Storytelling for Good | Jon Cleave

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Design for one and create for all: Inclusive Innovation | Ruby Steel

Co-Founder & Creative Director at Studio Exception www.studioexception.com Social Media: @StudioException

AUB Human were delighted to welcome back trailblazer in inclusive design, Ruby Steel, to share her latest venture as co-founder of Studio Exception. Ruby was also a ‘fixer’ on the BBC2 show ‘Big Life Fix’, that involved a team of inventors creating new and life-changing solutions for people in need.

Ruby’s talk, ‘Design for one and create for all: Inclusive Innovation’, gave students the opportunity to hear from Ruby’s experience of creating products and services that are better for everyone. Ruby shared how this experience and insight led her to being co-founder of Studio Exception, a unique design collective that embraces diversity, recognising the value people who are excluded from using products and services, because of disability or otherwise, have to offer. She believes, by acknowledging their needs that we can create a better world, not only for them, but for all.

In addition, Ruby also shared stories from the BBC2 show, ‘Big Life Fix’ of working with a woman living with Multiple Sclerosis that resulted in new ideas that pushed the boundaries of accessibility in existing voice tech. Ruby also shared practical methods to inspire students in thinking differently, and to help them identify and shift the source of inspiration to an ‘Exceptional’ person—someone previously excluded—to instil new inclusive principles that can be applied to everyday design and communication work. “By designing for one, we create a deeper level of empathy and help a design team go from everyday solutions to extraordinary ideas.

Ruby Steel

BBC Two, The Big Life Fix

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Empowerment Through Making | Emilie Giles

BA (Hons) Graphic Design Arts University Bournemouth

Emilie Giles, AUB’s newest staff member, who

joined the BA (Hons) Graphic Design team in June 2021, having recently completed her PhD in human-computer interaction. Emilie is a researcher and artist whose work explores co-designing and making with blind and visually impaired people using e-textiles and physical computing. Her work spans creative technology, crafting and pervasive gaming and she has run many projects with blind and visually impaired people in museums and galleries such as The Whitechapel Art Gallery and Tate Modern, collaborating with charities such as The RNIB and Sense.

Emilie’s talk as part of the AUB Human speaker series, ‘Empowerment Through Making: Working with Communities Through Creative Technology’, discussed the importance of taking a participatory making approach with participants when creating personal interactive objects, particularly with those people who are from more vulnerable communities. The talk also touched on how within human-computer interaction it has often been more common to design for people instead of with them, particularly those with an impairment or disability. However, this is increasingly changing with these intended users instead becoming the designers and makers of their own technologies. This embracing of co-designing and collaborative making is important for giving intended users a sense of agency over the technologies they use and to ensure that they feel embedded in the entire process. Emilie stressed the importance for students to learn how to take these approaches when working on their own projects, and to learn how to collaborate with their users and see them as co-creators and co-designers.

“I am very excited to have joined the graphic design team and to be sharing the skills and approaches to thinking that I have built up over my professional and academic career with the students at AUB. As well as my work in e-textiles and physical computing, I hope to bring my experience in participatory design and making to the course along with creative computing, running ethnographic design studies and pervasive game design.

Emilie Giles