Universal Design Practice in Norwegian Industry and Academia - more than Rules and Guidelines

Universal Design seems to be a political ideal, usually curbed by business and technological feasibilities. To study how the Norwegian industry practice universal design, we have conducted interviews with 16 central actors representing the Norwegian Universal Design environment, both within academia and consulting, practitioners of Universal Design in the Norwegian market today. All interviews were recorded, analysed, and discussed in the project group and created the basis for discussion on emerging topics about user experience and service perspectives on universal design. Universal design has been one of the key political projects in the last 20 years. It was announced as a priority and a neutral way to demonstrate respect for human rights and diversity. But by doing so it became necessary to define and quantify what universal design is as well as how much and what kind of universal design is satisfactory. It seems that this among other things led Universal Design in Norway towards narrow focus on accessibility and measurable personal needs based on the ICF (International Classification of Functionality, Disability and Health). Often the universally designed products, systems, processes, etc. are not placed in their systemic and social context. Instead, the focus is mostly set on measurable attributes, such as door width and rotational space in the bathroom for wheelchair users or measurable contrast for visually impaired persons. Thus, we think there is a need for a broader and deeper understanding of how and why persons experience being included and excluded in a situation. Exploring the issue of universal design from the standpoint of experiences and services can open new avenues for discussion. Lets take for example a perspective of a person on the autism spectrum who uses NAV services, here ICF is just a small part of the universal design solution. It is necessary to design service holistically through participatory processes. Furthermore, we need to take the basis for Universal Design; the UN conventions of Human Rights, deeper into account when we practice and teach Universal Design. Future discussion, currently hypothesis (to be worked on): This qualitative, hermeneutical study shows that the informants attitudes and focus about universal design equally affect design solutions just as technological solutions and business issues. Moreover, emerging topics among the informants from the industry don’t necessarily match the ones from the education and ICF regulations. In general the rules of universal design are not primarily considered in day to day projects. As a result we see a missing competence and therefore room for the improvement of the design curriculum.