Designing Inclusive Interactions: "Inclusive interactions between people and products in their contexts of use"

Venue: Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge , 22 - 25 March 2010

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CWUAAT '10 is the fifth of a series of workshops that are held every two years and follows on from the highly successful CWUAAT ’02, CWUAAT ’04, CWUAAT ’06, and CWUAAT ‘08.

The workshop theme “Designing Inclusive Interactions” reflects the need to explore the issues and practicalities of design that is intended to extend our active future lives. This encompasses design for inclusion: for the individual at home; in the workplace; for businesses and of products in these contexts. It reflects the development of theory, tools and techniques as research moves on, and also the need to draw in wider psychological, social, and economic considerations in order to gain a more accurate understanding of users’ interactions with products and technology. Trends are now identifiable in mainstream HCI and interaction research such that it is now no longer sufficient to investigate user modelling or develop usability guidance for specific, technology interfaces but where researchers must, by necessity, take up the challenge of widespread integration of products with the wider social, psychological and design worlds, such as healthcare or mobile systems. The philosophy underlying inclusive design specifically extends the definition of product users to include people who are excluded by disability and rapidly changing technology, especially the elderly and ageing, and emphasises the value of impairment and disability in innovation and new product and service development.

The workshop aims to encourage wide-ranging discussion, co-operation and collaboration within and between the universal access and assistive technology research communities in the context of inclusive design. We hope this will lead to new solutions to reduce exclusion and difficulty arising from impairment with special application to our future lives, in the workplace, at home and at leisure.

The call for participation in CWUAAT is international and contributions are welcomed from all leading researchers in the fields of Universal Access and Assistive Technology.  Likely participants include computer scientists, designers, engineers, industrial representatives, therapists and practitioners, ergonomists and architects.  The workshop will focus on, but will not be limited to, the following principal topics: