The DBA Inclusive Design Challenge is an annual collaboration between the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre and the Design Business Association. It invites member firms of the DBA to propose new ideas for products services and communications that improve the quality of life of older and disabled people and help integrate them more fully into mainstream society.
This year’s DBA Inclusive Design Challenge 2007 focused on two briefs, one set by its sponsor the National Patient Safety Agency to find ways to reduce accidents caused by slips, trips and falls. Every five hours in the UK someone dies as a result of a fall – such accidents kill more people in the population aged over 65 than cancer or coronary heart disease. The second brief was a more general, less prescriptive one.
Wolff Olins chose to address the issue of how to create a more mobility aware society and developed an awareness-raising communications campaign called Go Steady, based around a new logo to replace the international disability symbol, a pictogram originally designed in 1969 by the Danish designer Sussanne Koefoed.
The judges liked ‘the way the team had turned a negative into a positive and effectively tackled a large-scale problem that has long resisted satisfactory answers.’ And called it: ‘A ground-breaking proposal for an initiative that resolves the dilemma of a communications campaign and kitemark that will signal vulnerability elicit awareness, empathy and a desire to help but does not stigmatize those to whom it applies.’
Go Steady won the Challenge’s inclusive design award, beating off a strong field of proposals from four other DBA finalists, Seymourpowell, Rodd Industrial Design, Creactive and Uniform.
All the projects were presented at a special awards night at the RCA on 6 February chaired by Professor John Clarkson of the University of Cambridge and with keynote speeches from Anne McGuire, the Minister for Disabled People and David Godber, Director of Nissan Design Europe.
The Wolff Olins team arrived at their solution by a lateral route of defining what they did not want the campaign to be. They did not want to ‘reduce disability to a function or a pictogram of people as fallers, users or night walkers.’ They realised that a logo was necessary and wanted it to be ‘a bullet of information that stood out from the crowd’ and was ‘arresting, intriguing and jarring’.
They rejected red, the colour of danger, and environmental green and chose instead a lively pink for the symbol they developed – an arrow and its partner with one part of the arrowhead missing. Side by side, they suggest the M for mobility and the helping hand that can make a difference.
The sign could be used as a way of encouraging people to offer help. In other situations, it could signal the need for increased levels of vigilance – the symbol could be painted on uneven or dangerous surfaces or at the beginning of transition areas in buildings where the lighting is poor or the surface underfoot changes abruptly.
The simplicity of the symbol would allow a doctor to signal a patient’s vulnerability and level of risk. It could be drawn or stamped on the medical notes that will be passed to those who are there to help. In a busy healthcare setting, the symbol becomes a vital and constant point of reference for the care and support staff who can know at a glance which of their charges has a tendency to fall.
For the general population, the symbol printed on a package of medicine could indicate that ingesting it can cause drowsiness and increase the risk of a fall. It could be stamped on a bus pass to alert the driver of passengers need for assistance or posted on a route planner or website to indicate areas where extra care is necessary. Conversely, the symbol could be placed on products that enhance mobility such as a pair of shoes with soles that offer extra grip.
The Wolff Olins team envisage that the Go Steady initiative would need to be launched by a public body in collaboration with a coalition of organisations concerned with health, age and disability.
For more information on the campaign, see www.gosteady.org
