Challenge Workshops

The Challenge Workshops is a knowledge transfer programme for professional designers in consulting and industry whose focus is the use of practical techniques in inclusive design as a tool for innovation.

Background
The Challenge Workshops are based on the footprint of the annual DBA Inclusive Design Challenge, a mentored design competition lasting five months that is held in collaboration the Design Business Association (DBA), the UK’s largest trade association of design firms.

The DBA Inclusive Design Challenge has been described by Rory Cellan Jones, Technology Correspondent for BBC News, as the ‘combined Olympics and Oscars of the inclusive design world’.

The Challenge format was developed as a simple designer-friendly mechanism to transfer knowledge to design consulting firms and their industry clients about the inclusive design process and show how interaction with disabled people as ‘extreme' users could be a direct route to mainstream product and service innovation.

Since 2000, eight DBA Challenges have been held in the UK, organised annually by the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre with the DBA.

In 2005 we took its key elements, condensed them into 24 hours and found that designers responded with enthusiasm and creativity to this abbreviated format.

Since 2005, shorter 24-hour and 48-hour versions have been held in London, Tokyo, Kyoto, Oslo and Singapore, resulting in a range of innovative solutions spanning design disciplines includingproduct design, interaction design, 3D design, environments, services and visual communications

Business uptake
Using feedback from designers over the past eight years, InnovationRCA has developed a flexible multidisciplinary workshop module for different contexts. Challenge Workshops have been held in different corporate and academic contexts in Finland, the UK and Japan for major international players such as TOTO, BT, Reckitt Benkiser, Nokia, Roche and Proctor and Gamble.

What does it deliver?
The Challenge model contains the key elements of pertinent information, lateral inspiration, multi-disciplinary team building and the development of presentation skills. It has proved that it can significantly inspire participants across the board and deliver a set of innovative new design directions for seemingly intractable issues.

For designers, the Challenge is about operating outside their usual comfort zone, looking at a problem from the very different perspective of the disabled consumer and using those lateral insights to innovate for the mainstream consumer market. In the process, they learn the key skills they need to compete in a world where inclusion through design is increasingly legislated for by governments and desired by clients, major corporations and consumers of all ages and abilities. It is about being ahead of the game in an interdependent and increasingly ageing world.

Clive Grinyer, Head of Consumer Experience at Cisco and keynote speaker at the 2006 DBA Inclusive Design Challenge Awards event, describes the impact of the Challenge Workshops: ‘It is the perfect example of design thinking, building on new knowledge, placing designers in unfamiliar situations and forcing them to understand that the extremities of ability creates a powerful force for innovation.’

For more information on The Challenge Workshops, contact Julia Cassim, Senior Research Fellow, on +44 (0)20 7590 4242.