Inclusive Design Workshop by Regional Cooperation Between an NPO and a University

Abstract

This is a case of running inclusive design workshops. Communication in an inclusive design workshop is not intercultural colla- boration itself. However, as designers, engineers, and users who have individual needs, such as aged and disabled people, gather in the workshop, participants may become aware of differences in individual creation of meanings by communicating with other participants. Because as individuals our imaginative power is sometimes quite insufficient, it is not possible to sufficiently analyze such individual needs without communicating directly. In the inclusive design workshop, participants cooperate with each other during the design process, revealing differences in individual creation of meanings. In this paper, we describe some activities of social-academic cooperation, specifically cases of workshops that were run by an nonprofit organization (NPO) and a laboratory at Kyoto University. The former supports aged and disabled people’s participation in society and the latter researches communication by the system theory.