Design for All Blog

Design for All aims to enable all people to have equal opportunities to participate in every aspect of society. The concept User Centred Design also talks about the importance of users’ needs and wishes in the design process. We invited Hannu Kähönen to host a blog about this - please join the discussion! Hannu Kähönen is an industrial designer and Artist Professor working in Finland. He has been involved in designing solutions for everyday life of Helsinki citizens such as the city trams and litter bins. Design for All is an internationally known ideology. It aims to design for human diversity, social inclusion and equality. To achieve this, the built environment, everyday objects, services, culture and information – in short, everything that is designed and made by people to be used by people – must be accessible, convenient for everyone in society to use and responsive to evolving human diversity. The practice of Design for All makes conscious use of the analysis of human needs and aspirations and requires the involvement of end users at every stage in the design process. The motto is: ”Good design enables, bad design disables.” The EIDD Stockholm Declaration©, 2004

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Hannu Kähönen
01.06.2010

Designing for all – the user comes first

When you start to design an object you cannot think first about the object itself; you have to consider the user instead. What kind of person will be using it, in what place and situation and why? After that, you can start work on developing the actual object.

So you have to think about the user and the object, but with regard to the future we have to take a third thing into consideration, our environment. We have to see what kind of impact the product will have during its use – and after use, when it turns into waste. All three factors have to be in balance, the user, the object, and nature

At a certain point in the process, it’s necessary to put together all the requirements...
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