INCLUSIVE DESIGN IN IRELAND was born here at UCD in 2013 and has since gained huge traction nationally and globally!
We are proud to be the European/EMEA hub for Inclusive Design in Responsible Research, Innovation and Impact.
The IDRC not only achieves impact towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals; it is also working actively with UN Women and a range of NGOs and IGOs to create new XR experiential learning content in support of the goals.
The IDRC provides the national and international framework for interdisciplinary expertise to deliver on major research programmes in Research, Policy and Practice for Inclusive Design, including STEM & STEAM Education, the Care Economy, Empathic Computing, Future Forsighting, Assistive Technologies for People with Intellectual and other abilities and disabilities, Gamification for Connected Health, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Performance Technologies, Unconscious Bias/Data Bias, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and multiple interdisciplinary programmes directly supporting the Sustainable Development Goals with our partners in the United Nations and their NGOs and IGOs.
Inclusive Design supports all the UN Sustainability Goals, and is a perfect model for providing the 'transversal skills' required for the next century, and beyond.
THE MINDSET AND METHODOLOGY:
INCLUSIVE DESIGN begins and ends with people and the need for equity, diversity and radical inclusion.
It insists on a 1-size-fits-1 model of inclusion in society, technology, pedagogy, engineering and all domains. In fact, that model was developed by Professor Jutta Trevieranus of the IDRC Canada: herself a graduate of our PhD Programme at UCD, with a thesis that put forward the core principles, methods and tools of Inclusive Design now adopted by global stakeholders at scale.
Inclusive Design does not conceive of a 'norm' from which some of us 'deviate' if we have differences or disabilities, whether visible or invisible: physical, sensory, cognitive, neurodivergent, intellectual, And/OR if we differ from the majority around us for other reasons, such as 'lack of culture fit', difference in terms of gender, gender identity, ethnicity, national origin, economic status, language, age or religion.
ALL people exist on a spectrum of humanity and are deserving of equal respect and equitable inclusion in all aspects of life. We strive together to achieve this aim. We work in creative technology and hardware/software solutions, policy and activism, and across all educational sectors, to share the new paradigm and create a world that is INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN.
Inclusive Design is inherently and emphatically trans-disciplinary, and employs mixed methods and action research models, developing case studies with communities to achieve local and global goals. We do not 'file' people into categories or operate in disciplinary or sectoral silos. We design for the edges, in order to enable us ALL!
Instantiation and Proliferation of Inclusive Design:
The Inclusive Design Research Centre of Ireland @ UCD was constituted in 2013 as an all- island research centre to facilitate and promote post-disciplinary action research and scholarship in the domain of Inclusive Design to support the educational and life needs of ALL people with all abilities and assistive technology requirements. We draw upon inclusivity methods of the Arts, Design, Social Sciences, Digital Humanities, Engineering, Health and Medicine, and Computer Science domains.
The IDRC is the UCD instantiation of the larger SMARTlab cross-sectoral cross-cultural global network of partner sites that have been evolving for the past 32 years. The network feeds the IDRC, and vice versa.
Constituted as a national centre with an all-island remit and a global reach, the IDRC is a locus of research and education, providing postgraduate research training and supervision, and hosting national and international scholars undertaking practice-based clinical and scholarly research in the cognate disciplines of Inclusive Design.
Exploring new Horizons: How the IDRC ship anchored at UCD:
The IDRC @ UCD was set up and approved by UCD as a formal research entity of the university, initially in order to host the academic chair role for the award-winning 8.9 million euro ASSISTID research project: funded by the European Commission as a co- Fund with the charity Respect and the all-island research group known as DOCTRID at RCSI (the Royal College of Surgeons Institute), ASSISTID (Assistive Technologies in Support of People with Intellectual Disabilities and/or Autism), for which Professor Lizbeth Goodman of UCD served as Academic Chair and PI of six Postdoc projects for ASSISTID from 2013-17. The projects included partners at CSI, Ulster University Belfast, and the University of Michigan as well as the European network of the Marie Curie Programme, which was its host.
Our current funded projects (EU Horizon, EU IMI, Science Foundation Ireland, Irish Research Council, Logitech, et al) are all informed by our 32 year history through our partner SMARTlab, in delivering what the world needs, when it is needed with major partners and foundational funders including Stephen Hawking, the BBC, Microsoft Unlimited Potential, UNICEF, et al.
Our Flagship Academic Programmes:
The IDRC @ UCD operates as the main academic European/EMEA hub for the international network: as a national resource as well as a main hub of expertise for Europe, to act as a central research support unit to host funded Post-Doc fellows and PhDs and to host major research projects, programmes, projects and publications. The world-renowned Thematic PhD in Inclusive Design and Creative Technology Innovation (previously known as the SMARTlab Practice-based PhD) is offered by our centre. Information about the PhD IDCTI is here:
Candidates may be accepted three times a year, in January, May and September. Application information is available here:
An interdisciplinary Masters in Inclusive Design and Creative Technology Innovation is also in the pipeline. Watch this space.
IDRC on the island of Ireland and across the seas:
The IDRC hosts a set of showcase spaces or 'INCLUDE labs' which act as hubs for research activity and community engagement, where researchers, industry collaborators, clinicians and clients or ‘extreme users’ can work and play together, to achieve joint goals addressing real- world needs. Some projects use the N=1 model, others start at larger scale. All focus on the person at the centre. At present, most of the INCLUDE Research is co-located with SMARTlab hubs in Dublin, Skelligs, Sligo and Belfast on the island of Ireland, and in London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Riga in Europe, and in Sydney and Tasmania in Australia, Niagara in Canada, and Philadelphia in the USA. Future INCLUDE labs are planned for industry and non-profit collaborating sites in the near future.
Check out the current sites here:
Technology for Good: empathetic computing and policy for sustainability
The team brought a range of cutting edge technology innovations with SMARTlab when we arrived at UCD in 2010, including Assistive Technology and Multimodal Interfaces equipment and programmes (eye gaze interface systems and tools, gamified apps and early AR tools, performance tech tools, et al) and the SMARTlab’s Virtual World and Games for Learning methods came with us from our London MAGIC lab (Multimedia and Games Innovation Centre) in the London Docklands.
We partner closely on projects in this space with the Oxford-based charity SpecialEffect, led by Dr Mick Donegan (former SMARTlab Deputy Director, London) creating games with and for kids with complex needs.
An untapped area of scholarship:
The Centre lead research activity in Ireland and beyond is significant and growing
The centre provides a national resource of human expertise and material resources capable of meeting the needs of scholars and clinicians studying a range of subjects from Unconscious Bias in Data, XR futures, Workspaces and Jobs of the Future, Assistive Technologies, Disability Inclusion, Inclusive Engineering Education, Gamified Approaches to Inclusive Learning, E-sports and Co-Pilot Programmes, Buddy Systems, AI for Good, Gender Studies and Women’s Empowerment, Identity Studies informed by Technologies for Creative Expression, Performance Technologies, Rehabilitation Science, Autism and Neurodiversity
Innovation, Advocacy and Empowerment Studies, The Care Economy, Educational Psychology and Special Educational Needs, Higher Education and the History of Health and Inclusive Education, Robotics and Haptics for Inclusive Communications, Sensory and Olfactory Design, Design for Inclusive built environments and smart healthy cities, Virtual Worlds and Games for Learning, Interactive Tools for Innoculation Against Misinformation, Apps for Patient Engagement and Personalised Health, and Social Media tools for empowering SMARThealth systems.
This centre aims to support and include all people as equal researchers engaged in the co- design of more inclusive social and health/education spaces and curricula: not only people with disabilities but also a wider range of people constrained by personal or professional circumstances, or economic or social disadvantage are of particular concern to the extended reach of the Centre, which will not adhere to a simple ‘medical model’ of disability (which tended in the past to see disability as a problem of the person not fitting into the world) but will rather endorse and support a social model of inclusivity (which sees disability, injury, economic or political or personal marginalisation all as symptoms of an unhealthy society, wherein it is society and its systems and structures that require ‘repair’, not people). All of us require accommodations and supports (technological or physical or social) at some point in our lives. The IDRC creates and shares these supports, by all for all.
Why for as a Research Centre in a University?:
Much of our work happens off campus, off the grid, in the places where people need us and co-create with us. Yet the university base is important as it holds us to the highest academic and ethical standards. The UCD hub serves as a resource for scholars and practitioners in the Health Sciences and Human Sciences as well as in IT and Technology Development and the industries that support these domains. The Centre generates much-needed additional research capacity for a range of disciplines and acts as a centre of excellence for the collection and preservation of digital archives of best practice interventions in this important field.
Knowledge Sharing and Exchange:
The Centre hosts regular (bi-weekly) online seminars with global experts (free and open to all) and three annual week-long intensive seminars for the PhD cohort in particular. We provide a locus for inter-disciplinary collaboration in research, digital invention and archiving, and education, and serve as both a national and an international resource for visiting scholars, students, industry partners, and members of the public.
Collaborating faculty, Postdocs and 32 active PhDs (plus 60 successful PhD graduated from our PhD in Inclusive Design and Creative Technology Innovation) run many large projects in, some in partnership with industry and others co-funded by research councils and philanthropic funds provided by SMARTlab and its global network of collaborators and sponsors.
Community engagement is key to all our work. When we design for the edges, we provide for all.
The IDRC Global Network:
Our 'mother ship' site is the IDRC and linked Inclusive Design Institute at Ontario College of Art & Design University (OCADU) in Toronto, directed by Professor Jutta Treviranus. Our partner in Asiana is the Centre for Inclusive Design, Sydney, directed by Dr Manisha Amin, in collaboration with the new SMARTlab hub at the University of Tasmania, directed by Dr Zi Siang See. The two sites operate under the title SMARTlab Oz, and include the previous launch of a community XR training hub in Newcastle. South American programmes in this domain are led by Dr Silvia Margarita Baldiris Novarra, whilst European charity partner projects are directed by Dr Eva de Lera of Raising the Floor International.
In all our work, at all our sites, under all the projects, we are collectively dedicated to 'all boats rising' (rather than some individuals hitting a glass ceiling). Projects led by women and diverse communities can achieve great success in to solving their own issues and creating their own solutions in collaboration.