Design for the Mind. NRAC Conference, Dr Katie Gaudion

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1 Design for the Mind NRAC Conference, 2018 Dr Katie Gaudion

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3 WE INVENTED THE TERM inclusive design AND USE IT AS A TOOL FOR people-centred INNOVATION

4 OUR WORK IS ORGANISED INTO 3 DISTINCT research spaces AGE & DIVERSITY HEALTHCARE SOCIAL & GLOBAL

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10 What role does design play?

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13 A qualitative research study that explores how neurodivergent people experience the built environment to help inform the structure of new BSI design guidelines for the built environment.

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15 What is Neurodiversity?

16 Singer wanted to coin a term that echoed positive terms like biodiversity and cultural diversity to call attention to the fact that many atypical forms of brain wiring also convey unusual skills and aptitudes.

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19 Literature Review

20 Interviews

21 Every week I encounter groups who tell me that they do not have to bother with autism/ neurodivergent access, because there are no standards. or, inform me that they simply don t know what to do, and thus will do nothing.

22 I think guidelines are enormously important. It s one of those things particularly in the field of autism, which has sort of been tacked on at the end this sort of sensory sensitivity subject. But the reality is, if the person can t access a school, workplace, or a building in order to do whatever it is they need to do, then actually that s the most important thing.

23 Walk and Talk

24 Co-Creation Workshops

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26 Online survey

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29 Mind the Gap Forum

30 Findings

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32 Automatic flushing toilets and hand dryers really scare my students. The loudness and fact it happens itself. Hot desking, other people using your pens, fluorescent lighting, noisy fans are all really upsetting. Too many advertising screens and reflective surfaces create extreme visual confusion.

33 For many of us on the autism spectrum, ice cold steel feels like an electric shock. It can cause real difficulties accessing buildings with steel handles washing hands using ice cold steel taps. Leisure is scary because it is unpredictable, things aren t made explicit, it isn t always obvious where to go, where NOT to go and what is socially acceptable. A lot of stress comes from the lack of transparency in the system, don t know what is expected of them when they arrive.

34 There are no quiet spaces to retreat to; busy and unstructured times, breaks, are a particular challenge. Supermarkets are laid out to ensure maximum spend, rather than for ease of engagement. Changing layout for stock makes it difficult for many people with ASD to navigate easily, along with fluro lights and noise. I m particularly sensitive to environments that have a lot of unpredictable sounds and movement from people.

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36 Ensuring that environments are clearly integrated with clear information points and signage to avoid any vagueness Anything that is not within your own control can be a problem, e.g automatic lights in a toilet. The lights go out because you have not moved for a second and then how do you put them back on? For people with autism anything where technology has taken the element of human control can be potentially challenging.

37 It is essential to provide environments in which the visual, acoustic, olfactory and tactile qualities can be modulated to suit a person s preferences, and to eliminate their sensory dislikes. In one of the colleges they had a very large sports hall with a big whirring fan. The hall would be used for exams, so it meant that anyone who was neurodiverse either couldn t concentrate or they couldn t take the exam at all. It had never occurred to anybody that the fan might have had an impact.

38 A person may perceive a change in flooring as a cliff edge, a step or an area of danger. This can also occur with changes in lighting on the floor, shadows can be perceived as holes that are a danger to cross. Shiny floors, particularly in hospitals, they look so wet. You get people with dementia not even wanting to stand on the floor because it looks as though they are going to slip.

39 The less surprises in an environment the better. Familiarity of a space can encourage orientation, if things are frequently moved and changed within an environment this can cause distress. Moving things around for some people is very difficult. I know people who if someone moves the furniture around when they re not there, they come back into the room and they don t know where they are. They can t orientate themselves so it s necessary to be part of that process so that they can see things being moved around.

40 Control and minimise background noise, echo and reverberation. The provision of a quiet space is important to help a person to recalibrate, relax or get away from unpredictable or overwhelming sounds. There seems to be a misperception that the more space for people with autism the better, and a lot of people come into the ward and go wow look at how much space you ve got its really big. But you can have too much space because it feels uncontained and the acoustic issues you get with it.

41 The transitions and thresholds between space and the ability for a person to know and understand what is beyond, or the ability for a person to preview what is going on in a space before entering is an important consideration. Transitions and thresholds and the not knowing of what is beyond can be difficult. Therefore soft transitions so a person is able to see what is beyond is important.

42 The challenging aspects of lighting are; flickering lights, fluorescent lights, too much glare, lack of natural sunlight, sensory activated lighting as it is unpredictable and inability to control it or understand how it works. It s about control and the relationship between the light in the centre of the room and the switch that turns it on and off. For someone with autism sensory activated lights are bad because they can t control it and for someone with dementia they can be bad because they will never understand how it all works.

43 Next Steps The next stage is to write a Publicly Available Specification (PAS), which is a standardisation document that closely resembles a formal standard in structure and format. Once the PAS is complete there then needs to be an evaluation to create an evidence base to support it being an official British Standard.

44 Important Considerations Guidelines can become tokenistic because people don t think about what they are doing and why it is important. Autistic people s difficulties or differences are invisible so if you ve got a tick box, then you won t know why you re doing it. You just don t want people to do it for the sake of doing it. Design guidelines need to be more design principle led as opposed to solution led, so understanding what is an appropriate solution and knowing that there is not going to be one solution that will be perfect for everybody.

45 Thank you! Design Publications available at: Gaudion, K., PhD thesis:

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