Menopause Cafes (Season 5, Episode 5b)
Guests: Lisa Scully; Nathalie Bonafe: Erika Eitland

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: We have a very special episode for our listeners today. We are talking about Menopause and Design… what it is, how it affects women in the workplace, and what we as designers can do about it when creating these environments.

Carolyn: It’s an important topic that we feel needs more attention and is finally starting to be addressed. We’ve assembled a panel of experts in this field: Menopause Educator Lisa Scully; Women’s Health Advocate Doctor Nathalie Bonafe; and Doctor Erika Eitland from Perkins & Will.…

Janet:  We’ll discuss the different stages of menopause, and of course, design solutions. They also share their own personal stories in an honest and open discussion. I love that we have women from different generations, including myself. I usually do the interviewing but this time I am a part of this round table discussion…

Carolyn: it’s an incredible group of women… period.

Janet: (laughs) Hey, did you mean that as a pun?

Carolyn: oh yeah…

Janet: Oh my goodness. Well, you usually throw in a couple of puns, and just because this is a serious subject doesn’t mean there can’t be a few laughs.

Carolyn: So true. As long as it’s a part of the natural flow of the conversation?

Janet: Oh no…

Carolyn: too much?

Janet: maybe…

Carolyn: Okay, so before I add to the cycle (J: oh no), and get myself into more trouble, here is our panel discussion on ‘Menopause and Design’…

(Music 2 – Interview)

Janet: Hello and welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast. I am your host, Janet Roche. Today we’re going to be talking a little bit about menopause and design. And we’ve got a couple of experts on here who will be talking to us about the stages of menopause and how that works, and the trials and tribulations that women go through with menopause and also within the workplace. So I’m going to dive right on in. I’m going to ask them to go around the room and introduce themselves briefly. So, Dr. Eitland, could you go first, please.

Erika: Hi, everybody, I’m Dr. Erika Eitland, and I lead the human experience research at Perkins and Will, an architectural and urban design firm. I am a public health scientist proudly, and I am the first public health scientist to be in a leadership role at a major architecture firm in the industry. So I take that with a lot of humility, and I feel so honored to be joined by all these incredible guests today.

Janet: And we’re thrilled to have you too. So then we’re going to go to Lisa Scully.

Lisa: Thanks, Janet. I’m Lisa Scully. I am a licensed menopause expert champion with Menopause Experts Group, based in the UK, but they’re part of an international company. I’m an organizational development professional as well. So I work with different organizations with regards to taking the organizations through change, processes, but particularly specializing in menopause in the workplace.

I also have another hat, that’s where I met Janet. I am a trauma-informed project manager for Wrexham University in North Wales. And we have been on a journey for the past three years and continue to be on a journey to become a trauma-informed organization.

So, changing mindsets, behaviors, processes, and driving a culture of compassion and kindness. And I am amazingly working with Janet on an amazing physical design project about the physical environment and trauma informed approach.

Janet: Great. Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa: Thanks for having me.

Janet: And next up we have Dr. Bonafe.

Nathalie: Hello Janet, thank you for having me here. Hello everyone, Erika, and Lisa. I’m Nathalie Bonafe. Generally, only my mother calls me doctor.

Janet: (laughs). Well, that’s actually a very nice thing, she’s not seeing you as six. Right. So, yeah. (laughs).

Nathalie: Yes, yes, that’s the joke. But thank you. So, yes, I actually have a PhD in biomedical science. And because I do not work for any university or any big corporations anymore, I actually go by Nathalie Bonafé. And, but that background is extremely useful in being, like Lisa, a menopause expert champion, representing here in the USA as part of this wonderful group, you know. Originally based in the UK, but it’s not now really global. (Erika: yeah). (Janet: yeah). And I love being part of that group because we grow together the awareness.

So I am a woman’s health advocate, specialized in transitions. So you can call me a coach or a doula. A woman who serves at two transitions at menopause and at end of life. That’s me.

Janet: Right, which is interesting. Until I met you, I didn’t realize there was end of life doulas, which I think are quite important. And, so, thank you for everybody for being here. It’s such an important topic.

I am a woman who is now approaching 58 and I had a surgical hysterectomy in November of 2020. To be honest with you, when I got out of surgery, I was about as happy as one could be. Well it was over, right?

And I was healthy and okay, and I was really quite ecstatic. I never had kids. I didn’t want kids. And my journey going through menopause was quite extreme. I had a lot of cervical cysts. I had heavy bleeding. I mean, it was, it was bad.

And so once that, what I figured was the journey was over, I thought ‘hot diggity’, right? Like, I could not have been more thrilled. And I know I had a lot of friends that said, “this is like going to be the worst thing you’re ever going to go through” and having the uterus taken out, like that was the defining moment. And that was it, like, your skin is never going to be the same. Your hair is never going to be the same. And all this other stuff.

They’re not wrong. However though, the thing that I really found to be true, and what started kicking off this session, was my real moments of dealing now with bits of depression that hadn’t really happened since I was a teenager and an early adult age. I’ve been a pretty happy person.

I’ve also have been dealing with a lot of anxiety, which I’ve never had in my life. And to the point where I think sometimes, I have panic attacks. And then, also there’s a lot of anger and rage. Forgot to mention that part earlier. It’s coming through. I might have always been a little quick to fire off, but like I feel like this is a little bit something else.

I was asked by a doctor recently, “did I have any thoughts about hurting myself or others?” And I thought about it for half a second and I thought, I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to cry or ask her, “describe exactly how I was supposed to hurt people.” Like, I had somewhere between this wanting to cry because I was depressed, but also this complete rage where I thought to myself, “Yeah, I might want to hurt somebody. How can I go about that?” (Lisa: chuckles).

And I wanted some sort of answers, And I just shut down, and I just said nothing. And, because I knew it was just a f fleeting moment. And so I said, “no, I’m good, you know” but it really wasn’t true. And so then I got a chance to meet Lisa on this Wrexham University project. And when she told me that she was a menopause expert and I said, “Oh, we have to talk, we have to get you on Inclusive Designers Podcast. It’s so important. We need to talk about this.”

And then I started doing a deep dive and I started to realize that, even when I asked my doctors, and I was going through perimenopause, and they told me I was just too young to be going through perimenopause. I said to myself, ‘but I’m having all these problems, like, you know, the cysts and the mood swings and all this other stuff’. “You’re too young. Don’t worry about it.”

And then from there, once I did go into menopause, and I have a great OBGYN, I really like him an awful lot. And so I said to him, “you know, now I’m in menopause, you’ve taken the uterus out, like, this is a real defining moment. I said, what can I expect?” And he goes, “well, what do you want to know?” And I thought to myself, “oh, I don’t know what I want to know. What do I, how… what?”

And so then I kind of shut down from that because then I didn’t know what to ask. And then it wasn’t until I went back and started doing more research, I realized doctors aren’t taught, at least in America, what menopause is, because we don’t know.

So his answer was technically kind of correct. So he could probably help with certain questions that I might have, but I didn’t know what questions I was supposed to ask. I didn’t know what this next step meant. I didn’t know I was going to have depression. I didn’t know I was going to have anxiety. I didn’t know I was going to have the complete fits of rage. I nearly took out the refrigerator the other day because I spilt water. I did it. I spilt water and I just started pounding on that thing. And I mean, it’s not good. so, (Lisa: chuckles), yeah.

So again, I was already going through this anyways, and then when Lisa and I had that initial conversation and I found out that there was actually like, like menopause experts out there. I was like, wait, what? And so immediately afterwards, I called up Carolyn and I said, ‘ahh, I have our next show.’ And even though we weren’t planning in doing it for this season, I said, ‘we have to do it for this season, and we have to do it now.’ Yeah.

So I’m going to let you guys jump in. I don’t know who wants to go first. Maybe we could talk about what is menopause and let’s start with that basic conversation.

Lisa: Shall I? (Janet: Yeah, go ahead, Lisa). Do you want me to start the ball rolling? (Janet: Yes). Okay, yeah. So a lot of what you said there Janet, you know, those who are listening that have experienced any of those feelings or any of those symptoms as they’re called, will completely empathize with you. Because it is true… (Janet: Nathalie is raising her hand), (Lisa: laughs). And I recognize the rage and I do recognize the anxiety because that was me, 3-years ago. I mean, I’ve always been quite a nervous energy type of person. And when I was young, I would worry about little things and mum would call me ‘Nervous Nelly.’ That was my nickname, you know, but in a very loving way, but that was fine.

And I’ve been through life events like we all have where, you know, I’ve had resilience, but I’ve always had hope, faith, and trust in myself that, you know, I’ll push through. But for me, the anxiety and the depression, now when I reflect back, and I didn’t know what on earth was happening to me.

It was during lockdown, so 2020, that lovely year, you know, in lockdown, not being able to access the normal medical services or speak to somebody. And also it being a subject that actually, although it was being started to talk about in the UK, and Mariella Fostrops’ program had been on, it wasn’t actually in full swing, the conversation. And also, I think there was a bit of denial, I mean, I was 47 at the time, or 48 nearly, uh, I don’t know why I was in denial, but nobody had ever told me.

So the anxiety part, and that’s where we’re at, I mean, I am still perimenopausal as it calls it, and that’s the first stage. So anybody who goes through a natural transition in terms of no medical or surgical intervention, it is a staged approach in menopause. And we talk about the average age being 51 in the UK and the US where actually that’s when your period stop.

And it’s only one day menopause, (Janet chuckles). Mark it in your diary, the day your period stop, because it’s done retrospectively and that’s your menopause day. But the lead up to that is known as perimenopause and that for some people can be between 10-to-15 years of changes in our transition from reproductive years to our non-reproductive years. Yeah. (Janet: yeah).

Erika: Lisa, this is the part that’s just like, this is the crazy part, right? Like when we say like, “oh, menopause, this is one day, it’s when our period stops.” But the fact that like menopause and this perimenopause part is a sixth of a woman’s life. And like, “oh, by the way, here you go, and nobody talks about that.” (Janet: no). I just have to say, that was also the wild thing. It’s like, a huge portion of every woman’s life is going to experience this. And we don’t even have basic leave. (Janet: right).

We don’t have menstruation leave. And I know, UK, you rejected a proposal for menstruation leave there. But it’s like, that got, it’s just, it’s wild. (Janet: yeah). So, not to cut you off, but as someone who’s 33 and trying to navigate this space and be like, “what is this whole thing?” The numbers are like, so stressful as someone at my stage. So, hopefully, we deal with this anxiety together in this next, you know, hour.

Nathalie: Erika, we also want to prepare you. I think we wish our mothers had told us. (Janet: yeah). But I think there’s been a lot of things in the past 20, 30-years that have kind of prevented, you know, this transmission of information. (Erika: yeah).

First, you know, some research that has contributed to a lot of confusion on whether it’s a good thing to replace some hormones for women, but that’s another conversation. (Janet: chuckle). But my point also is that, actually, menopause is a lot more than that, in my opinion.

But if you ask a doctor today, as we were discussing Janet, you know, what did you want to know from your doctor? He should have told you that actually menopause now is considered to be the day after you haven’t had your periods for one year. So you see the confusion? It’s not just because you don’t know when your last period is. Really, you know, you think you might have one in 6-months because natural menopause, it kind of slows down.

You have less eggs in the basket, so you don’t necessarily have periods every month. So it could be, you know, every month for 6-months and then you skip 1 month and then you skip 6-months and then you skipped 11-months. And then you skipped and then it comes back. (Janet: yeah). And then it skips another 12-months and that’s after 12-months that you’re pretty sure that there are no eggs in the basket. (Janet: yeah). And that they call menopause.

Janet: Mine was actually 1-year, 11-months to the day. And I was like, I’m over it. Didn’t have to have a hysterectomy. They told me I needed to. I was, again, I was a happy camper. And then ‘boof’ (Nathalie: it came back). it just came back like that. (Erika: ooh). And then they were like, you know, basically coming to get you so you can have a hysterectomy, but it was during the pandemic.

I was so floored by that. I was like, (Nathalie: you were not prepared), I wasn’t even prepared for almost 2-years. 2-years! (Lisa: um-hmm). And it seemed a little cruel. It was like 1-year and 11-months to the day.

Erika: I feel like Dr. Bonafe, you know, we have this book of like what to expect when you’re expecting. Like really, they should just rewrite it for about menopause. It’s like, what do, what do we expect? You know, when we’re waiting to find out.

Nathalie: I think they, uh, please don’t call me doctor. (laughs).

Erika: The reason I call you doctor, because I think it brings up actually another important point that I was going to bring up earlier is women don’t refer to ourselves as doctors. We diminish the knowledge and information that you have acquired (Janet: yeah). And so when we’re talking about menopause, you being doctor and having this accumulation of knowledge gives it some validity. (Janet: yeah).

That to me, I think is something that we need to own. And so often as women in this space, talking about something men simply cannot understand, the power of having doctor in front of our names I think sometimes gives us at least a little bit more of a place at a table.

We might not have the full seat, but at least we’ve, you know, been invited to be in the room and I just, it is out of like respect for the amount of work that you’ve done to get to this point. So I will call you Nathalie from the rest of this conversation. But I do think it is important to where we are in this conversation that there is this need for true research and science and care on this topic. And so, you know, I really am grateful for sort of your effort in this. And so it’s more out of respect than anything else.

Nathalie: Thank you.

Janet: That’s amazing. Thank you, Dr. Eitland for reminding us of that important fact. Let’s kind of, I also want to talk about women in the workplace with menopause. Like, this was part of the catalyst that started this all, but I also want to, let’s talk a little bit more briefly about what menopause is. Anybody have any thoughts on that?

Nathalie: Well, I thought about that, Janet. And if I may, just respond to Erika about that before I go into the medical definition. (Janet: sure, absolutely). This is for you that we’re doing that. (Erika: yeah). This is for your generation, and this is thanks to you for pushing us to do that, and there is a lot of that that we could share at another time.

Janet: It’s another show, right? (laughs).

Nathalie: It’s like, it’s because of your generation that we are speaking up.

Erika: No, and we need that support. (Janet: claps).

Nathalie: We are speaking up. You are helping us, and so we help you. (Erika: thank you.) And so it’s, it’s really a beautiful thing. So thank you. (Erika: hmm). (Janet: yeah).

For me, the way I see menopause is, yes, menopause is this point in time where a person has gone an entire year without menstruation. You know, that’s really what it is. But menopause is a midlife event for most women. And it is really gradual, and it happens in several stages. So we don’t know we are in menopause, really, until we’ve gone through the years that have led to menopause, that one day. And until we also start understanding what comes after. So there are the years that lead to menopause that are perimenopause.

And that is for some women, they’re going to navigate it and it’s not going to be a problem at all. They may have been a little bit moody. They may divorce, (Janet: chuckles). You know, they may just, you know, all these things.

But for most women, they’re going to experience at least some of the symptoms, whether they’re going to start peeing in their pants when they laugh, (Janet: chuckles), whether it’s going to be feeling bloated, not being able to regulate their body weight anymore, or their appetite, whether it’s going to be an anxiety, whether it’s going to be brain fog.

And I believe that menopause really starts in the brain. So I say in the head, but as a joke. (Lisa: laughs). And all our body has estrogen and progesterone receptors, and we are all dependent on that estrogen. It’s not just for us to make babies that we have sex hormones. (Janet: yeah). Then there is a day of menopause in that period of, you know, 1-year, 2-years, where we kind of really in that flux.

And then there is the post menopause, that lasts until we die. And that is something that, because I also do end of life, I care a lot about that other part. Because when I hear women say, ‘Oh, I’m past menopause.’ And I think, ‘Okay, have you looked at your bones? Have you looked at your blood vessels? How are you mentally? Is your weight regulated? Are you at risk of a stroke; at risk of not being strong enough to carry your activities of daily living; how is your thyroid? et cetera, et cetera.’ (Janet: …well that’s just it).

And that is why I think that, yes, we’re talking a lot more now about menopause and social media about perimenopause, but let’s also not forget the post-menopause. And it’s in that sense why I think it’s even more than 10-years in my opinion. It lasts, it could last 50 years (Lisa: chuckles), if we live until 100, okay?

Janet: Yeah. I forgot about the brain fog. That drives me nuts. Because I’m pretty organized and it’s definitely, I’d say, going into one room only to realize I’m picking up something else that I didn’t want, and then I’m carrying that around, and I’m like, wait, what happened to the other thing? And it’s this whole like kind of spider web of, just kind of confusion. Don’t get me wrong. I can still put on my pants. So I’m a happy girl, but it’s still, it can be frustrating for sure. Lisa, do you want to jump in?

Lisa: Yeah. Exactly what Nathalie just said. It is that we talk about these stages, and it might be, as of then, we’re actually ignoring the whole. The menopause, its word is, technically it’s that one day, after 12 months and one day, without a period, but that’s when you’re looking at it from a medical perspective.

But actually, menopause is a whole life transition, and that it lasts up to the day you die, as Nathalie said. So, you know, if, for example, I know for myself, I look back now and, you know, hindsight’s great, isn’t it? You know, when my perimenopause symptoms started kick in at the age of 40. And if I actually end up living until the ripe age of 80, if I’m lucky enough, then it’s 40 years, half of my life has been in this life transition. (Janet: yeah).

And I’ve gone on a journey of understanding. And I know that Dr. Erika earlier, we talked about, you know, reproduction and, you know, we start at maybe an average age for our menstruation at 11, for example. I mean, I’ve got a niece, sadly, who started hers at the age of 8. I mean, God love her. (Janet: yeah). But we get to 11, and then, you know, get to 40, and then we think it’s all, we’re getting there. No one told us, which is the problem around the history of it, and us not knowing,

And maybe previous generations not feeling comfortable in sharing and talking about it. Because, you know, we get on with things, you know, we’re stoic. We can solve the world, we’re superheroes. But we can’t really talk about things that are happening, particularly in the body and how it might be affecting our mind, or how it might be affecting us wanting to go to the toilet every two minutes, and all, you know, how it’s affecting our periods every month if we’re lucky to have them on a 28-day cycle.

So yes, it is a big chunk of our life. And most importantly, as Nathalie said, is it is with regards to the long-term health. So we’re very immediate in our looking at finding the instant answer.

So perimenopause is about maybe managing the symptoms, which because of our ovaries going into retirement. They’re not going into retirement quietly. (Janet: chuckles). They’re turning up one day and they’re boosting us with 2 ton of estrogen and we’re feeling on top of the world. (Janet: laughs). The next day or the next few weeks, they won’t turn up hardly.

And therefore, if you looked at it as an ECG, for example, you go from menstruation, which is an up and down cycle, and it looks like a perfect ECG, if you look at the hormones that are produced on a cycle. You go into perimenopause, and you’d be very worried if that was an ECG, (laughs), because you’d be thinking what on earth is happening.

And, and that’s, it’s good that people are talking about it, but trying to get beyond the symptom management is a challenge, but it is important. It’s not just for now, it’s for future protection of our health. And cardiovascular disease. As we talked about on strokes, talked about osteoporosis. There’s over 3 million people in the UK with osteoporosis diagnosed. A majority of them are women because of bone density and estrogen has disappeared. So we’re not actually, our body’s not protecting itself as it used to do.

And the mental health, the anxiety and depression we’ve already talked about as well, along with a whole host of other symptoms. It doesn’t just stop when your periods stop. Because your body still has to readjust and it’s also to do with what can we do for ourselves as well. So there’s a whole load of education, you know, before, during, and it continues. (Janet: yeah). (Erika: yup).

Janet: So, we’ve done a bit of a piece on menopause. Should we go talk about Perimenopause, or…

Erika: I kind of want to jump to the implications. I really appreciate everyone’s definition and experience, but I think, you know, what’s important to me as we talk about these life changes that women uniquely experience, it’s also, what does that mean for us? And I think when I hear ages 40, 50, I mean, that’s when you start to like also in your career, start making magic happen.

And yet when I see sort of, there was a big survey done in 2021 by Newson, you know, where they are saying 1-in-10 people are resigning because of their menopause symptoms, 18-percent taking more than two months off due to these symptoms. So this is like a considerable amount of time that is adversely affecting women.

And as we have more women in the workforce, to me, it’s something where you’ve made it over all of these hurdles only to get to this point then whereby these symptoms are severe enough that people are willing to leave the workplace. (Janet: right). And so, when we think about say the inclusive    design part of this and we think about, there’s definitely gender differences in some of these key building types that we use.

If we think about just even a K-12 school, we know 77-percent of those teachers are women. And, you know, in those younger grades, it’s even more. And so, as we think about our teacher shortage and retention, and we’re losing our female teachers and our older teachers. Well, is this a part of it?

And so how are we responding with a certain level of dignity and honesty about this? And so, going to Nathalie’s point of like, I’m going to call you Doctor, is because we need to be able to boost up these women who are in these professions that sometimes are lower paying, and aren’t able to have the efficacy and comfortability to speak open about what they’re experiencing. So we can have honest dialogue about symptoms and what does it feel like for us, but how often do we hear that on a day-to-day basis? (Janet: Right), It’s very few.

Janet: Yeah, well and Dr. Eitland, you have a really good point and I do want to get into the implications and that is the catalyst for how this whole conversation started. I just want to remind listeners that you can find all the information we’ve already put out there so far on inclusivedesigners.com, and so there’ll be a whole bunch of resources as well as everybody’s contact information.

So to Dr. Eitland’s’ point, Lisa, maybe you could talk to us a little bit about what you know to be true, and the financial implications for women that end up having to leave because the workplace is non-forgiving, non-understanding. And I mean that from the built environment all the way up to policy and management. So let it rip, that’s all I have to say. Go ahead. (laughs).

Lisa: Yeah, so I think Janet, when we were talking and I think I got on my soapbox, didn’t I, that day?

Janet: And I loved it. I loved it. (laughs).

Lisa: The ‘mini meno-rant’ as I call them, (Janet: right exactly, laughs), with regards, probably frustration, but we have got to turn that frustration to passion, haven’t we, to make that difference. And yeah, I mean, me personally, I’ve now, I was full time temporarily last year, but I’ve gone back to part time.

And I, you know, do a mixture of things to allow the flexibility. And that’s not because of my employer, who I’m employed part time with, because they’re a very good and supportive employer, but it’s because it’s a way of me being able to cope.

But that does impact us, and it does impact those women because I mean in the UK, say for example, the figures are 900-thousand women have left their jobs due to menopause symptoms, (Janet: that’s crazy), and not being able to cope with the symptoms and in the workplace. (Janet: right).

Now obviously there’d be a story and a narrative behind each one of those, but the implications when we look at it practically because it’s not just a medical situation or a well-being when it comes to our social or our psychological well-being or our physical well-being, it’s about our financial well-being as well. (Erika: wow).

So if the average age is 51 and people are struggling through this transition in life, where they find themselves having to go part time for example, or the worst-case scenario, 1-in-10 women leaving the workplace. Then you think about the loss of income in the short term or even the long term because they may never return to other work or increase their hours or go back to part time, full time. So loss of income in the first instance, on the backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis, on the backdrop of what are your responsibilities if you’re trying to bring up a family, (Janet: right), you’re trying to be their…

Janet: Sandwich, right? You’re also that sandwich position. (Nathalie: caregiver). Your parents are getting old, and your kids are still maybe not out of the house, (Lisa: yeah), or the word failure to launch, right? (Lisa: laughs, yeah). Economically it’s for the younger generation. Your children at this particular age, then, you know, you’re still taking care of them because it’s harder for them, the cost-of-living wage has gone up exponentially, whereas wages have not. So that’s a problem as well. (Lisa: most definitely). I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, so….

Lisa: No, no, no, definitely. You’re quite right. And I love the failure to launch thing, yeah, most definitely. (Janet: chuckles). I think as well, it’s a long term, isn’t it? Because then you get to retirement and the years where you should actually be putting more and more into your savings and more and more into your pensions, so that you can enjoy retirement are suddenly impacted (Janet: right), because you’re on a less income. So actually for the rest of your life financially you can be at a bit of a loss in compared to, to others.

Now, I know for example in the UK, actually, if somebody leaves work or is struggling, the average figure is that they’re going to be 126-thousand pounds, which I think is about 160-thousand dollars, lacking in their pension pot, in their savings pot, in comparison to those who work right through. So, there’s those. And there’s also then, there’s the mental health impact of, you know, feeling like you might have failed. You know, I’ve had to give up work (Janet: right), or the psychological, so all maybe the things that the symptoms are brought on anxiety is then exacerbated and compounded by this sense of (Janet: wow), why, (Janet: failure, why me, right), yeah.

So, but the financial impact’s a real one. And there are only estimated figures that have been done, study by Royal London Insurance here over in the UK, has shown that it’s a real thing. So nearly a million women in the UK. How will that reflect in the US if they did the same study? I’m sure it’d be significant.

And then that’s our standard of living for the rest of our lives. If we don’t have partners or others to support us, or another income coming into the household, then we’ve got to be thinking about that as well. But it’s the last thing you think about. (Janet: right). If you want to go part time and you want to get out and you can’t cope, and even if you’re in a good organization, you know, it’s real.

Nathalie: May I add a little bit more to what you’re saying Lisa, from another perspective. I totally agree with everything you’ve just said, and it is just so devastating, for menopausal women are the fastest growing demographic in the workplace. (Janet: right). And that’s from that aspect.

So about 8-years ago, I reached the glass ceiling at my company. It was a good biotech company, small biotech company, was fairly supportive for what I needed, until then, 47. And then I started to demand for more. Demand more opportunities. I really wanted to help my small team, you know, work better together. I didn’t necessarily need to be at the bench and write grants. I really wanted to be in that manager team, and which didn’t really exist in the company I was in.

And I was gently said, well, Nathalie, this is all good, but I cannot provide this for you. I mean, basically, no. (Janet: chuckles). And so that’s when I said, okay, so let’s negotiate, and I negotiated my exit. And I found strengths to develop what I really wanted to do on my own, but it took me time because it was on my own. So can you imagine if I had had a manager who said, ‘Hey, Nathalie’… so 47, retrospectively, I was at the beginning of perimenopause. (Janet: right). So basically, I was already fed up with a lot of things. (Janet: chuckles).

And what it would have taken, you know, to just been able to say, okay, get a mentor. There was no mentor. I’ve never had a mentor. (Janet: no). In the 25 years from my PhD through my work experience in science, whether it was at Yale University or in the biotech world, I have never had a mentor. I’ve had one time a senior woman tell me, ‘Nathalie, what is it that you want?’ And I was about 35. What did I know about what I wanted? I had no idea, as you were saying, Erika. I have no idea of what’s coming up. I have no idea of the possibilities.

So not only did I not have that offered, but no sponsorship either. So what I see from younger women, and that’s why they are pushing us, you know, to speak louder. (Erika: yeah). I don’t speak very loud generally, just my personality, but I just want to scream now, (Janet: laughs), and I want to share everything. It’s like, get a mentor. Talk to your boss. Talk to your HR, if you have an HR.

And if what we can offer the companies now is actually to get this education, as Lisa, you know, through us or through other people, get some education in the companies about what they would lose if they lost all the women already on their way up. Or even in medium level, they would lose these women who have worked very hard at developing their skills, at making those companies very successful. (Janet: yeah).  If every company lost their women in their 40s, we’re really losing great potential here. And of course, I lost my income 6-months later. Right? So I had to find other ways to do that. So does it make sense?

Erika: Yeah, no, it makes tons of sense, and yet I think the thing that we also need to sort of pause on is just the idea that when we talk about, say, diversity and equity and inclusion, and we want to diversify our workforce. And yet when we see studies, you know, where they’re following 3-thousand women in perimenopause and menopause for decades, and they’re finding that Black and Hispanic women are going through menopause earlier than their white counterparts. They’re going to be in it for twice as long and they’re experiencing more intense, more frequent hot flashes and enduring those for more years than any other race.

So when we talk about this work, if a company is dedicated to, you know, this equity, diversity, inclusion work, then, if you have women of color in these places, you need to do more for them because these are impacting them even greater, even earlier. (Janet: right). And so therefore as we talk about these ages, again, it’s always a range, right? And I think for us if we’re going to be talking about equity, it’s important to remember that those stats are there.

And to me it’s a very humbling thing because it means that all of those other burdens that we place on women of color in the workforce then gets exacerbated. Even now when we go through, say, menopause and even recognizing that they’re not receiving certain treatments at the same rate as their white counterparts. So this is something that we really need to be mindful of that, you know, how are we supporting women across their life course just generally. (Janet: right). So I wanted to bring up that point,

Janet: It’s an excellent point.

Nathalie: This is so true. (Janet: yeah). This is so true. May I add one thing? (Janet: go ahead). Just in that regard, I am a white woman and I started talking from the very beginning about how Hispanic women— because we have a lot of Hispanic and Black women in America— are absolutely just affected even greater than most white women. (Erika: um-hmm).

So you were talking about teachers who were greatly affected because, what, 70-, 77-, 80-percent of the teachers are female?  (Erika: hmm). (Janet: Yeah). Well, look at nurses. (Janet: another group, yeah). I once, I was visiting an assisted living, and I was talking to this gentleman — older, white gentleman— leading the company. And I would say, ‘so how are your nurses and CNAs doing? They’re mostly women, yes? So have you noticed anything, you know, said, how are they doing?’ He said, ‘Oh, I did notice that at lunch break, they were all in that one room and they cranked up the AC.’

Janet: (laughs) I don’t mean to laugh, but that is just, I mean, it’s very indicative, right?

Nathalie: This was awful. (Janet: yeah!).  Yeah. How can you just ignore the fact that these ladies…

Janet: And it’s somehow, it’s a mystery, right? Like, this cannot be a mystery at that point, right?

Nathalie: I was never re-invited in.

Janet: No, but you bring up a good point. It’s a good transition because I’m keeping an eye on the time. You know, I’m very mindful of our guest’s time. We get on these great subjects, and I get it, but it is also about inclusive design. So, we’re going to start to mold it into that area.

And it brings up a great point, right? I would say that’s probably on the high part of design. I mean, because I remember, I’ve always had hot flashes, I feel like it was since I was a little girl. But when things were going really sideways, I’m up here in Vermont and I ski, and you’ll be up on the top of the mountain, like, unzipping your parka and pulling off your helmet because you’re having a hot flash. And it’s like 17-below and you don’t care. It is so incredible.

But this is also about design for women who are having their periods. I used to have bad periods. There was one company I used to work for had a couch in this storage-slash-handicapped bathroom. And it was air conditioned, like to the T, because there was nothing there but air conditioning vents. And I remember going in there and finding that respite that I desperately needed that I wasn’t finding at my desk. (Nathalie: when your clients are warm? laughs). Yeah, right. (Erika: yeah).

So can we talk a little bit about what might make the workplace a little bit better? I know that there’s some pillars that we can maybe discuss, but let’s throw out some ideas for designers to think about in order to mitigate some of these stressors for women. And again, it also goes through women who are having their periods, women who are pregnant, and perimenopause, post-menopause. So, I started with the air conditioner, so I got that one. (Erika: yeah, I mean…), go ahead, Dr. Eitland.

Erika: I kind of want to pause on this for a second before we get, like, into it, which is, as a researcher— and joined by all of you who are also researchers— I think there’s a shocking (pounds desk) lack of evidence. (Janet: yeah). Peer reviewed literature about the physical environment and the association with outcomes for women going through perimenopause, menopause. (Lisa: hmm).

And so anything that we are about to share, I think is very much like what we think makes good sense based on what we know symptoms are. And I have my list and kind of rooting around. But I, you know, as someone who’s a part of a large, major, international design firm, I went to a couple of my female mentors and asked, ‘Hey, what’s the research on this?’ And they go, ‘I really wish I know’. It would have helped me so much if I had had this information. (Janet: absolutely). So that evidence is lacking. (Lisa: hmm).

Janet: You’re absolutely right. It goes back to even that conversation I had with my doctor about him saying to me, well, what do you want to know? (Erika: mm-hmm). And you know, volleying that ball back into my court.

Because I didn’t know what I was going to try to ask. (Erika: sure). And then it wasn’t until I left and then I was like, wait a minute, they’re not being taught. (Lisa: hmm).

Erika: But I would say that this goes beyond medicine. I think this is, when we talk about inclusive design, to me, I think there’s a really important point where this is an issue of legacy, in my opinion, (Janet: right on), which is we know that architecture has been dominated by older white males.

And still 65-percent of architects are… (Janet: white men, chuckles). We know that we’re at an inflection point that gives me a lot of hope. (Janet: yes). But I would say that to me, you know, if only a quarter of licensed architects are women, and only less than 1-percent of them are Black women, then how are we actually going to meaningfully embed research and this discussion in design? (Janet: right).

And so that’s something where I really want us to, we have to acknowledge the importance of research in design. We have to acknowledge that we have impacts and implications on women going through a sixth of their life, we know it impacts workplace. (Janet: yes). These are topics that are not something that we can shy away from and yet, because of who has had the power of design, we need to remember that we need to be centering people. We need to be centering the non-male experience. And so therefore, you know, it is excellent to be talking about energy efficiency in the future of this planet, but at the same time what is that resilience? Because women offer something in those workplaces to make us more resilient and be able to adapt.

And if we are systematically creating hostile environments where they do not want to participate and would rather quit their job and their life’s work, then that’s really saying something. (Janet: yeah). So I would say from a designer’s perspective, we need to invest in research. (Janet: yup). We need to be really prioritizing what are those metrics, who are the people we are designing for? Like that is something we need to really be investing in, because otherwise, you’re just making energy efficient sculptures. (Janet: right).

I also feel, I’m an environmental exposure assessment scientist, so I bias towards things that I think are universal aspects of our built environment. And so you’re right, Janet. It’s like air conditioning, number one. But what’s interesting about this to me is, what is the controllability? I do not want us to create places that are stigmatized. I do not want us to be like, ‘oh, just use a little fan’. Because why do we need to put that on display?

If our car seats can hot and cool our butt, (chuckles), but we can’t do that in a workplace. I mean, this is like an industry wide problem where y’all making bougie chairs for people to sit on, you know, ergonomic this, but where do we actually invest in those types of things that are responding to women in this place?

And I would say this also goes back to even just the very building standards that our buildings are designed for. (Janet: yeah). So if we go to ASHRAE 55 which is a big thermal comfort standard, it’s been designed for men in 3-piece suits. (Janet: right). And so when I think about women going through menopause, here’s this thing where we haven’t thought about the temporality, the variability, the controllability. That’s not okay.

And so, as I was thinking about this question and kind of getting ready, this is the least sexy thing that I could probably share, (Janet: laughs), but I also would say, maintenance matters. (Janet: yeah). If I think about it, our facility managers in our buildings do more for our health on a given day than our primary care providers. Because if they’re making sure that our ventilation is, you know, properly maintained, we’ve changed filters, we know things around ventilation and air quality have impacts on improving our cognitive function, reducing headaches. (Janet: yeah). You know, sick building syndrome symptoms. And so when I think about all of this, it’s that why would we add additional burden to our occupants’ bodies?

And so by simply improving ventilation, we improve it for everybody, especially for our women going through menopause, because this is not a ‘like to have’ — it’s a ‘must have’. And when we’re talking about things like lighting and we know flicker glare, repetitive patterns trigger migraines, how are we ensuring that we’re actually not leading and creating environments that are exacerbating some of these conditions around headaches? So I think that’s like one aspect of it. I think you got me on a rant because now I’m all warmed up because of Lisa and Nathalie. So sorry y’all. (Janet: laughs).

Janet: it’s all good.

Nathalie: I think it’s great. I see one problem though (Erika: hmm), is that not everyone works under the same conditions. I mean look at the teachers, (Erika: right), look at the nurses, right? They don’t necessarily have the option to control the temperature because they’re not alone in those rooms.

Erika: They’re not alone in those rooms, but there is this opportunity for designers to be really thoughtful in creating spaces for it. (Nathalie: yes). When they’re with a patient, that might not be possible, but I think it really is about how do we stitch space. And what are those guiding principles?

And so to me, you know, is there a space for rest? (Janet: rest, yeah). I have heard from too many people that I care about, ‘Oh, well I would drive down the road, and go park in the Wendy’s parking lot and take a nap for a half an hour and then drive back to the office for my lunch break’. (Nathalie: I know). Where is the dignity in that? (Nathalie: yeah).

So to me, I think there’s a want in designers to really say that this is a part of our due diligence, our code of ethics, is making sure that we have at least thought about it. And is there private space to rest, sleep, be cooler if you need to. If you’re in a more of an office setting and you can be at your seat and that’s where you are, which is already a sedentary environment where you’re not moving and generating heat, how do we just make that a bit of a private moment where you get that control that you desperately need? (Nathalie: yeah).

Is it something where you can control the light levels so that it isn’t so bright, and maybe there’s glare? So I think there’s that part of it, but there’s moments, even within an environment that might be more chaotic, of, you know, where is the wayfinding? How do I have redundancy where it’s not just a single sign, but if you’re having brain fog and you’re just like, I need to space out, but like, here, it’s going to branch and this hallway is going to be confusing and unclear, (Janet: right). Especially in hospital settings. (Janet: absolutely). We can do better, you know? (Nathalie: yes).

And it’s like, where are we putting windows? Are our nurses working in spaces that have no windows, but the hallway’s got a whole bunch of windows that people pass in for maybe 5-minutes? (Janet: maybe, chuckles). So is that the most, like, beneficial way for us to serve that population? And so I think it’s just this re-centering of that experience. Because I think, they don’t have to be expensive changes in this situation, just we have to be more thoughtful. (Janet: yeah).

And I think there’s, again, where do you spend your time and invest that? We don’t have the research to say what the priority list is here, and that is also problematic. And I would say is, still we have a young population of women coming up through design, and we have a mostly male leadership within design. We have to be pushing though for these conversations. (Janet: right).

And I think it becomes everyone’s responsibility to look at the people who caretake us, whose womb we were in, that’s why we exist in the first place. And so to me, I think it’s, you know, I have hope, especially having opportunities like this, that in the next 5, 10 years, there is a true guideline (Janet: right), that is being enacted in all these different building types you’re bringing up, Nathalie. Right? Like it’s not just about workplace. (Janet: right).

Nathalie: Oh yeah, and so many more. (Erika: hmm). So 20 years ago, 30 years ago when I was younger, there was no special room for breastfeeding. (Janet: no). Okay. There was nothing. I did not have children of my own, but my girlfriends were breastfeeding in the bathroom, okay. At least pumping, not breastfeeding, but pumping. (Janet: pumping, yeah). But now, now you have those rooms that are available in a lot more facilities. (Janet: yeah). So how did this happen, and can we learn from that and just go through the process faster? (Janet: yeah).

Erika: And I think so. I think that maybe it’s like an interesting moment where we’re, at least in the US, I know we have a lot of federal dollars we’re investing in our buildings. Right now we’re working on a firehouse and most of these firehouses are 50-years old. So in this environment, female firefighters, which are few and far between, are still pumping in the bathroom stall. And then where do they dry their equipment and all of that.

So I think it’s the speeding this up, it has to be in any new building. We are doing these things. And those principals have to be there early because then the next 50-years is what we’re going to be dealing with. (Janet: right). And so I would say that even when we talk about public transit, it’s like those are things that, to me, as somebody who was pregnant and has miscarried since then, that was one of the most exhausting environments to be in. (Janet: right).

And so how do we actually start doing those things that the entire journey between our home and the places we occupy is actually as seamless and as inviting and calming as it can be. So that we are not physically exhausted, even by the moment we walk into those places. (Janet: right).

So, I want it to be faster. I don’t think it’ll be as fast as we would all hope. We needed it like 50-years ago. Since the beginning of time. (Janet: chuckles). But I do think that as we have more public health folks, as we have people like you, and as we’re vocal about it, it at least brings the attention. And the more we talk about it, we de-stigmatize it. The more we talk about it, we acknowledge that this is a lived experience that every single woman goes through for a huge part of their life.

Janet: Right. It’s such an important part and a lot of this stuff that you are bringing up, we do a lot of that with trauma informed design. That is such an important piece of all this. (Lisa: hmm), because it’s, you know, ultimately about bringing down that stress level, right? So it would try to help to mitigate headaches and you know, just maybe the overall stress.

So, but anyways. Lisa, I saw you nodding over there. (Lisa: yeah). Do you want to like jump right on in, because I, again, I’m getting a little worried about time. I want to make sure that everybody has a little bit of a moment. Maybe we’ll actually just start with you. (Lisa: chuckles). Tell us what you think and then any kind of last words you might want to pop in.

Lisa: Yeah, no, I think that that was amazing then. Sort of me reflecting back on listening to Doctor Erika and Doctor Nathalie then. You know, it’s so, so true. And it is a time thing, isn’t it? It is about us speaking up as we are now. It is about us empowering others to speak up because the voices get louder, don’t they? And that comes through education and empowerment. (Janet: right).

And very much so in terms of some of the basics that a lot of businesses and organizations and workplaces don’t have. You know, you could have your sort of bronze standard, your silver standard, your gold standard, couldn’t you? That becomes affordable, so for like the charity sector, for organizations that would do all of this if they had the money, but they don’t have the means.

And but the trauma informed was exactly what was coming to my mind and the work that we’re doing with you, Janet, on the trauma informed design piece, and the analysis that we’re doing at Wrexham University, and the tool that you develop for schools and, you know, that we’re now going to be developing this one for higher education which is both staff and students that, you know, occupy that space as is our visitors. All of those things will be about creating, but we have to put multiple lenses on, don’t we?

From menstruation to menopause, basically. (Janet: right). You know, that whole reproductive cycle, we have to bear that in mind, and it wouldn’t come under necessarily one of your standard protected characteristics, for example, in the Equalities Act, but it’s about that inclusive design.

Then we look at it through multiple lenses, menopause, and women of color, that various things, you know, we’ve got, everything we look at has got to be through these multiple lenses, but from a design perspective. There’s probably a lot more influence that can be done because it is a physically built environment, isn’t it?

We’re not talking in nuances here. We’re talking that something when it’s built or changed, whether it’s through retrofit refurbishment or new build, (Janet: right). It’s something that can, you know, be achieved and can be there right in front of you where the other work that we’re doing might feel a bit like sort of hit and miss sometimes writing a policy and then getting people to implement that policy.

So, I’m really encouraged though by that whole sort of explanation there and thoughts with regards to what we talked about then because I think all of that, the small little things we can do quite quickly at low cost. There are bigger things. It is a time thing, but let’s focus on that sort of what can we do now? What’s for the medium term? What’s for the long term?

Get more women into architecture, more women into the design. (Janet: right). And also women of, you know, various backgrounds, women of color, all of those so that everything can be represented alongside what we already do. (Janet: yeah).

Nathalie: We want women to talk to one another and to exchange regardless of their situation, their education, their skin color, etcetera. (Janet: right). And that’s what we do in some cafes, or here. Here we do this. You know, we would not have met otherwise. It’s wonderful.

Janet: Right. You know, I think it should probably be a two-part series for this particular program because there’s so much more to go into, and I think you’re right, we have a lot more to discuss. I also want to say, though, to Dr. Eitland, yes, there’s so much that needs to be explored. We all need to start talking about this. We can’t be sweeping it underneath the rug anymore. Like, enough is enough.

That also includes understanding what happens to us when we get our periods. I mean, there’s information, but I think it’s also about mothers to daughters, sharing that experience and not being ashamed of it. But we’ve got some work out there, I know, I’m going to put it on our page, so the resources that we have, we’ll put everybody’s information on: inclusivedesigners.com.

And I’ve pulled some papers and stuff like that, but to Doctor Eitland’s point, there are few and far in between. Our friends at MotionSpot had done some work around menopause. They’re about beauty and function meeting together for types of inclusive design, and so they decided to take a deep dive into this area, which I thought was pretty amazing. And so we’ll have all that information on the website. Again, just keeping mindful of the time…

Erika: I still get a last word I thought…

Janet: Yes. You both… I already had Lisa, I thought I would jump in. And so, Dr. Bonafe and Dr. Eitland, if you would please do us the favor in closing out the show.

Erika: Dr. Bonafe, hop in there.

Nathalie: Well, you know, coming to this podcast, I was not really sure how I could contribute, (Janet: clearly you have, laughs)), but at the same time what I’m seeing is— and what Dr. Eitland is also encouraging me to do— is we need to continue to speak up. (Janet: yeah). Wherever we can, based on our own personalities, based on the opportunities, wherever, we need to have more of those conversations where we can work together. Only through synergetic work that we’re going to really go a lot faster. (Erika: yeah).

And, I’m just delighted to have been invited to be there with you. I’m blown away by the energy that Dr. Eitland is bringing, and Lisa is. You know, we’re talking from the other side of the pond and I’m just very grateful that you had me come and collaborate with you. Together we are so much stronger.

Janet: Right on. Doctor Eitland….

Erika: I completely agree, and I think that’s giving me a lot of strength and energy, just like, ‘Alright, we got to keep going. What are we going to get after? Who we got to yell at?’

Janet: (laughs). You’ve got a whole bunch of post-menopausal women out here willing to yell at people. Don’t you worry about it.

Erika: Perfect! I mean, I think the last thing I want to say— and I feel a little bit embarrassed that it’s a last word and wasn’t one of the first— is I think it’s really important that we talk about this also through the language of disability inclusion. (Janet: right on). I think it’s one of these things where we know women with disabilities experience menopause at earlier ages, and yet some of these studies are from the early 2000s.

And I really, even though obviously menopause isn’t, you know, described as a disability, to me, it’s also this moment for, you know, and a good friend reminded me, this is not a dichotomy. you know, you’re not able bodied or you’re disabled, it’s a spectrum and a state that we pass into at any phase of our life.

And so to me, when I’m thinking about a topic like this, it is a very humbling experience to say, ‘what does that mean?’ you know, and how are we going to support people? And this is, especially with people who are experiencing these unique and sort of intersectional identities and we really show up for them.

You know, I, as an able-bodied person myself, and there are moments where I know I have sort of ableist tendencies, and I don’t even realize it. (Janet: you don’t even know, yeah). And so for us, when we’re having these conversations, let us kind of correct the wrongs and do things differently in the sense that who needs to be at the table, who hasn’t been at the table. (Janet: right).

And so that as we move forward, we’re not leaving anybody behind. And so I just really wanted to kind of make sure that that’s shared because I even think, you know, when we’re talking about our transgender friends, colleagues, you know, family members, to me this is something that, how are they experiencing this, even if they’re presenting differently. (Janet: right on).

And so, these are topics that really, we have an opportunity to make it a different way of having these conversations. So I really am so grateful to be with all of you today. And even though I’m kind of the young punk in the group, (Janet: laughs). I really have appreciated all of this time. So thanks so much, Janet.

Janet: Oh, you’re welcome. You brought so much to the conversation. All of you guys did. Again, I feel like this could be a 2, 3, 4-parter. We could even just work on the disability and work on all the LGBTQIA plus community. And again, I think ultimately, it’s about having— they’re not tough conversations, right? This isn’t some sort of, like, we’re trying to explain how sex works, right? Like, sex works I can see being a little, you know, it shouldn’t be, natural. However, I can see where that gets a little kind of pointed, but this is not. This is human health. This is women’s health. This is people of all different ages and races.

So, maybe we can continue to have this conversation. And I can’t thank you guys enough. I was so excited to do this today. I can’t even begin to tell you. We’ve been doing this for 5-years now and I think that this is probably one of the better episodes we’ve done. And I couldn’t have done it without you guys. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Erika: Thanks for having us.

Nathalie: Thank you and be well.

Lisa: Thank you Janet, thank you.

Nathalie: And reach out to one another.

Erika: Definitely.

Lisa: mm-hmm

Janet: Thank you.

Erika: Thank you everybody.

(Music / Outro)

Janet:  What an important discussion! We covered everything from menstruation to all the phases of menopause, and what that means for women in the community and the workplace.

Carolyn: Yes, and the economic impact for women who struggle and decide they can’t cope with an unsupportive work environment— it’s just staggering.

Janet:  I never knew and was just so floored— according to the study Lisa quoted, they reported that 900-thousand women in the UK left their jobs. That’s 1-in-10 women just leave! 1-in-10!!! And there are some adjustments we as designers can make in the built environment if we take women’s well-being into consideration during planning.

Carolyn: Along with that, we heard how important it is to diminish the stigma associated with menopause which can be done through education and empowerment. And also to create and implement menopause workplace policies aimed at supporting women during these life stages.

Janet: I do like the idea of a menopause mentor! That would have been so helpful to me.

Carolyn: Hopefully this episode will be helpful for everyone listening.

Janet: You are so right Carolyn.

Carolyn: We briefly touched upon the existence of Menopause Cafes in this discussion. We decided to focus on them in a short chat that’s posted as a separate episode.

Janet: It’s truly worth a listen. These Menopause Cafes can be a great resource. We wanted to share just what they can do, and how to find one if you or someone you know needs help or support going through these life stages.

Carolyn: Should we call these our period pieces?

Janet: Let’s not.

Carolyn:  More seriously, if you need more information on either of these episodes, you can find it on our website.

Janet: Absolutely! You’ll also find how to contact Lisa Scully, Doctor Nathalie Bonafe, and Doctor Erika Eitland, as well as links to the other things touched on during this discussion… all on our website at: Inclusive-Designers-dot-com.

Carolyn: That’s: Inclusive-Designers-dot-com…

Janet: And a big thank you to Lisa, Nathalie, and Erika! And, again, to all of you for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts— such as Apple, Spotify, and Pandora— we are now on YouTube Music which replaced Google Podcasts.

You can also find us on our regular YouTube Channel. What hasn’t changed is our name – Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page.

Janet: Yes, please do. And let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for topics we should be covering in upcoming shows!

And as our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed!’

As always, thank you for stopping by.

We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

(Music up and fade out)

Menopause Cafes (Season 5, Episode 5b)
Guests:Lisa Scully; Nathalie Bonafe

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: This episode is a little different than our other ones, but so interesting… and not just because it’s short!

Carolyn: That’s so true!

Janet: In our most recent episode, we had a wonderful multi-generational discussion on Menopause and Design. Joining me on this panel… Doctor Nathalie Bonafe, Doctor Erika Eitland, and Lisa Scully… experts in the world of design and menopause.

We explored the different stages of menopause, how it affects women in the workplace, and of course, design solutions…

Carolyn: We think it is a very timely topic, and hope you’ll take a listen to that episode, or maybe you have already. You’ll find it on our website, as well as all the other places you get your podcasts.

Janet: Yes, please do.

Carolyn:  During that episode, the topic of Menopause Cafes was brought up. And we decided we needed to continue this discussion and give it its own spotlight. I’m calling it our “…but wait, there’s more to the story” episode.

Janet: I love that! Two of our experts—Dr. Nathalie Bonafe and Lisa Scully— have great knowledge of Menopause Cafes. They have facilitated them both online and in person. We felt it was important to share just what these cafes can do, and how to find one if you or someone you know needs help or support going through these life stages.

Carolyn: And with that, here is our intriguing and informative look at Menopause cafes…

(Music 2 – Interview)

Janet: Hello and welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast. I am your host, Janet Roche. Today we are going to be talking a little bit about menopause, and we’ve got a couple of experts on here who will be talking to us about the trials and tribulations that women go through with menopause. So, I’m going to dive right on in, and I’m going to ask them to go around the room and introduce themselves briefly. So, we are going to go to Lisa Scully…

Lisa: Thanks, Janet. I’m Lisa Scully. I am a licensed menopause expert champion with Menopause Experts Group, based in the UK, but they’re part of an international company. I’m an organizational development professional as well. So I work with different organizations with regards to taking the organizations through change, processes, but particularly specializing in menopause in the workplace.

Janet: Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa: Thanks for having me.

Janet: And next up we have Dr. Bonafe…

Nathalie: Hello Janet, thank you for having me here. Hello everyone, I’m Nathalie Bonafe. So I am a woman’s health advocate, specialized in transitions. So you can call me a coach or a doula. A woman who serves at two transitions at menopause and at end of life. That’s me.

Janet: Great. So thank you to everybody for being here. It’s such an important topic. You know, these Menopause Cafes can be a great resource. That would have been so helpful to me.

Nathalie: So yes, the menopause cafe concept is also coming to us from the UK. So, it started in 2017, and it started to be hosted in Scotland by Rachel Weiss. And basically when I had the idea of, you know, having conversations about menopause about 4-years ago. I googled it and I found that it already existed so I connected with Rachel, and I was able to bring it here.

So the cafes are actually a concept of no agenda. Safe-slash-brave spaces for anyone who want to talk about those topics. (Janet: hmm). It’s recognized as educational, supportive, but menopause cafes are not medical per se. I often have a co-host or a guest who is a retired physician who comes. So we sometimes can discuss some of the medical options, but this is not a place where you find solutions.

This is a space for community and sharing experiences confidentially. There’s no recording. I don’t sell anything that I do. We share experiences. We share resources as well, articles, et cetera. (Janet: right). And this is really, um, just really beautiful space. (Janet: right). and we laugh…

Janet: Okay, you got to laugh about some of the menopause, right?

Nathalie: We laugh, we joke, we cry together, we hear, we listen to one another.

Janet: Well, that’s just it, that you know that you’re not alone, right? It’s such an important and strong message, right?

Nathalie: Yeah, and people come from all over the world because I do them online. It started during COVID. It really allows people to come from all over. South America, Europe, China. (Janet: That’s terrific). But some people do them, uh, especially in the UK, they do them in person.

Janet: Right. That’s great.

Nathalie: You know, people like Lisa or me— and there are more and more people throughout the world now— could be invited to some of the rooms, (Janet: yeah). You know, so Boston is not that far away or anywhere, you know, we could be part of the conversation and give some feedback. (Lisa: hmm).

So that I think, we talk to so many women, (Lisa: yeah), I cannot write all the stories. (Janet: chuckle). I’ve been hosting menopause cafes just virtually for 4-years now. I have like 400-women have come in. I don’t record them because this is a, I would say as safe as it is possible for everybody to come in. But really, you know, brave space and people share a lot. (Lisa: yeah). They share a lot. (Janet: right). And just, uh, we may not be able to put it on paper because it’s confidential, but if you had a meeting, you wanted to say, ‘Hey, can you run it by us?’

Lisa: Yeah, that’s it. We’re all about creating space, aren’t we? Because that’s what it is. It’s creating space for conversation in a safe and friendly environment. So, actually, even if there was a question you wanted to ask or, you know, just feedback generally, or, you know, just to, we could facilitate that conversation for you, you know, or connect you into those conversations or connect you into people, because a lot of these people come back over and over again, don’t they? They grow in confidence, but they’ve had a lot of life experience, a lot of stories to tell. (Janet: oh, yeah). Yeah.

Nathalie: I get to work with a lot of women and a lot of women with invisible diseases. (Lisa: yeah). So these invisible disabilities that they’ve never named, but that prevent them from being active, so I help them, you know, just find meaning or purpose.

So these stories of any color, I mean, people who were mistreated, you know, by the medical system, (Janet: right), treated for depression while they were menopausal, you know. (Janet: right). So whatever you, you’ve all brought up, we could have constructive stories, or we could connect you with people who can help you more specifically. Because that’s what we do. We’re facilitators, Lisa, right? (Lisa: yeah).  This is how we see ourselves. We fill the gaps.

Lisa: It is about us speaking up as we are now. It is about us empowering others to speak up because the voices get louder, don’t they? (Janet: right).

Nathalie: We want women to talk to one another and to exchange regardless of their situation, their education, their skin color, etcetera. (Janet: right). Originally based in the UK, but it’s now really global. (Janet: yeah). And I love being part of that group because we grow together the awareness. So you can Google it and find it. And mine is, uh, the one here is called Menopause Cafe Connecticut.

Janet: That’s great, thank you.

Nathalie: Thank you and be well.

Lisa: Thank you Janet, thank you.

Janet: Thank you very much.

(Music / Outro)

Janet: I wish I knew about these menopause cafes sooner myself. It’s wonderful to know that there is a place to get information on what’s going on, share experiences, and get some much-needed support.

Carolyn: For so long, women have been raised not to talk about menstruation at any age. Rachel Weiss started the café concept in Scotland to get conversations going and break the stigma. And she is still leading the way. I understand they even have annual ‘Menopause Festivals’!

Janet: I believe it’s now celebrating its fifth year! If you want to learn more about the festival, or information on finding a virtual or physical café near you, check out the ‘resources’ listings on our website for these episodes.

Carolyn: Absolutely! And speaking of which, if you want to learn more about ‘Menopause and Design’ in the workplace, take a listen to our other episode.

Janet: For information on contacting Dr. Nathalie Bonafe, Lisa Scully, or Erika Eitland…  as well as links to what was talked about during both discussions… you’ll find all that and more on our website at: Inclusive-Designers-dot-com.

Carolyn: That’s: Inclusive-Designers-dot-com…

Janet: A big thank you to Lisa, Nathalie and Erika! And, again, to all of you for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts— such as Apple, Spotify, and Pandora— we are now on YouTube Music which replaced Google Podcasts.

You can also find us on our regular YouTube Channel. What hasn’t changed is our name – Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page.

Janet: Yes, please do. And let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for topics we should be covering in upcoming shows!

And as our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed!’

As always, thank you for stopping by.

We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

(Music up and fade out)

Designing for: Crisis Centers   (Season 5, Episode 4)
Guests: Stephen Parker & Robyn Linstrom of Stantec

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: We have another amazing episode for our listeners today.

Carolyn: And a very timely hot topic which may present challenges for designers.

Janet: Right? There is an enormous increase in the amount of people seeking help for mental healthcare today, and with it, a rise in the need for Crisis Center facilities to take the overwhelming burden off of local Emergency Rooms.

Carolyn: We realized how important this issue really is, and that we had to do an episode on it.

Janet: These centers need to reduce the stigma, and taking evidence-based research into consideration can do just that. It’s those things we tend not to think of when people are in crisis that can make a huge difference.

Carolyn: Luckily, we found two very knowledgeable experts in this field, Stephen Parker & Robyn Linstrom from Stantec. Let me tell you a little more about them…

Stephen Parker- is a Behavioral and Mental Health Planner. His projects range from community-scale recovery centers to expansive mental health campuses— using dignity-driven design research for communities in crisis— with work ranging from China, India, Kenya and across the US & Canada.

Janet: As a mental health design subject matter expert, Stephen believes strongly in advocating by design for humanity at its most vulnerable, elevating communities in crisis and serving those that suffer in silence.

Carolyn: And we are also delighted that Robyn Linstrom is joining us. She is a healthcare architect and senior associate at Stantec, with a passion for behavioral health and designing for healing environments. She believes that the built environment can be a partner in supporting healing. According to her bio, Robyn is focused on changing design from the institutional to a more therapeutic environment. This challenge drives the work she does.

Janet: I love that her goal as a behavioral health specialist is to de-stigmatize facilities— with design that provides an environment of hope, dignity, and support.

Carolyn: And speaking of support, if you or someone you know is having mental health issues and needs help, know that it is available – you can call 1-800-273-8255 or simply dial 988.

Janet: And here’s a little pro tip for you—to help with any anxiety try sitting with your feet on the floor and focus on your breathing. That can help calm you. Or- take a drink of water and just focus on how your body feels. These are grounding techniques that can be used anytime, anywhere.

Carolyn: Sometimes, that may be all that is needed, but if not, it’s so vital for someone in crisis to get more help.

Janet: And ideally, they will be able to get it in a facility that has taken all the right steps in the design phase.

Carolyn: Sounds like it’s time to hear from our guests…

Janet: Yes, and these two truly know what it takes to design a good mental health crisis center.

Carolyn: and with that, here is our interview with Stephen Parker & Robyn Linstrom…

(Music / Interview)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers. I am your host Janet Roche and today I have Steven Parker, as one of our guests. Hi Steven.

Stephen: Hello Janet. Great to be here.

Janet: Thank you. And we also have Robyn Linstrom. Hi Robyn.

Robyn: Hi Janet. Nice to see you.

Janet: Thank you. Well, listen, I’m quite excited about this episode because it’s such an intricate balance of design and human behavior when we’re talking about crisis centers. Is there a starting point for you guys? Like is there something that right off the bat, you have to know to do designing for some sort of crisis center.

Stephen:  Yeah, I’ll, I’ll start off here. I’m sure Robyn can, uh, embellish…

Robyn: Yeah.

Janet: Everybody just jump right on in. It’s all good.

Stephen: So, uh, crisis centers is an interesting subspecialty in mental behavioral health design. It’s not kind of your run of the mill inpatient psychiatric facilities. It is not outpatient. And it’s intended in terms of helping the continuum of care, as the name suggests, in crisis, individuals that are emerging in crisis.

And so to divert individuals from overburdened emergency departments or worse, law enforcement settings, and diverting them to this kind of third place, is actually the third leg in the stool of the 988 system, if you will. So part of that, just to give you the context of it, is that 988, which was a, kind of like the crisis hotline that subsumed all of the suicide prevention hotlines across the country. Some place to call, someone to come get you, and some place to go. (Janet: right).

So they’re less than a day of stay, so less than 24 hours, much like emergency departments. (Janet: huh). and every community is different. So you’re, when you ask, you know, what makes them different than anything else, is that there’s typically a ‘no wrong door’ policy.

You don’t know who’s going to walk through the door and in what crisis they’re in. (Janet: right). Is it addiction? Is it withdrawal? Is it acute psychosis? Is it a child or adult on the spectrum who is escalating? You really don’t know. (Janet: right). An individual who was formerly unhoused for a long period of time. So I think that’s what kind of makes it fairly different than what you might see in other mental behavioral health settings.

And every community is dealing with that a little bit differently. And I think that’s one thing that trauma informed design principles really has a key factor in informing those very community specific needs to avoid coercion and help individuals in crisis in a humane and safe way.

Janet: Yeah, the community specific is such a big part of all of this, isn’t it. Robyn, I see you, you’re nodding your head. So…

Robyn: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I guess what I’d add to that as well, and Stephen sort of touched on it a little bit was just that, having these crisis centers now is a location and a place for first responders to take people, right? So when you start to see people on the street that are clearly in behavioral health or mental crisis, normally would go to either the E.D. or jail, right? (Janet: right). Which neither of which are appropriate place for them to be.

So the emergence of these crisis centers is really a wonderful place to get the help that they need in that immediate crisis that’s happening. So, you know, when you start to say, ‘what do we look at as designers when we’re looking at these facilities,’ that access is a huge piece of it, right? (Janet: right).

And that understanding of who’s coming to it and how they can get there. Because it can be a first responder. It could be an ambulance. It could be a walk in. And really distinguishing those different pieces and how somebody is going to enter the facility, in terms of their treatment and how they’re going to receive that treatment is key and important to understand as we start to look at these facilities and how we lay them out and design them.

Janet: Okay. So now my head is spinning. (Robyn: chuckle). All right. So I wasn’t expecting those kinds of answers, but they’re great. (Stephen: uh-huh). You know it’s also that attitude of looking at how are they coming to this facility, right? My assumption is that most places have like the walk-in ambulance, police, type of vehicles or ways to get to the facility. Am I understanding that correctly? I would assume most of them, correct?

Stephen: So, um, that’s the interesting thing about it. Different communities have slightly different needs. A standalone crisis center, and they go by crisis receiving center, crisis response center, crisis intervention center. (Robyn: stabilization unit, yup). Find the derivation of the name and acronym that comes with it, because we have a wonderful patchwork of a healthcare system.

And so what’s interesting there is that they can be independently standalone which is really helpful for rural and suburban settings where you don’t have a major medical center with which to attach this facility to or otherwise triage from emergency department from. (Janet: right).

So if it’s, let’s say, again, I’m part of the continuum of care; that law enforcement is aware; that there are crisis mobilization teams; that there are crisis centers that are getting calls and routing those calls for individuals in crisis to these centers; and that, you know, they take walk-ins and referrals. So there’s a multitude of paths. So it’s about that accessibility that Robyn mentioned. And the fact that these are triaged to be medically stable.

So if an EMT or an ambulance picks them up and they’re clear, medically stable; if they find themselves emerging in an emergency department and they’re clear, medically stable, but have this emerging crisis diagnosis or psychiatric need, and they’re diverted from that overburdened E.D. which is, you know, think about last time you went into an E.D. The national average is, what, 8-to-10 hours of wait time? (Janet: yeah). And for psychiatric needs and consults, it’s 3-times that. (Janet: wow).

So, imagine spending a day or longer, or in some cases for pediatric, youth, or ‘Geropsych’ needs, so specific patient populations where you need a consult beyond, like, kind of general adult, you could be there days. Or weeks. Because you’re not just waiting for the consult itself, but the bed to open up. And so a crisis stabilization is kind of very interesting is that you find the opportunity to put these facilities in a much more accessible location in a broad number of community settings outside of those major medical centers, if needed.

You can also attach them to those facilities. um, you see them in psychiatric EVs, there are empath units associated with major medical centers. (Janet: right). But also the fact that since they have a ‘no wrong door’ policy most of the time, that intake, that kind of first handoff between— and a warm handoff, as we like to call it— what is the experience of someone in psychosis being dropped off of this facility?

Is it because the EMT and the law enforcement officer have been trained and kind of integrate well with the facility staff to have that warm handoff? And that the first sign is not law enforcement entrance, but first responder entrance. (Janet: right, right). Because you can imagine the community connotation of an individual taken to a facility that has that sign on it, and what they’re expecting next. And I think that’s a trauma-informed principle is ‘nothing about me without me’. And so letting them know what’s happening to them next is very, very important. (Janet: agreed). (Robyn: yup).

Janet: You know, it’s also the Trauma-informed Design lens involved. I mean, and it’s also goes into everything from dignity to self-empowerment. It gets rid of the stigma, you know, to a large degree. (Stephen: uh-huh). So Robyn, did you want to join in? It looks like you were getting ready to say something and then I popped in. (Stephen: chuckles).

Robyn: No, absolutely. I, you know, I get excited about these conversations for sure. And I mean…

Janet: … who doesn’t Robyn, who does not get excited about these conversations (both laugh).

Robyn: …but you know what Steven is saying too, it’s also about acceptance of the individual coming in, right? It’s about creating this environment that allows them to come in and accept that treatment to get out of that crisis that they’re in.

You know, I have done a crisis facility and we went back and did kind of a one year, you know, retrospective, if you will, of how is the building working and how is it functioning? And one of the key takeaways I took from it was, in this kind of crisis piece, this particular facility served a lot of those experiencing homelessness, right? And that trust is not there. And that feeling of coercion of having to do things is huge, right?

And so they talked about how there are people that come and maybe they’re there for an hour. And they don’t know, they don’t trust you. They don’t know, you know what I mean? And they leave.  (Janet: hmm). But then come back and next time they’re there for maybe 2- or 3-hours, right? And so it’s really about creating these environments that allow people to build up that trust in order to receive the treatment that they need.

Janet: Right. So what would you do for something like that? How do you create that through design? I mean, I think it’s also seeing the same people and knowing that ‘we’re here for you, come back when you’re ready’ type of deal. (Robyn: um-hmm). But also how do you as designers design for that type of, you’re trying to gain their trust, right? (Robyn: right). Because that’s another Trauma-informed Design principle, trustworthiness. (Robyn: yup, and transparency, right). and transparency. (Stephen: uh-huh).

Robyn: I think that’s a lot of it in the built environment, right, as being able to see where are you going? What’s happening to me next?  Just having that environment that really meets people wherever they are, right? So somebody might feel the need for feeling safer in a smaller space. Someone else might want to see it kind of more transparent and open and be able to see everything that’s happening around them.

So it’s understanding the clients that might be using this facility and trying to kind of react to those environments, and providing those different types of spaces so that each individual can find what is comfortable for them.  (Janet: right), (Stephen: yeah).

Janet: Go ahead. Go ahead, Steven.

Stephen: Yeah, I mean, so we’re always trying to harmonize risk and recovery, or safety and serenity, if you will, in those spaces. (Janet: right). So they give the individual choice in the organization trust. Because, you know, you need good lines of sight for staff, but that’s good lines of sight also for those individuals in crisis so they understand where they are and kind of fit in the context. And they don’t, you know, have a feeling of entrapment and coercion and confinement. And avoid re-traumatization through the spaces that you may be forcing them to choose from if they’re given a choice.

And so I think voice and choice is really important to Robyn’s point is that the seating arrangement, so they can self-reflect safely, that they can choose to engage one-on-one, or they can socialize in larger gatherings, and every variety and spectrum in between, right?

So I think that’s a key part of it in terms of laying out the space. Because it’s, it’s a lot of nuances that are also very culturally specific. As Murat mentioned, an unhoused community, or those experiencing specific addiction types, whether it be an opioid, specifically fentanyl, alcoholism, so forth and so on. And so there’s, you know, different acuities and different needs that you really need to listen to the community and kind of hone in on.

Janet: Right. You know, it was interesting. I’ve been very excited to interview the two of you. And I think that designing for crisis centers and mental health and all of that through design, like it’s such an important part. And I was doing a lot of thinking about how I usually just do kind of riff, but I really want it to make sure I hit all the notes.

So I was thinking that we kind of walk through the, the front door, so to speak, (Stephen: sure). We go and we think about what that space might look like, you know. and I know we’re looking at it in terms of depends, right? It depends on the community, depends on what kind of crisis center it is, that type of deal. But maybe we can blend all those. I wonder if walking through the front door isn’t a bad place to start.

Stephen: I’ll let Robyn, unless she wants me to do it. I’m happy to walk, do a day in the life of and kind of walk through the flow.

Robyn: Yeah, we can, and we could even tag team Steven if you want, (Steven: sure, yeah). You know, I mean, I think it’s kind of coming into that space that maybe not the first thing you hit is a security or safety, or you know, it’s coming into much more of a welcoming space. (Janet: yeah). I think it’s about creating different types of environments, right? Maybe there’s an area that’s kind of a seating waiting area that’s more open.

You’re going to have smaller rooms, consult type of rooms (Janet: right), where you can have those kinds of one-on-one conversations, and where a clinician can really start to understand ‘what is this individual dealing with?’ and, kind of, ‘where are the traumas and the crisis coming from?’ to have that space. We often have spaces where we can bring in family members (Janet: yeah), (Stephen: uh-huh), because sometimes the family is part of that trauma or trying to kind of understand how that all plays into it. (Janet: right).

So it’s really to me about designing these different types of spaces. We often have what we call quiet rooms or calming rooms. (Janet: right). Sometimes they’re sensory type of rooms, right? So we can start to look at different, depending on, again, what the clients that are being served there.

You know, I had a facility where it was children, and they had these calming rooms that had different themes, right? (Stephen: uh-huh). One was just a room of ‘stuffies’ (Janet: chuckles). And that’s helped comfort children. That they could just go into this room. They could self-regulate. (Janet: right). A space that they can feel comfortable in, right?

I’ve done in adult facilities, color light therapy is a huge piece of it. Being able to go into a space and change that color of the room to what feels right for you at that moment. (Janet: right). Again, to kind of help self-regulate.

So it’s about creating all of these kinds of spaces that people are allowed to choose. And I think when you first walk in the door, there’s going to be sort of that assessment piece, right. That’s going to have to happen. (Stephen: uh-huh). But once you get through that piece, it’s really about creating this environment that allows people to find where they feel the best and able to have the conversations to kind of get themselves through that crisis with the, you know, trained folks that can help them. (Janet: right).

Stephen: And I think that gets to Robyn’s point of, if that is the initial intake assessment and evaluation that’s a key part of the crisis care model is that you’re not waiting for that immediate assessment to understand what is the best path for you moving forward. (Janet: yup).

So whether it’s that first responder entrance where they kind of take you through that intake and assessment space, they’ve kind of figured out, you know, ‘Hey, do you have anything on you that can hurt yourself or others?’ You know, ‘What was the circumstances of which you were found?’ and ‘Who brought you in?’ ‘Who called?’ ‘Did you call yourself?’ (Janet: right).

And getting all of that kind of download between staff. Oftentimes, you know, if it’s an individual that’s unhoused, ‘Where did all their personal belongings go?’ right? (Janet: yeah). And so there’s some kinds of security around literally all of their earthly possessions. (Robyn: um-hmm). You know, ‘Who’s taking care of that?’ ‘Where’s it going?’ (Janet: yeah). Not just chain of custody, but just the sense of security around my sense of belonging and the belongings I have, right?

Robyn: Do I have access to it, right? (Stephen: yup).

Janet: Well, that’s huge, right? (Robyn: uh-huh). (Stephen: um-hmm). To your point, it could just like be the clothes on their back and whatever they have in their bag, right? (Robyn: yup). They want to be able to keep their eyeballs on it all the time, right? (Robyn: yup).

Stephen: If they have a service animal, ‘Where is that pet going to be taken?’ You know, so accommodating even kennels in some cases. Or if they’re on the other end of the spectrum, oftentimes we kind of see facilities set up with four department types.

So you might see mental health urgent care, where you can do walk ins and referrals, where you have that kind of counseling and consult either individual or family. The crisis stabilization unit itself. So typically it’s a big living room style with a staff station and a variety of those other spaces Robyn mentioned that allow people to do one on one consult group therapy. (Janet: right).

Family counseling, sensory spaces, nourishment, as well as like hygiene and other things, but a variety of spaces within the living room environment. So that way when it’s typically recliners, so that boy, if they’re there for 23-and-a-half hours or so, you know, they can fully recline, get some rest. They may come in in the middle of the night.

But they also might have a more social space where, you know, we’re doing a youth crisis unit where, hey, the big topic is the video games, you know, (Janet: yeah). ‘Who’s playing what and where?’ because that’s how they relax for example. (Janet: right).

And then other components of the program could be a transitional outpatient program. So they’ve gone on their observation for that amount of time, and it’s realized that their medication is stabilized or otherwise their treatment plan, which, they’ve engaged with, and with providers, have established some sort of therapeutic alliance about what their next steps are happening to them.

Okay, we can discharge them into an outpatient or transitional program. (Janet: yeah). And that can be a day hospital, you know, sort of like a very half to full day group therapy sessions and other therapy modalities that can be accommodated in the facility. And then if it’s deemed during that observation period in the crisis unit, they need to be admitted to a longer length of stay, 3-to-5 days, 7 days longer, depending on what the facility needs.

So sub-acute units, so inpatient beds, being accommodated and therefore having kind of an inpatient setting. But you can see there that you have something of the spectrum of continuum of care within one facility, possibly, urgent care walk in; the crisis stabilization unit that has its own intake for those folks that come in hot in crisis; the transitions program for outpatient care; and then if they need to be elevated to a higher level of care, sub-acute, inpatient. That’s a lot.

Janet: Yeah, there’s a lot to digest there, but I’m wondering though, in your opinion, and maybe this is stuff that you’ve also done in post occupancy reviews or what have you, you know, is there like a sweet spot for the amount of beds? And for different types of timing that, you know, a couple of days versus like a week or so? Should designers be looking to try to fit in, say like 6 beds or say 12 beds, if it’s 7, you know what I mean, is there something along those lines?

Stephen: You want to talk about a sweet spot, Robyn? (all laugh).

Janet: Yeah, sweet spot. Is it true? I, I got to think it might be, right?

Robyn: Yeah, I think there is. I think some of that sweet spot really relies to on the staffing (Stephen: uh-huh), and sort of that staffing model. (Janet: right). Some of it is tied to licensure components, right? (Janet: sure). I often see— and Steven, you can see if you agree— but you know, that 12-to-16 beds is usually kind of that sweet spot. (Stephen: yeah). In terms of the staffing, it’s usually 8-to-1. So kind of that 16 gives you kind of 2 within there. But that seems to be manageable from the clients as well as, as the staff and the people coming in.

I think you see the kind of crisis assessment piece. As Stephen said, there’s different ways you kind of come into that initial intake assessment area, right? (Janet: correct). And then oftentimes you might have an observation area that’s sort of that less than 24-hour kind of piece. And then sometimes you move into a longer-term crisis, right? Sort of that 2-to-5 day stay until you can really understand where someone might need to be, whether it’s an outpatient, whether it’s inpatient, whether it’s additional kind of services. (Janet: hmm).

Stephen: And I think, even with 16 beds for just kind of making staffing work is that you try to lower the social density in those settings as much as possible, right? So the variety of spaces in the therapy and kind of programming and functionality you can imbue into it. So that way you’re not sort of confining a mass of people, if you will. Yeah. If you’re in a living room style crisis unit or in the subacute unit with 16 beds.

If you’ve ever had a roommate, or a sibling in my case, (Janet: chuckles), you kind of know that usually your pain points around bathrooms (Janet: yes!), and personal belongings and food. (Janet: preach). (Robyn: chuckles). So, what is your sense of personal space and belonging? Like how do you feel like you own a sense of space and some personalization if that’s the case in the subacute unit?

So how do we break that up so you’re not dealing with 16 personalities, but you’re dealing with 3, or 4, or 5, so that we can kind of lower that social density. You know, from evidence-based design research that you lower the number of incidents that lower that social density is less friction with individuals that gets back to widening corridors and creating more buffer space. Because also a lot of these spacers intended to lower the barriers between patient and provider as well. (Janet: yeah).

So the idea that you’re not creating authority dynamics of ‘us versus them’ as much. (Janet: yeah). So a ‘being out in the milieu’ as we call it. So I think particularly for crisis, a lot of providers push a peer model. So peer specialists are individuals that have gone through crisis, gone through recovery, and then have clinical training to help other individuals in crisis.

So you have someone or multiple someone’s on staff (Janet: right), that have gone through what you’ve gone through, similar age and so forth and so on. So that you can start building that trust, which is a two-way street between the organization and the individual. And it really comes down to a staff member having positive engagement and rapport.

Is that coming down to, they have a nutrition station outside in the milieu area, and they have access to it, and they don’t have to tap on the glass every time they want a drink of water, right? (Janet: right). So what are the things that help the providers not create friction points with patients because they can see a patient as a human being. And provider can be seen as a human being in the same way.

Janet: As opposed to like, maybe behind the glass, you know, the pulling back of the glass, ‘what do you want?’ You know, like, ‘I just want some more water, please.’ Right? (Robyn: uh-huh). Something along those lines. Well, you gave me a lot to unpack there as well.

You guys keep throwing out all these nuggets, which is just fantastic for designers, like, things to think about when designing crisis centers. And it’s interesting to me, the first grant we got in Trauma-informed Design was to do it for schools and we found that kids were most dysregulated in the hallways.

I mean, we knew like gyms, cafeterias, right, but it’s really the hallways, and then you only have to do is think about your own experience in school and be like, ‘Oh, right. They were.’ you know what I mean, they terribly were. (Stephen:  um-hmm). So it’s giving people their space in the hallway. So I appreciate both of those nuggets of information there.

Were there any kind of like big takeaways when you first started to do all these behavioral health centers? You know, I know that this is your job, you came into it, but was there any time that you thought to yourself, like, ‘Holy moly, why didn’t I know that, why didn’t I think of that, like, why haven’t we been doing this all along’ or along those lines?

Stephen: Yeah, I’ll let Robyn take that first one away.

Robyn: Sure. It sounds odd, but my biggest nugget when I first started doing these types of facilities was really how simple, (chuckles), the solutions can be. I think as designers, we want to be innovative. So I guess I would say, you know, I’ve started my career, I’ve always focused it in healthcare design but started kind of more in the physical health world.

And one of the things that we do is we always meet with the users of the space, right? Which is typically our nurses, our doctors, the facilities people, to really understand how they’re using the space. And when I started doing behavioral and mental health facilities that peer support that Stephen talked about is such a key piece of it and that lived experience.

And so that voice started coming into those user group meetings, right? And as designers, we’re always trying to be innovative. We’re trying to really look at how can we do something different. And I learned in talking with the peer group, how simple the solution can really be. (Janet: right). And that it’s really just about exactly what Stephen said of, ‘How do we widen the corridors so that we’re not brushing against each other as kids and poking each other and causing those friction points’ right? (Janet: friction points, right).

I mean, we had a peer group that, you know, they come in with some lofty goals. ‘We want a swimming pool’ right? Some of the things that are probably not going to happen in the facility. (Stephen: chuckles). But the simple things like, ‘I just want to get a drink of water without having to ask somebody for it.’ And as designers, well, how can we do that?

You know, from a safety perspective, drinking fountains can cause safety issues, right? (Janet: sure). There’s ligature risks and concerns. (Janet: right). But as a team, we came together and said, ‘this is something so simple that we can do. How do we do it safely?’ Right? (Janet: right). And so you have those conversations.

So I guess for me, those kinds of little nuggets are those little, smaller things is what I’ve really learned as a designer, to hear the voices and what’s really important to them oftentimes is something very simple that we can do.

Janet: Isn’t that true though? I’m so happy you said that too, because sometimes it seems like a pretty simple solution right there in front of you.

Robyn: And sometimes we make it complicated, right? (laughs). (Steven: yeah). (Janet: exactly). Yeah.

Janet: Funny. Steven what, like what’s been some of your takeaways?

Stephen: (laughs). Yeah, I would echo Robyn’s points, that’s for sure. Lived experience, I think, is very important. I serve as a board member for the Design and Mental Health Network in the United Kingdom. And they’re expanding to North America, and a big proponent of their platform is this lived experience. But that’s not just stakeholder groups kind of in that design process, it’s more holistic.

And so we see this in other parts of the world where they inform the model of care, (Janet: right). Like before the building is ever programmed. They inform the design process for how the building takes form and kind of manifest organizational goals. (Janet: right). But also, in their operations.

And so I, that’s what I like about crisis centers in particular is that as a subspecialty within mental behavioral health, it’s kind of this unique manifestation of where lived experience is becoming much more manifest. I find that engaging and worthwhile. (Janet: yeah).

I will say having a parent who’s a psychiatric patient, the kind of role of family and visitation and maintaining or forging social connections is so critical for some people’s recovery (Janet: right). And the traumatization of the individual going through crisis just ripples through families and their support networks.

So you have secondhand trauma that really needs to also account for that visitor comfort and ability to see someone in crisis and make it through crisis. So you’re also not thinking about just the individual who may be exhibiting self-harm or addiction or harm to others, but you know, how are you healing this greater community and this greater family, this greater context, by treating the individual in a much more holistic and humane facility that we’re designing.

Janet: It’s such an important part, isn’t that? I mean, to piggyback on what you said, you know, I too have had a family member that ended up in some sort of psychiatric facility. It was older, so it was bad, like really bad.

You know, like the windows with like the wires in them and stuff like that, you know what I’m talking about, right? (Robyn: uh-huh). You know, it has like the chicken coop kind of wiring. (Robyn: yup, yup). (Stephen: absolutely). Yeah, it was, I think it was early ways so that it wasn’t able to like, be broken, and then, right? (Robyn: Yeah, yup. Fire ratings, and…), Right? (Robyn: yeah). Fire, all that other stuff.

Robyn: Newer technology has improved that for sure.

Janet:  … has improved that tremendously, thank God. (Stephen: yeah). you know, but as the family member coming through, that was, I mean, I’m not allowed to say exactly because we don’t swear on this show, but it was a holy ‘beep’ kind of moment for me. (Robyn: laughs). And I just remember feeling uncomfortable.

You know, at the end of the day, I mean, it was an addiction problem, not a psychiatric problem, but they needed to put him somewhere. So that was sort of what was going on. And I just remember, besides saying, ‘holy boop,’ that it was very, it was just, it was horrifying.

And, you know, and if you’re going through that type of crisis and to be in those types of spaces, again, I know we’ve changed quite a bit since these days, but there’s still a lot of them out there that seem to be a-okay with the built environment that is not conducive to healing whatsoever.

Robyn: The built environment should support that healing, right? And it traditionally has not. (Janet: That’s our plan, right?) Yeah, hopefully we’re changing that, right? (Janet: yeah). And it’s, you can see where it came from because there’s this level of safety that we’re trying to be conscious of, of people in this facility is that may want to self-harm or, you know, harm others. (Janet: right).

And so there’s that safety level that has to be there, but how do we do it better, right? (Janet: exactly). How do we infuse it with an environment that is supportive, that allows people to receive that healing and treatment that they need. (Janet: right). Because the environments we had previously just didn’t, unfortunately. (Janet: yeah).

Stephen: And they can help or hinder, right? (Robyn: absolutely). So, I mean, it’s not neutral. And I think that the growing societal awareness around mental health has really kind of catalyzed this conversation in the last few years. (Janet: yeah).

But there’s still a lot of stigma because of ignorance, even just people using the products and just as an applique, not really understanding they can really either enhance or hinder the care that’s there. (Janet: right), and the feeling of humanity and dignity and empowerment and agency. (Janet: yeah), for patients and the safety of staff.

I’ll give a shout out to the manufacturers for providing a lot better options in recent years, (Janet: yeah), but Robyn and I especially do a lot of risk assessments of existing facilities where it was just, ‘Oh, we knew it was tested and we just used it,’ but not how it was used or how it was supposed to be installed or, you know, the feeling when someone is locked in a room, and they count every bolt and nut and screw and fastener, (Janet: right).

Janet: Yeah, it reminds me of being in church, but that’s another story. I always try to count how many crosses, (Robyn: laughs, I do the same thing, count the ceiling tiles, yes). So I’m not equating the 2, I’m just saying like, that’s how I get through church. So… (Robyn: yeah), but yeah, I mean, it, it’s changed quite a bit, and I’m glad we’re looking at that. (Robyn: yeah).

I had so many questions and then I had to do the church joke. (Robyn: laughs). So my apologies. We talked about so much and this has been just terrific. So I want to know, when you’re designing, are there things that designers kind of need to think about?

Is there something that is a crossbreed between walk-in services and has like a bit of a residential program, right, it’s sort of a mixed program, I guess, some sort of hybrid? Is there a way that you look at that differently than maybe just like a walk-in?

Stephen: Every community is a little different, I will say. We’re seeing a lot more blending and fusing of programs. (Janet: yup). And, uh, I know Robyn’s worked on some projects out her way in the west that can speak to those.

One that comes to mind, up in the far north of Canada is a recovery center that’s for a very specific indigenous community. (Janet: yeah). And so their approach to care for flow acuity is to address generational trauma and fetal alcohol syndrome. So a very specific community needs, and they do that in an inpatient setting.

So they’ll take entire family units, and kinship cohorts in for inpatient care for generational trauma and treatment. (Janet: right). So that’s very unique. And, very specific to the cultural context (Janet: yeah), dealing with addiction for that specific cohort of mother, baby. Or in the case of mother dealing with addiction of alcoholism and a much older child dealing with the developmental disorders from having fetal alcohol syndrome is a very interesting family comorbidity in a way. (Janet: right). And how they deal with that within a very specific cultural context that has a spiritual lens to it.

A very unique rural and isolated part of the world, that, you know, is very humbling to us that get to work on those projects. But they blend housing; they blend childcare; they blend counseling, both for family and individuals; they blend ceremonial and spiritual spaces, and a variety of therapies that are very unique to that context that you don’t see anywhere else. (Janet: yeah).

And so that’s one community’s response of like blending these things together instead of having disparate programs and facilities that don’t really treat the individual, much less the family or the community holistically. So those are some things that we’ve come across. We’ve had the opportunity to work on across Stantec that we’ve really enjoyed. And then Robyn’s had some similar experiences out west.

Janet: Right. I just want to remind our listeners that you can go to InclusiveDesigners.com, because I want to promote that facility that you’re talking about in Alaska, because it’s so unique and I think the pictures are pretty wild. And we will have all of that, plus other references on our reference page.

But so I didn’t mean to interrupt you, Robyn. So I seem to be doing that a lot today. So my apologies.

Robyn: (laughs). No, all good, no. You know, I would say in terms of kind of the hybrid, I feel like these facilities in general are kind of all hybrids. And I think the biggest piece to me is about flexibility, right? (Janet: yeah). And how we design the spaces.

You know, when we’re talking, someone’s coming in in crisis, if it’s substance use, they say substance use is a disease of isolation, right? It’s people that have isolated themselves. And being in a facility with potentially a roommate may be what they need as part of their treatment and their healing process, right? (Janet: hmm) versus oftentimes we’ve heard that those experiencing homelessness will choose to be on the street, (Janet: yeah), because a shelter has been a traumatizing environment for them, right? (Stephen: hmm). (Janet: right, wow).

And so that more wanting the sense of isolation and that security and safety for themselves, they might want a room that’s just an individual room, right? So when we’re looking at these types of facilities, it’s really about how do we design in that flexibility (Janet: right), to really be able to meet whoever comes into the facility where they’re at, (Janet: right), if that makes sense.

Janet: Oh, I was just going to say so well said Robyn. So yeah, you’re, you’re, you hit it right on the head. And so thank you for answering that question. And I still can’t remember what the other question was before I did the church joke, (Robyn: chuckles), but so I can jump into my next question, which is about staffing. Like I know for myself as a designer, if you’re not paying attention to the staff, if you’re not taking care of the staff, I’m not taking the job.

Because our mentality is if the staff isn’t able to find a place to be regulated and be able to bring down their own stress levels, then you can put it in a beautiful place, and have all the bells and whistles and all the finest of the finest. But if that staff is just like going off the charts, it doesn’t matter, right?

Stephen: Oh, absolutely. It’s huge. (Janet: yeah). (Robyn: huge). We’ve had the opportunity to help master plan for entire health systems, provinces and states, their mental behavioral health facilities. And so what we have come across that almost every state is deficient in thousands of beds in some cases. But even the beds they have, they don’t have the staff to staff them. (Janet: yeah).

So thinking about recruitment, retention, how to mitigate burnout. (Janet: yes), And so a lot of, you know, thinking about the mental wellbeing as well as the mental health of staff and patients, how do you give them some level of parity of patient spaces to staff space. You know, is the break room embedded into the facility with no light, or have you given them some glazing in the perimeter? Have you given them an outdoor space to kind of decompress, (Janet: right),

Even just looking at wellness rooms with the same sort of sensory lens that we take for the calming areas or other neurodiverse considerations that we have for these unique patient populations are just as beneficial to individuals on 12-hour shifts in very emotionally charged behavioral health units, right? (Janet: yeah). That they need to decompress from.

So it’s when we do observation, it’s not just the step study of between the meds room and the care desk. It is, you know, how far off to the break room does it take to kind of feel like you’ve gone away from quote unquote, the space that is causing your stress and your spike in cortisol level, right? (Janet: yeah).

So, I think that’s a big part of why we are looking at, you know, how to use these facilities as not just to create great deference. I think that goes to pay for staff, the recruitment of staff.

Janet: You’re so right. I have another story for you. So, I went to boarding school and we had a dining hall, and the dining hall was just awful. You couldn’t get a good chef in there to go work the facility because they’re like, I can’t work with this. So they would get like these terrible chefs. So they had a terrible kitchen with a terrible chef. And then somebody gave some money and then all of a sudden, they had a brand-new building and then all the chefs came running. So it’s along those lines, right?

Stephen: Absolutely. Yeah. And I like to think that, you know, we can do a lot with very little. We find that the reimbursements for mental health facilities are typically less. So there is still a lack of parity in the health system and that mental health is health and they should treat it with the same deference. (Janet: right). I think that goes to pay for staff, the recruitment of staff, and the investment in these facilities. But if you look at the capital costs versus one year of operational costs, yeah, you’ve saved a little bit up front, by picking a little bit lower finish or fixture or things of that nature when long term you’re increasing your staff retention because you’ve invested in the spaces that reflect the value you have in your staff, right? (Janet: yeah, right).

Robyn: Yeah. I mean, I think that staff retention is so important and so key in these facilities that can be very, as Stephen said, emotionally charged. Right? And I think one of the key things that we need to focus on is making sure we have dedicated space for staff. (Janet: correct). We’re always pushed and crunched on square footages and costs.

And the first thing to go is always the staff support, right? And we have to really fight for that. (Janet: don’t worry about it, they’ll be fine, right?). Yup, yup. And it can be, again, it goes back to that simple solution thing, right? I mean, it doesn’t have to be the Taj Mahal of spaces, right? But it has to be spaces that are purposeful for staff, (Janet: right).

We had a facility that I worked on where we had these sort of ‘quiet rooms’ on each of the units for the patients that had this kind of color light therapy. And we ended up doing the same thing for the staff.

It was a small room with just a chair, but it had this color light therapy in it. And we did kind of post occupancy surveys with the staff, 100-percent of the staff said that it was incredibly helpful for them. Both from an emotional standpoint of having a place to go to just decompress, but also, you know, we have to remember that these staff often in these inpatient facilities are on 24-7 in these crisis facilities. They’re on 24-7. They’re overnight, right? (Janet: yeah).

And so having a space where there’s kind of that circadian lighting, the color therapy that, you know, say they’ve worked a night shift and they’ve got to go home and go to sleep. (Janet: yeah). Can they go into a space, turn on that amber light, start to bring their levels down and then get prepared to be able to go home and go to sleep, right?

And vice versa, (Janet: right). If they’re starting a night shift and they’re getting tired, can they go in there, you know, get that dose of the blue light (Janet: right), to kind of, you know, increase that cortisol. So it’s small spaces, but they’re so important and so key and something that we really need to be considering and part of the projects.

Janet: Yeah, absolutely. I’m such a believer of that. And we did an episode of Inclusive Designers with Alex Tan from Philips. And Philips had created these— I think it was for a pilot, but it was for adolescents in crisis. And what they had done was, is that they were really giving the autonomy back to the patient, resident, what have you.

And they were able to pick like the noise level, what their images were supposed to be. And all this, I mean, again, it goes back to the trauma-informed design principles where it was about choice and agency, you know, and giving them that option, but it really helped to bring down, I mean, sure there was loud music probably at points, but it helps to bring down your levels.

Stephen: Absolutely. We find that integrating these sensory enabled architectural elements, so they’re not just isolated to one sensory room. For some sensory enabled spaces we did for Cooper Health, is it in the pre-op area. Is it in the post-op areas, the subway. Is it where the siblings are waiting, who might be having anxiety of waiting for a loved one coming out of the crisis unit?

As well as the staff to Robin’s point of, it can be anything from, you know, in the mother room. (laughs), you have a bottle washing feature, because it’s not just simply the time it takes staff to do something if you’re a nursing mother, but also like, you can kind of give them a little bit extra functionality and flexibility in a space’ and then that pain point is kind of taken care of if you just think a little bit more thoughtfully, a little more deeply, and ask a few more questions.

So whether that’s a piece of functionality, if that’s kind of a sensory element, that’s great. It can be very, very, very simple tactile strips to, I can create a wind generator and a setting in the room to make it feel like an autumn breeze and everything in the room to transform through a haptic projector.

And it makes me feel as if you are in kind of New England right there in fall, or you’re on the spring and the coast. So you can really transport somebody and aid in their self-regulation through the built environment, which is one of those key coping skills they kind of teach you in these environments.

Janet: Yeah, I, you know, we could all use that in our homes. But I love the fact that, you know, things are changing so much and we’re also recognizing the built environment is such an important piece of this.

And I want to tell you another little story. So we just finished up our trauma-informed design class that was at the Boston Architectural College. And one of the students was redoing and rethinking ER and the ER process. And her first instinct is, as all of ours would be, was that, you know, you’re just trying to lower people’s stress level. So like yoga, Zen type of, it’s just everything that you would kind of think about. Like I see a lot of bamboo and I see a lot of waterfalls, that type of deal.

And she said, ‘you know, you’re in such a state of stress, it felt incongruent to have that type of like complete utter change, right? You’re coming from this heightened state and then you’ve got all the, like again, the bamboo and the wind chimes and all that stuff. And I would think to myself, if I’m in that heightened state, I might want to take the wind chimes and knock them off there, you know what I mean?

Is there like a reality to like trying to bring that stress level down within the built environment, but that it’s in stages. Because that question kind of came up and I thought it was interesting to have that gradient as opposed to going from 100 to down to 0 Zen and have a Kumbaya moment. I don’t think it’s really realistic, right? Am I missing something here?

Robyn: No, I 100-percent agree with you. And I’ll give you an example of this was actually in an inpatient facility, but you know, it’s about, again, I think it’s that flexibility, right? (Janet: right). So if you’ve got someone in an inpatient unit, they’ve got a room. They’re kind of isolated in that room. Often therapy wants to bring them out, wants to bring them into group settings. Well, somebody might not really be at that place in their journey to be able to be in a room with a whole bunch of people interacting, you know what I mean?

So it’s about creating spaces. It’s that sort of step down, as you said, right? (Janet: yeah). So we started to create little niches in the corridors that people could go and still be individual, but outside of their rooms. So starting to interact more with people, but not yet quite ready to be in that group setting. (Janet: yeah). So it’s about, it’s exactly what you said. How do we, as that built environment, support all those different levels to meet people where they’re at? (Janet: yeah).

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. They talk about it fairly often with autism because the transition between spaces and activities, and a lot of, you know, if you look at evidence-based design studies, usually they go back to attention restoration theory. (Janet: um- hmm). And so how do you get that time to kind of refocus from one element, or focus, or space, or task, to the next? And how do you recharge from it?

So you obviously see that in autism where, ‘what is the transition from one activity or one space to the next?’ So that way you’re transiting an individual, they aren’t sort of drawing them through, but you’re decanting them and their stress levels to have them acclimate and give them a greater choice and empowerment as they choose to go through a space.

So a sense of procession, I think is really important. (Janet: yeah). I would orient your focus around a couple of interesting in developments. The state of South Carolina is currently funding a 3-year grant through Clemson University for pediatric behavioral health needs in the emergency department. (Janet: hmm).

And we’re, you know, supporting that research through our professional practice use of our case studies and things of that nature. They’re going to have some really interesting findings to address those specific needs that you just mentioned that your student was going through. (Janet: yeah).

We recently funded a small grant through the UNC Greensboro for a sensory room for college students. And so we’ll be publishing the findings from a sensory room or a built environment intervention for, you know, stressed out college students and sort of what they gravitated towards in the built environment to help them through those critical times which is really exciting to see the investment in practices like ours, but across the industry at states, you know, organizations that are coming together, like the intentional spaces summit that was hosted by John Hopkins this past year. (Janet: right).

They’re coming out with an intentional network, and great findings that are bridging, you know, neuro architecture for the greater understanding and knowledge of all practitioners to view in their projects.

Janet: That’s amazing. I appreciate all that. And again, for the listeners, we’ll have all of that on our website on InclusiveDesigners.com. I’m getting a little bit aware of the time, and so, this has just been fascinating to me. I feel like this was a master class, quite frankly, in this particular world of design for crisis. and I can’t thank the two of you enough for coming on this journey today.

Is there anything that I’m missing? Anything that designers want to know? Was there something when you walked into this conversation, you thought to yourself, I hope Janet really asked me this. I want to make sure that I’m hitting on the notes because you guys have so much knowledge in this area. I want to make sure that, you know, we help to send that out to other designers.

Robyn: Sure. You want me to go first, Steven? (chuckles)

Stephen: Yeah, yeah.

Robyn: Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve touched on a whole lot of stuff today. Kind of a lot of the key design pieces of these types of facilities. I mean, I think for me, the biggest thing is just, I want to help kind of reduce that stigma. (Janet: yeah). Right?  I want to be part of that solution that we could all find ourselves in a situation of needing help at any time, right? (Janet: right).

And my biggest hope working on these types of facilities is to make this a conversation, you know, that it’s not something to be scared of talking about. And that it’s okay. We could all need a place like this, and let’s design places and have places that are healing and kind of support people.

Janet: And support people. How great is that, right? And Stephen, what about you? (Stephen: hmmmm). You can totally say no. And I am A-okay with that. (laughs).

Stephen: No, no. I would say that we strive really hard to design for dignity. And, you know, we balance and harmonize the evidentiary with the empathetic. (Janet: yeah). Right? So, I think we often rely on as designers, this kind of experience we have in the past. But, you know, really championing that lived experience, talking to those individuals in crisis, the family members that have endured it with them, and not make assumptions. And not, to Robyn’s point, let stigma really drive your design decisions. Because every design decision will help or hinder an individual in crisis. And we have a responsibility as designers to do better.

Janet: Yeah. I completely agree with you.

Robyn: This was really nice to be able to hear all of the things that you’re doing that I don’t understand as a person who’s not a design person, and how you’re bridging those gaps in peer support and all of the different things that we’ve been working on as advocacy on this end is making it into the design world. And it has been, but we weren’t aware of it.

So it’s really cool to be able to hear it from the other side, and being able to sort of, see the gaps being bridged. Like that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do for a long, long time. So it’s really cool to be able to hear it. And there’s a lot of stuff I have to learn yet as well. I was thinking about the blue light thing, because we have in our bedroom, we have lights. I try to make my house into like a sensory house, I don’t know what I’m doing. And then I was like, wait, blue light raises cortisol, and I’m looking at it before I go to sleep. Uh oh!

So like, I find blue light calming, so I thought it would be cool. So like, now I’m like, googling it while you guys are talking.  (Janet: laughs). Well, I’m in, I love learning. (Stephen: um-hmm). So, (Janet: yeah). Well, it’s, it’s fascinating to how something like that can have such a huge impact. You don’t even know it. Right. You know, cause it’s just part of our, it’s just sort of the cycle of life, right? You don’t even realize it, but once you start looking at the science of it, it’s pretty amazing.

Stephen: And that’s just one sense. I mean, we’ve had other like aromatherapy be considered and trying to like get people into a specific mind space, right? Or that trigger of a nostalgia to kind of help them with fixation. we’re doing a neurological institute for Cleveland Clinic and, you know, they’re exploring research around psychedelics. So there’s all kinds of, of, of fun, interesting things going on in the world. (Janet: yeah, wow).

Yeah, I mean, I think there’s, I was doing a behavioral health clinic in Lake Tahoe area. And so we have all these beautiful, like local photography that we commissioned. And so we’re doing renderings of it and it’s a group room and then some break rooms for staff and that kind of thing.

And it’s these majestic mountain ranges. It was snow caps. And they’re like, ‘It feels very cold, and it’s a cold part of the world. You made an assumption about kind of our landscape geography, but it doesn’t kind of fit our culture as a provider organization.’ But you know, that’s part of the conversation, not to make those presumptions and kind of listen.

Janet: Right. It’s funny you should say that. So we, the Trauma- informed Design class that we had, in the front we had all this stuff about you know, if this is too hard for you, please stop. Well, you can come back, you know, like it’s recorded. It’s not like a one-time thing, or, you know, if there’s real issues, contact us or the suicide hotline.

And then at the end we would have this, let’s bring down the stress levels, let’s do a little Zen kind of thinking. And we would have an image and it turns out like Christine and I both were like, well, we should get the one with the mountains with the snow on it. We’re both skiers. So for us, that was sort of in our mindset, right. And then I’m like, we probably should put a beach in there. I think some people might want the beach. They seem to like that. So it was a very humorous comment. (Robyn: laughs). (Stephen: um-hmm).

Robyn: Yeah. I, you know, I did a facility, it was children’s hospital. It was MRI. We use the ambient experience, right? And you know, research shows, you know, oftentimes children will need sedation in order to get into the, do the MRI (Janet: right). And that it actually reduces it.

And it’s like they have this selection of, they can create this whole world, right? You know, they can create a jungle or an underwater, whatever. I mean, it’s pretty amazing. (Janet: right).

Stephen: Oh yeah! There’s a new product that basically lets you preset so you can change the lighting, you can change the wind, the temperature system. (Robyn: yup). A couple other settings of like the features in the room so you can kind of make it… this is a rainbow; this is a spring day; this is a fall; this is, you know, pick something. And then I think that goes, you know, back to like, ‘Hey, we can dial this in a lot better nowadays, if the product is well supported and, and kind of thought through’ and presumably we’ve got, we’ve got the budget as always.

Robyn: Well, there’s that, that’s the key, yes. (laughs).

Janet: There’s that, (chuckles), I know. It’s nice, but you know, it’s a little expensive. but yeah. (Stephen: chuckles).

All right, so I do have one last question. But you know, I can’t go into my doctor’s offices, wherever it is, and I sit there, and I look around, and I’m like thinking to myself, ‘are you kidding me? Come on, like you can do a lot better.’

And it’s interesting to me that at the moment, it’s not all, I’m not talking about like the, the newer high-end hospitals, right? I’m talking about just going to like you know, the local dentist, the local eye doctor and stuff like that. And I just, I can’t understand it. Like the gynecologist. And I would, I’ll tell him things like, you know, listen, you can just put something up on the ceiling, you know what I mean? To distract what’s going on. (Robyn: yup), you know, some pictures of biophilia, something, anything.

And, actually with my gynecologist, there’s a, it’s a frosted window and it’s a frosted window and you can’t see in, but it’s a window to one of the exam rooms that’s behind the table. (Robyn: not what you want. laughs). They now don’t put me in there because I’m just, I am, I’m like triggered by the fact that they thought this was reasonable.

And I said to them, a couple of times now, I’m like, listen, I’m more than happy to like, I’ll go to Walmart. I’ll get our little spring rod, like put some curtains there. You know, it’s a simple solution to fix it. But I was just, I don’t understand, you know, like there should be more stuff like in medical journals. You know?

Stephen: As a member of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry, I will say that there is very little thought given to the education of clinicians that I’ve seen, to like, these kind of spatial environmental factors. (Janet: yeah). They will definitely point it out if it’s like, yeah, it’s lead based poisoning; or it’s nutritional factor; ‘Oh, wait a minute, you have a vitamin D deficiency. You should probably get out and get some sun’.

And so it’s, it’s fascinating. I’m usually the only architect at these things. And they’re just like, why are you here? I’m like, well, I’m learning from you and hopefully you’ll learn from me, because I want to know how I can better design the spaces for your patients, and for your acute needs. And hopefully you’ll see an example of how for your next project to do something a little differently, a little better. You see in dentist’s office all the time is like the goldfish tank, right? People can just look at that thing all day.

Janet: Right, well, it’s true. I mean, yeah, and it, it always drives me nuts though, that, you know, I come back like the next year or dentist maybe every 6-months or so, they’re not sitting there and like, ‘Oh, we, we took you up on your offer. You know, I’m like more than happy to help let’s just go do this, you know.

Robyn: Yeah. I think it’s just a lack of understanding of how impactful that stuff really is, right? (Janet: bingo). You know, I mean, I think clinical doctors are so focused on their specialty and what they’re really good at, which we need them to be, right? (Janet: right).

But we also have to look at the holistic approach that I think just often gets missed, you know, like that, that emotional reaction to an environment is part of whatever’s happening to your health. You know, it’s so intertwined. And I think we just don’t give that enough credit, honestly. (Stephen: yeah). It’s like, I fixed your leg or I’ve whatever, (Stephen: um-hmm). So everything’s good. But that whole experience of getting my leg fixed is part of that journey for me, you know, and it just gets missed, unfortunately. (Janet: Yeah).

Stephen: You know, they say break a leg, so… (all laugh).

Janet: Oh my goodness. You guys, I have taken up way too much of your time. This has just been quite amazing. I just got chills. Like you guys have been just so wonderful and thank you for your time today. And we just could not be more thrilled that you came today and shared your knowledge and, you know, please come back. We’ll talk about this again, whatever you would like. (Stephen: laughs). I mean it was really, really, you guys know your stuff. Like, there is no ifs, ands, or buts. (Robyn: laughs). So, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Robyn: Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure talking with you. Appreciate it as well. (Janet: great, thanks).

Stephen: Yeah. Thank you again for the opportunity to share.

Janet: Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

(Music / Outro)

Janet:  As a designer, I find this information really exciting to talk about. Good design really can make a difference in mental health treatment centers.

Carolyn: As Robyn said, “the built environment needs to support healing, and typically, it has not.”

Janet: And it’s also about creating trust and showing that we are trying to treat them with dignity. And to be sure that nothing in the environment will re-traumatize them.

Carolyn: seems like that in itself can really make a difference.

Janet: Yes, you’re right. Creating a welcoming environment that gives clients or residents autonomy over their space, and surroundings, is key.

Carolyn: And as Stephen mentioned, it’s important to remember to keep the mental health of the staff in mind too, with spaces for them to decompress. Be sure to let the stakeholders know that this will help with staff recruitment, retention and to mitigate burn-out.

Janet: You are so right Carolyn. This is such an important piece of information for all you designers out there. If the stakeholders do not address the staff’s mental health within the built environment, you can have the most beautiful design in all the world, but it ultimately won’t be as effective to those in crisis.

And I was very happy to hear that a lot of what Stephen and Robyn are doing follows the Trauma-informed Design and SAMSHA principles.

Carolyn: And of course, if you need more information on these, you can find it on our website.

Janet: Absolutely! And we will also let you know how to contact Robyn and Stephen, and provide links to the projects they mentioned, as well as many of the other things touched on during this discussion… all on our website at: Inclusive-Designers-dot-com.

Carolyn: That’s: Inclusive-Designers-dot-com…

Janet: A big thank you to Robyn and Stephen! And, again, to all of you for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts— such as Apple, Google, Spotify, and Pandora— you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it again, Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page.

Janet: Yes, please do. And let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for topics we should be covering in upcoming shows!

And as our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed’!

As always, thank you for stopping by. We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again!

The Ins and Outs of Good Urban Design
(Season 5, Episode 3)
Guests: Meg O’Connell & Steve Wright

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: We have a lovely show for everyone today! We will be discussing the benefits of urban planning with an inclusive focus. We’ll also explore the barriers that exist every day in terms of accessibility when designing buildings that meet employee’s needs… from the outside on the street, to the entrances, and all the spaces within.

Carolyn: … like kitchens, conference rooms, and of course, bathrooms to name just a few.

Janet: We are honored to have not one but two dynamic guests with us today. Meg O’Connell & Steve Wright to talk about designing for disabilities in the workplace and beyond.

Carolyn: Before we hear from them directly, let me tell you a little more about our guests…

Steve Wright primarily calls himself a Storyteller— which he is— but he is also an educator, award-winning journalist, and advocate for positive change. He has presented on Universal Design issues and solutions at national conferences. And advises clients on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

Janet: In all these roles, his goal is to create a better built environment with a focus on inclusion, dignity, and non-segregating design for people with disabilities.

Carolyn: And we also are delighted that Meg O’Connell is joining us. She is the CEO & founder of Global Disability Inclusion. Meg is an award-winning disability inclusion expert who provides strategic direction, design and implementation of disability employment and inclusion programs. Her clients include Global 500 companies- including some of the world’s most recognized brands- plus foundations, universities, and nonprofits.

Janet: Meg is also involved in disability employee research.  She co-authored ‘The State of Disability Employee Engagement’ to help companies understand the workplace experiences of their employees with disabilities.

Carolyn: I think you can see why we are so excited to get their views on this topic. Steve and Meg will share their pet peeves and advice on what designers can do to design it right the first time.

Janet: I wanted to have them on together because they both have a lot to say about urban design and workplace challenges for disabilities, but from own perspectives.

Carolyn: We think you’ll agree. And with that, here is our interview with Meg O’Connell & Steve Wright…

(Music / Interview)

Janet: Hi, and welcome to Inclusive Designers. I’m your host Janet Roche, and with me today I have Steve Wright and Meg O’Connell. Thank you so much for joining us today. How are you?

Meg: I’m great.

Steve: Yeah, great to be among friends old and new and just sharing lots of practical advice to good folks.

Janet: Great. Thank you. It’s more a natural conversation as opposed to a specific set of questions… so let’s just dive right on in.

I noticed that like, you guys have a lot of different hands in a lot of different pots, we could talk about that. Maybe talking a little bit more about universal inclusion within urban settings?

Steve: Yeah, but certainly let’s definitely try to steer things, because Meg’s expertise is, you know, employment and training and inclusion on that end. And let’s be honest, it’s no exaggeration that there’s like 10 different databases or stats from Fed, etcetera, that show that people with disabilities are still under and unemployed compared to education or ability. It’s not the underlying disability, which most of the regular world thinks, it’s a lot of times the filling the gaps. Is there accessible housing? Is there accessible transportation? Can you cross the street safely? (Janet: right). So it, to me it all folds together pretty well.

Janet: Yeah. Right. So of the two of you, is there anything you’d like to promote on this show? Meg, is there something that you would like to touch on and let our listeners know?

Meg: Yeah, and I think Steve mentioned it. The bulk of the work that we do is with companies and creating accessible and inclusive work environments. So when Steve talks about urban planning, it’s getting around in our cities and streets. And for me, it’s access in our buildings where people are employed. (Steve: um-hmm). And do we have the right universal design concepts in most buildings? (Steve: hmm). The answer is no, (Janet: no, chuckles), to ensure that this space is open and available to everyone.

And ultimately that’s what we want. We want environments that work for everybody, and we don’t have to have special considerations or accommodations made because they’re already built into the environment. (Steve: right).

Janet: Yeah, in terms of universal design. Right? So, maybe we could talk about the idea of what I saw in both of your postings in Miami— by the way, just for the listeners, love Miami. Miami’s amazing. Miami’s great. especially in terms of architecture too? (Steve: mmm). Right? Like some of the art deco areas, just incredible — but there was a particular building that you both had kind of pointed to, which was the health services building right there in Miami. (Steve: yeah). And Steve, you actually went there and documented it. (Steve: yeah, yeah), Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Steve: Sure, sure. And again, just, you know, to me, Universal Design— I should give credit. The person that founded that is a fellow by the name of the late Ron Mace. He’s passed away. He was a post-polio person. Brilliant fellow in the American Institute of Architects. Brilliant person. Wish I could have collaborated with him, but, you know, I think it’s really well worth it for every listener to understand that, you know, he probably could have called it “fella in a wheelchair” design or “disability community” design, but he picked universal.

As a marketer, I praise that. But I think it showed that, you know, getting around, being able to cross a crosswalk safely, whether it’s grandmother who’s a slower walker but doesn’t use a wheelchair and doesn’t view herself as officially disabled, (Janet: right), whether it’s small children. You know, I even wonder why we have these 30-second crossings instead of 45-seconds. (Janet: right). Because if a little 8-year-old starts to dart back, you’re stranded and here comes a wave of 3-lanes of sedans plowing at you.

Janet: Right, getting ready to plow you over. Actually, I just saw it this weekend too. New York City, 5th Avenue, as soon as their feet are kind of touching the ground on the street, like you can see the thing starting to blink already. And then there’s a whole panic, right? (Steve: right). And this kid is on one of those little razor scooters and poof, literally right in the middle of the road. And we’re down to like 5-seconds (Steve: right, right). And the kid is sprawled out, you know, I mean, thank God the kid was okay, but… (Steve: Right).

… and meanwhile, I’m trying to get my father, my 88-year-old father, across the street on the other direction. And he’s decided because the little ramp that they have there was all torn up and he didn’t like it. So he’s now going out into the traffic and around the bend in order to get back on the other side. (Steve: mm-hmm, mm-hmm). So, I mean, just to your point, right?

Steve: Yeah, yeah, you could almost call it ‘welcoming design’ or ‘comfortable design.’ (Janet: right). And I, unfortunately, there are some architects and planners and engineers that push back and feel like, “well, we didn’t do this when I was growing up. Why now?” And I always point out, it’s comfortable. It’s not like it’s some special interest.

Yes, certainly, if there is not a ramp, a person with a wheelchair can’t get in most likely. And they do not want to be carried because their mobility device is an extension of their body. So it almost be like grabbing you by the rear end and the throat to carry up the steps, but…  (Janet: chuckles).

Yeah, but again, it’s just, I don’t think anybody, I don’t think Michael Phelps from the Olympics won all the medals, I don’t think anybody that, all of a sudden balloon up to 500-pounds because there were curb ramps or safer crosswalks or wider sidewalks or buildings that had welcoming entrances. It’s just this, I like healthy design, but there’s almost like this mythology that if we build it accessible, we somehow cut off exercise, which is kind of silly. (Janet: really?). Yeah. (Janet: huh).

Meg: Well, and I think Steve, to your point, the flip side is the aesthetics. (Steve: yeah). Architects are really proud of what they design and interesting features. (Janet: right). And they’re afraid of putting a wheelchair ramp in the front of the building, instead of behind the building, (Steve: mmm). will somehow take away from the appeal of what the building looks like, (Steve: right). (Janet: the aesthetics). The aesthetics of the building. (Janet: right).

And universal design marries design and function. (Steve: right). So the challenge really for architects is how do you create something that’s beautiful that is also accessible. (Steve: correct). And the most people possible have access to enter your fabulous building that you’ve created. (Janet: right). Or even the boring office building you’ve created. (Janet: laughs, yeah).

Steve: Yeah. No, you are so correct. And I have seen mosaic tiles. I’ve seen plexiglass that you see through. I, I don’t want to be mean at all to my brethren, but if you think you can only build the Spanish steps or, or some replica of it and everything else is second class, (Janet: right), or VA hospital (Janet: hmm), and smells bad and is dated and all has to be painted gray and ugly, (Janet: chuckles), you’re, you’re not a good designer. (Janet: yeah).

You know, I mean, again, forgive me for riffing, but here in Florida, we have sea level rise issues and hurricanes and horrible stories. Yeah. Every building here, even the retrofitting, the older ones, you better be out of the flood plain. You better be resilient for even no name storms that are going to dump a ton of water. (Janet: yeah).

Yeah. That might alter what they did 80-years ago. That doesn’t make every one of those buildings poisoned and terrible. And we were talking before about the cold of the North and the heat of the South. So you, you know, there were ancient buildings that were built before air conditioning. Now you’ve retrofitted. Nobody says, ‘Oh my God, it’s so horrible because there’s a compressor on the roof.’ So…

Janet: Right. Those are excellent points. Steve, I love that. I mean, it’s very simple, right? We do that all the time.

Steve: Yeah. Design is fluid (laughs).

Janet: Right, yeah.

Meg: Totally. And Steve, I know you and I have talked about this. Steve and I are both in different parts of Florida. (Steve: yeah). And Florida is the, you know, retirement capital — Arizona’s coming up strong behind us— (Janet: laughs), for the retirement capital of the United States. Less than 1-percent of the homes are built for accessibility. (Steve: right). So you have an aging population that are building houses and they don’t know any better. They’re not thinking 20-years from now, I’m not going to be able to use the stairs. (Janet: right). They’re thinking “I’m 60, I’m retired, I’m going to move near the beach,” and our builders aren’t thinking about it. (Steve: right).

And my husband and I live in an older home and we’re likely going to tear down at some point. We’ve started talking to builders. And every time I talk to a builder and say, ‘this is our aging in place home,’ (Steve: mm-hmm), ‘we’re going nowhere else after this. We have to talk about universal design concepts.’ (Steve: mmm).  Three builders. ‘What’s that?’ (Janet: gasps, wow). (Steve: right, right). ‘Do you mean ADA.’ ‘No, I mean better than ADA.’ And they just don’t know. (Janet: Wow).

Steve: Yeah. Boy you, you really throw out a perfect point, Meg, (Janet: yeah), because, uh, there’s so many contractors and architects that they, even when you tell them what you want, they want to push back. (Meg: mm-hmm).

I did an interview within my past year, year or two. There’s a woman by the name of Patricia Belmont, I believe she’s in the Texas area. Belmont Senior Living, you know, I wish I had one-one-hundredth of her pocketbook because I think she’s become very wealthy building senior housing. And very interestingly, there’s 2 things, instead of that idea of building in the middle of nowhere with cheaper land, she’s filing building vertically.

Now it is in major cities, but you know, like the one in Miami, it’s going to have a health system connected right to it, so you can have your urgent care and checkups. And it’s right by a rail station, which sometimes people say, ‘Oh, that’s so urban and frightening’ but people want to get on the train, and they’re recognizing that maybe in their mid-seventies they might not be good at driving (Janet: yeah), or they might already have low vision. (Janet: right).

And the other thing she told me, that her like marketing and design people said, ‘Oh yeah, people don’t want to think of disability even if it’s around the corner. They want to be healthy. You know, when you sell these communities that charge 5-, 6- thousand a month, you want it to be sexy, and you’re pretending you’re 38-years old or what have you, even if the client’s 68.”

And they built tub showers. (Janet: gasps, groans). And they had some folks with some falls, and I’m sorry, she, it was sort of like, you know, the A-wing had walk in, roll in and the B-wing had tub showers. And when people started seeing the ease of transfer and the ability to just walk in, you know, and they had like rain forest shower heads. Again, it wasn’t, the VA hospital substandard, hadn’t been upgraded since the 40’s or something. It was sexy. It looked like an Aloft hotel or some cool thing. So they ended up, you know, they spent money to, (Janet: to make money), yeah…

Janet: … but to make money, and to make their residents happy and to have them stay. (Steve: yeah, right). And therefore with them staying, then the prices go up (Steve: right), because it’s a desired area, desired neighborhood, desired building to go into. (Steve: yeah). So yeah, I’m with you all the way on all of that. And so it’s an important piece. (Steve: yeah).

And I actually saw this old house, and they were showing an accessibility house and I crossed my arms and said, ‘okay, show me.’ Do you know what I mean? Like, I knew very well there were going to be issues. There were but there were very few and it was a very sleek and modern building. (Steve: yeah). It had a beautiful facade that you would never even know that there was a __ ramp there. And their daughter wasn’t necessarily in a wheelchair at that time, but they still put in an elevator. They put in a curb-less shower for her.

Again, there were a few details I think could have been changed. (Steve: hmm). And maybe they would be at some point or an easy retrofit at some point if she is in a wheelchair. But, you know, I probably try to contact him at some point because I think he’s a local guy. He did a really nice job. And that’s not always the case.

And Meg, I’ll tell you, it really blows my mind that none of the contractors in Florida wouldn’t know… you know, what does it take? Maybe 3, 4, 5-years ago, okay. (Meg: yeah). You know, it was just kind of burgeoning, but I feel like now that’s a little… it’s frightening. (Meg: right). (Steve: yeah). Right.

Meg: Well and what ends up happening is what nobody wants, right? You have to leave your home when you need care. (Steve: yeah). You can’t bring the care into your home because it’s not accessible for you to get into a bathroom if now you’re using a wheelchair or walker, or your doorways aren’t wide enough. (Steve: hmm). And so if you need additional support— even if it’s temporarily maybe due to a fall or something that’s longer term, a serious illness— you’re going to be forced to leave your home because it’s not accessible. (Janet: right). And we all know, some of those facilities are great, but the majority of them are not. (Janet: right). And nobody wants to be in any of those places. (Steve: hmm).

Janet: Right. And I’ll also take a step further with that, because then now you’re taking the generational wealth out of your family. Right? (Steve: yeah). That nest egg that you built for the house, within the house, now gone and you’ll have to, I mean, unless you’ve done some super planning, (Steve: yeah), but some of the times these things happen like this (finger snap). (Steve: right). And you will have to go sell your house and then give the money to the people that are taking care of you, (Steve: correct), instead of your, you know, children, your descendants who, that’s their inheritance that then they can’t get a leg up on. (Meg: yeah, that’s true).

Steve: And there’s so many simple solutions, you know, even just like a barn door, which, you know, you pick up a design, you know, whether it’s a real high or a mainstream design, and, you know, those are all sexy and cool. And just having one of those for your kitchen, but, you know, if they’re mounted, right, you can almost move those with a little finger. And that might replace the swinging door with the hinges because sometimes those 3-inches of hinges block the wheelchair or block the assistive mobility device. (Janet: right).

I’ve even seen conference rooms, you know, switching over to Meg with what she’s done with clients for helping people self-declare and, you know, getting good employees to be great employees because they’re comfortable with the accommodation they need. But even a conference room that has a wider entrance or isn’t clogged with furniture, (Janet: right),

You know, heaven help the person who thought, ‘Oh, you know, disabled people are only a charity case,’ and then your client rolls in in a chair and they’re the richest person from Columbia, but they leave miffed because they couldn’t get around or they went down the hall to an inaccessible restroom. You’re not going to get the commission from them. I don’t care whether you design widgets or you’re a big four accounting firm, You’re just, you’re not. So, if you want to take it from there, my friend (chuckles).

Janet: Right, or at the least you’re going to be extremely embarrassed. (Steve: yeah). I think the clogging of the accessible bathroom as storage (Steve: yeah), as always, one of my favorites, it’s not necessarily a design faux pas, but it’s just people going, ‘Oh, look at this big room. You know what? We should, we should put paper in here. (Meg: yeah). We should put paper and extra chairs in here. Right. And maybe a table or two.’ Laughs. (Steve: oh yeah).

Meg: Well, and years ago, this is going back decades, I worked for a regional bank, and we had an employee who was a wheelchair user, obviously looking to use the accessible stall. And time and time again, he would go in and there’d be other employees in there reading the newspaper in the larger stall while they did their business. And so we, you know, HR sent out several notes, please be respectful, don’t do this. So, and then of course people were still doing it. So then we had to put a lock on it (Janet: aw geez), and only the employee with the wheelchair had the key (Janet: had the key), or the janitor, (Steve: yeah).

And so it’s just about being respectful to the accessibility components that are in place. (Steve: yeah). And not using the stalls if you don’t need them because it’s roomier and you have a little bit more room for you and your suitcase and your purse or whatever else. I mean, we’ve all been guilty of it…

Janet: We’ve all, I was going to say, guilty as charged, right?

Meg: Yeah. Um, but you know, don’t do it. (Steve: right?).

Janet: Don’t do it. I know. Well, you know, but that goes back to also designing bathrooms correctly, right? (Steve: right). Like just in terms of universal design. And I, I love the Europeans, when they get to the United States, they come and there’s even like a little bit of a gap between the side bar and the actual door and they’re like, you but you can see people in there.

And it never even occurred to me until somebody had pointed it out, because Europeans have more of a connected, like, overlapping piece of the door. (Steve: hmm). So, but we don’t even design those bathrooms correctly. And don’t even get me started on women, and the lack of the amount of bathrooms for women, as opposed to like, it’s even, and it’s like, ‘okay, but we’ve got, oh, other things to do.’ (laughs).

Steve: Right, you bring up a great point, Janet, it makes you wonder, like you go to an airport, you know, MIA is like a city within a city, you know, Miami International Airport. (Janet: it’s huge, right).

And there’s a lot of dead space there. And it just makes you wonder as you’re retrofitting, why not, you know, why not make 13 stalls that are all the universal design ones.

So then if it is, the privileged feeling businessperson with a right, maybe I’d understand, you know, if it’s a really old historic building with a small floor plate, you might be doing flips and twists to fit it. (Janet: right, right). But when it’s something the size of, feels like 20 football fields, (Janet: yeah).

And by the same token, you know, I, forgive me, this is one of my pet peeves. I’ll go to— because I’m kind of an activist— and I’ll go to a meeting and in the morning, you know, they’ll say, ‘dear madam mayor or madam city manager, we have immigrants and we have school kids in the summer’ and I don’t care if it’s, find 4-million in the budget and we’ll push a pile of sand from one end of the tennis court to the other for make-work jobs because we have people that need a J.O.B. (Janet: right). Kind of an honorable thing. (Janet: right).

I’ll go in the afternoon and say, ‘Hey, why don’t you bid 3- of those 4-million towards contracting for inclusion? Hire local because a lot of the labor can be doing it and a disabled person could be writing up who did the labor or tracking it so it could be inclusive’ and they look at me like I just switched to a language that was unintelligible.

And you’re thinking, wait a minute, at 10am you were ready to pay 5-million dollars to push a load of sand from one end to the other. Surely you could tweak this thing and do, you know, connect some of your sidewalks, build things that are more inclusive. (Janet: chuckles). I’m not that bright, you know, I don’t have to go to the Ivy league to come up with that answer. So why can’t you plug that in? it’s just weird.

Janet: Right. well, one would think we’re still working on it, Steve, as you well know, and you guys are working really hard to make some of those changes possible. So, I mean, it’s, you know, you talk about a pet peeve. I have a lot of pet peeves (Steve: hmm), and they’re usually around inclusive design. Do you guys want to talk a little bit about your pet peeves in terms of inclusive design and what they, people have done? They like, ‘Hey, look, here’s like the cutout for the sidewalk. It goes in the middle of the crosswalk and the street, but here you go’.

Steve: Well, I’ve got an all-time one and it, I checked, it’s in all 50 state building codes. And I’m not saying, you know, nothing’s an absolute, right? I mean, just like we said, there may be a historic property or very old building you want to save with a small floor plate. (Janet: right), So it’s not like it’s across the board, but I don’t, I think the company someday will probably sue me. I’ll open up my mail and get some ding letter, (Janet: cease and desist), but limited use, limited access lifts.

And again, I mean, that’s a little bit of inside baseball for some listeners, but they’re sort of those outdoor elevators. They’re very small and I’ve yet to see one that’s not key operated. Well, you think about it, you know, is it the doorman? Is it the janitor who can… the key goes missing within 6-weeks of it being deployed. And they tend to be used in very urban areas. And unfortunately, like South Beach, if there’s something like that, it becomes where the beer bottles get thrown or where, you know, someone uses it as a de facto bathroom when they’re 3-sheets to the wind. (Janet: yeah). It just, it happens, and you can’t use it and it’s the only way of getting in.

So you basically, you might have built a mixed-use thing with, you know, 20 restaurants and 10 bars and everything. Basically, you might as well just say, you might as well just fly an airplane over with one of those trailing ads on the beach saying, you know, we intentionally discriminate against people with disabilities with mobility issues because it’s not going to work. (Janet: laughs).

I talk to architects, and I say, ‘well, why do you do this? And they said, ‘well, it’s in the code and it passed inspection.’ (Janet: yeah). And I said, ‘but I’m a living, breathing person telling you it’s going to fail. Would you, you know, if you built a roof for a skyscraper out of laminated cardboard and somehow it kept the rain out on inspection day and passed. Would you go home knowing the roof is going to cave in on your 38-story building and say, ‘ha ha’ (Janet: oh, well), you know, ‘we passed at noon when the inspector’ (Janet: we passed the code, right. chuckles), yeah, the inspector waddled over for 20-minutes at noon in March. It’s, you know, it’s good. No, because your clients would shoot you.

So why, why… again, maybe, I’m just feeling like that those kinds of lifts should be by a variance where, you know, you’d have to prove that it’s a super narrow lot and it’s a tight lot. And I think some designers put it in because I’m guessing, you know, a little turn ramp doesn’t have a big markup if you sell them 3, 6-thousand-dollar lifts, you probably make, you know, you probably mark it up. I hate to be so cynical, but the design firm probably puts a little markup on that. So they probably love them. (Janet: yeah).

Forgive me for rambling and I will shut up, but, Michael Graves, the late architect, very famous modernist architect, happened to get a viral infection that invaded his spinal cord and used a power wheelchair for mobility for about the last decade of his life. He taught at University of Miami, so I got to meet him and there’s literally a thing that was called ‘Ocean Steps’ at the very top of world-famous Ocean Drive in Miami Beach.

And when he was the able-bodied multi-millionaire star architect, he built 3 of those LULA lifts, which completely fell apart within about a year of— a year is probably being generous— within a month of installation. So, you know, whether it was Starbucks coffee or the Russian caviar place, you couldn’t go to them and your families couldn’t. (Janet: yeah).

So anyway, he was one of the few people within his lifetime retrofitted and spent time building all kinds of product design with fatter handles and easier to move paddles. So he, he’s probably one of the few that sort of got to undo his sins while he was still rolling about the earth. (laughs).

Janet: That’s actually really interesting. I would like to hear more about that at some point. (Steve: yeah), like, because I think, you know, to your point, it was an architect going back in and kind of scrubbing down, you know, like you said, the sins that he had created which, sometimes you have to spend a, just even a little bit of time, you know, in somebody else’s, in this case, maybe a wheelchair or whatever, (Steve: oh yeah), just to have that ability to be like, wait a minute, maybe this isn’t working. (Steve: yeah, yeah).

I know that I’ve told this story before on the podcast, which is, I teach over at the Boston Architectural College (Steve: yeah), and not only when I was a student there getting my master’s, but also when I taught, one of the best things we ever did was to take a wheelchair and go around the city of Boston.

Now I know it’s controversial because, you know, it’s one of those things where, like, the person in the chair could go and easily stand up and take care of, whatever it is they need to do. (Steve: right). But, you know, there were definitely some eye openers there that were just incredible. (Steve: right).

And I think, I mean, I know it stuck with me. I know it stuck with the students. And we also had, like the dean come with us on one of the trips and we were trying to find the accessible way to get to the T. (Meg: yup). And this is the local subway system around here in case you don’t know. (Steve: yeah).

And he could not fathom that there wasn’t an accessibility at the train, this particular train station on Mass Ave here in the Back Bay. (Steve: yeah). And he just, I let him do his thing. Right. I let him walk around and he’s like, ‘well, it’s got to be over here.’

We went into Target, got into the elevator in Target because it’s over the subway and he’s like, ‘well, you got to press the button and go downstairs’ and there was no button to press. I mean, I went with him to, you know what I mean, to go through this process and he just couldn’t imagine it. And then, you know, it’s the wintertime, so now we have to walk and or then push the person in the wheelchair a mile (Steve: hmm, hmm) to get to either train station. And this is right in the heart of Boston.

And now I know that they are changing that. They’ve redone a whole bunch of stuff in that particular area and part of the promissory note was for them to go and change that train station which should include some sort of accessibility. (Steve: yeah). If not, I’m going to be very upset. (Steve: hmm). But yes (laughs).

But anyways, I mean, so Meg, tell me a little bit more about your experience, you know, talk to our listeners, and tell us a little bit more about the work that you’re doing, and maybe how other designers could get involved.

Meg: Yeah. So the work that we do is primarily with companies to help them create better workplaces for people with disabilities. So that covers everything from policies, programs, procedures around inclusion at the different touch points that companies have where they engage with their employees— from recruiting to onboarding; to learning and development; and performance management— all of those things.

And it also includes digital accessibility and physical accessibility. We have a client now who wants a physical accessibility audit. They’re in a new building. They don’t own the building, but they want to make sure that the 4 floors that they are on are in fact accessible and so that they can share their expectations with people that own the building. So we’re really helping companies move to that more inclusive design in every aspect of their business.

So, we see it all the time where companies don’t have an accommodations policy for employees that may need either different digital equipment to help them perform better at work, or just even, you know, not thinking about— I think you mentioned it earlier— having conference rooms where there is open seating for people with wheelchairs, you’re not having to move furniture around.

Making sure that people know how to turn on the captioning in the meetings, so, you know, people that maybe are hard of hearing, or English is their second language, or ‘Hey, I just didn’t catch what they say, but I can see it in the captions.’ (Steve: hmm).

We all watch movies with captioning on now, right? (Janet: laughs. it makes it better, right). You know, people are watching videos at work with the captions on, so they’re not interrupting their coworkers. In some ways, we’re seeing universal design components ramping up, like in the captioning example, that’s gotten a whole resurgence. Captioning meetings that became a real thing during COVID.

And so we’re seeing companies adopt those as standard operating practices now to be more inclusive to everybody. So that’s great. We still have largely organizations thinking a person with a disability is a person in a wheelchair, (Janet: right), and we’ve kind of done that to ourselves, right? (Janet: we have). We got the iconic wheelchair symbol everywhere.

Janet: I was going to say the iconic wheelchair, right? Yeah.

Meg: But you know, 1-in-4 adults in the U.S. has a disability (Janet: right), and 80-percent of those are invisible disabilities. So, you know, we tell folks, we coach both employers and employees, ask for what you need. It doesn’t always have to be about your disability.

Say things like, you know, we tell folks with dyslexia all the time that don’t do well with, ‘Oh, we’ve walked in a room, we’re handing out a 10-page PowerPoint deck. Now we’re all going to discuss it,’… that’s not going to work for somebody with dyslexia that really wants to engage but doesn’t have the processing time.

So, ask, ‘I need materials at least 24 hours in advance.’ You know, what do you need in your workplace to make it better for you? And then as employers and managers are getting those requests, they’re going to know what works better for their team. And bottom line is it’s not just the person with dyslexia, everyone wants that PowerPoint 24 hours in advance. So they have time to read it and be prepared with questions. Come into the meeting with something that’s thought provoking. So we’re really trying to encourage more things like that, where tell us what you need, let’s accommodate you that way, and let’s create better workplaces for everybody.

But I think that the biggest obstacle that we’ve been talking about is the retrofitting of buildings. You know, we don’t have folks thinking about that as much as they should. And then, you know, things are broken all the time. The automatic manual door goes out or I’ll see signs up that say only employees who need this should use it, so not to wear down the motor. But meanwhile, everyone wants to use it because they’re bringing in, you know, bags and suitcases and briefcases and heavy things and they have things in their arms and hitting it with their hips, so the door opens for them. So they don’t have to struggle to get in. That works for everybody.

It’s not just about the people with disabilities. So I think for full circle, it’s about how do we create universal design, meaning how do we create our spaces that work for everybody? (Steve: yeah). And the workplace is an area where we really need that commitment to creating workplaces that work for everyone. (Steve: right).

Janet: Yeah, right. A lot of people who are disabled for one reason or another might not be able to get to work or to be at work. I think there’s some more grace period now because of the fact that we can zoom and stuff like that, right? (Meg: um-hmm). So we’re not as tethered to the old desk and chair. And well, for at least a good 30-years, the cubicle, (Meg: yeah, laughs), approach that I think we probably all suffered through at some point. I know I did. But it’s, you know, it’s such an important piece, you know, and it’s also about leveling the field of equality. And so that’s a really important part of all this. (Meg: yeah), (Steve: oh). Steve, you want to jump in?

Steve: Yeah. (Janet: yeah). You hit the perfect nerve here with the leveling the playing field thought. (Janet: laughs). I think we open with this image that I like to share of the, it’s basically the board of health building for Miami. And a lot of the people that go to it are lower income, not everyone, but it’s, you know, it’s part of the safety net for inoculations and all kinds of ongoing care and checkups, et cetera.

And they’re all proud of it because it’s a Leed, Gold building. (Janet: right). So it’s got its sustainability and it’s out of the floodplain. But in building out of the floodplain, what you really see from the street is the main entrance is up a grand staircase. And now there is a ramp entrance. It goes to the same lobby. I kind of fanatically check it every other month (Janet: chuckles). And it is open, you know, because sometimes here’s one of your problems. If you build a segregating entrance for your access, a lot of places lock it. (Janet: yes). Retail- it’s very common; restaurant- very common. (Janet: yes).

Because ‘Oh, somebody’s going to dine and dash’ (Janet: right). Or, you know, been a million stories lately about how some retail places are, they’re in the best corner in Manhattan, but they’re thinking of shutting down because there’s so much theft. (Janet: right).

And nobody goes back and has the architect shaking their fist, well 18-years ago we built this alternate entrance and when you lock it, you’re going to destroy it for everyone in a chair (Janet: right). Or not just chair, even just a slow walker or Canadian crutches. It’s much bigger than that, right? Obviously, low vision people like graded ramps rather than trying to tackle something that you may have a depth perception issue or something like that. So once again, it’s, it’s much more universal than just someone in a power chair. (Janet: right).

But again, it’s just that when I gave a talk about that building. And I don’t want to knock it, it’s actually a person I know was the main designer. But just when you put that little baby sign pointing you a whole block down the street, think about back to Meg’s, you know, her bread and butter. Think if she helped coach them and do the right thing.

And again, it’s not charity because people with disabilities are very good at problem solving and they’re incredibly resourceful because we have an environment that makes you do that because we get from point A to B, you get up early and plot out and you’re a natural problem solver. It’s a stereotype, but it’s a positive one. (Janet: right).

But anyhow, even if you’re not just a visitor that gets intimidated or you’re not sure where the other entrance is, think if you’re a person with disability and you know, where do you make your points with the boss to get that corner office or to go from being an entry level to project manager?

You walk and roll on the way to lunch. Well, you know, you go down your 4 stories in the elevator. You can BS with them then. You get ready to go with a couple people. And ‘Oh, you know, here’s a little sparky in a wheelchair, you got to go all the way down, all the way back. If it’s starting to rain, you know, you, you separate from the group. (Janet: right). You’re giving all these visual cues that you’re, you’re second rate or you’re around the bend.

Janet: And that is a huge part of all this as well. You bring up a good point Steve that that also makes you feel inferior. And I mean it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work. (Steve: yeah). And when I was telling you about that class that I did, it wasn’t just the train station.

I would also bring him to a coffee shop, (Steve: yeah). and it was smack dab in the middle of the street, not, couldn’t be any more smack dab in the middle of the street. (Steve: um-hmm).

And, it was downstairs, which is not uncommon around here. And it had 3, kind of zigzag steps going down. There was no lift or anything of that sort. (Steve: hmm). They had the very, the nicest looking accessibility plates I’ve ever seen before in my life. They were brass. They were very shiny. They were basically like pointing you to go to either side of the block to go around the block to go into the alley, which is what we’ve got here.

So you’ve literally now had to go around the block into the alley where the garbage is kept, where the, the cars are kept, right? (Steve: huh). Like this is sort of the unsightly parts of Boston (Steve: uh-huh). And then I couldn’t even believe it. They didn’t even have a cutout on because there’s like a little bit of a lip between the street and the parking areas, which is fine for like a car, right? Or like, you’re walking a bicycle, but if you are in a wheelchair or if you’ve got something large, it just doesn’t work.

And the last time I did it, we got to the door, the doorbell wasn’t even working. (Steve: oh yeah). So you’ve done all this, like you said, you have separated yourself from the rest of the group. You have now gone to the back of the building. You are there by yourself.

Maybe… it’s New England… could be raining, could be snowing, could be the heat of day, right? Only find out that the doorbell’s not working! There was a telephone. They were able to call. The person came out, just kind of flung open the door, (Steve: oh yeah, oh yeah), and didn’t even hold the door for them.

It was a group of the students, and they didn’t know where they were going, so they got in the elevator. And they ended up going up all the way up to the top floor, which was somebody’s apartment, apparently. And so they started going into the apartment thinking that it was the coffee shop. It just kind of goes to show you, you know, Steve, to your point, you know, by then, I would have gotten my coffee already and I would have already gone. (Steve: oh yeah). It’s just, (Meg: yup). Yeah, it’s crazy. (Meg: absolutely).

Steve: That’s why it is so important to have public transit functional. Again, you know, all due respect to Michael Bloomberg and all those super tall buildings and saying, you know, if we zone to the sky, we’ll have money to fix the problems.

You know, and I know the M.T.A. is not the city itself, It’s like another layer of government for the transit.  (Janet: Manhattan is really bad). Yeah, as we said, you know, not even 1-in-4 stations are wheelchair accessible. Unless you own a helicopter, a CEO, you know, the fastest way to get, you know, from the Bronx to a meeting in Union Square or vice versa is that train. (Janet: yeah). You know, you see millionaires riding the train because it’s efficient, you know, you don’t, can’t take 4 hours into traffic. (Janet: chuckles). you know. (Meg: uh-huh).

And then, you know, you turn around and of that 1-out-of-4, half the elevators are broken on any given day (Janet: yeah). And then and somebody says, well, but you’ve got 1-of-4, that’s not bad. But, you know, you find these weird things where the northbound train, there is the platform with the elevator, the southbound is not. So you can’t really work there or live there because you can’t do a 50-percent commute. (Janet: chuckles). You know, you’re not. What are you supposed to (Janet: stop), you know, get a, get a wheelchair that has a bed inside it that, (Janet: laughs). you know, whatever, you know, 3-in-1, you know…

Janet: Well I will challenge you, Steve, to design that. That actually sounds pretty, pretty handy, right? (both laugh).

Steve: There you go. It’s like those, like the business class seats that I never get to sit in, the fold out, you know, but… (laughs)

Janet: … it’s just glorified larger seats, that’s all.

Steve: You know. Forgive me for, if I’m rambling or riffing, but it just. You know, we have one of the ugliest histories in our entire nation is of segregation, (Janet: yeah). You know, certainly based on race, not that, by gender too as far as pay, that’s still a gap.

But I just, I sometimes I go to an architect and they’re designing a brand-new building and it’s like, “Hey, wait a minute. You know, the access is way off the back and it’s like we’re saying, ‘Oh, it’s by the dumpster’ and, (Janet: yeah). And with all respect, the homeless person, so it might even be dangerous.

And then there’s the, the big button that’s as likely to electrocute you as it is to actually work and signify to somebody to go get it. And maybe they’re used to near-do-wells ringing the big button. So they just ignore it, even if it does buzz, (Janet: and there’s something you said for that, right, yeah).

And I look at them, I say, “you know, with all due respect” I said, “you’re an inclusive person,” I said, “you know, would you put a headline in the Miami Herald saying, you know, brand new development or retrofitted historic building, you know, people in Orthodox Jewish garb, please call 2 weeks ahead to schedule, or please, you know, wait and get rained on by the dumpsters, or, you know, Hispanic people need not have the expectation of spontaneity at this restaurant.”

“Please, please send us a registered letter and please beg and please only call when Steve’s on duty to usher you through the kitchen and through the stinky garbage and then we’ll take your money for the tomahawk steak, but only then will we…” you know, we, I would hope to God as an inclusive society that, that loves our brethren, you know, we’d all be marching or it’d be the first thing on the 6-o’clock news or the big Twitter feed saying, “oh my God, look at this place, what it does.” (Janet: right).

And yet disability. You know, it’s hard to even get the news producer to come out and do that. They just kind of roll their eyes like, well, at least they let them in. (Janet: wow) And it’s like, what do you mean them? (Janet: yeah). That’s pejorative. You know, there’s that word ableism, that’s a fairly new word, but it’s, it sounds like racism. And on any given day, it can be as toxic and hurtful and detrimental.

Janet: Yeah, all you could do is like, take that word disabled out of that sentence and put in any other group. (Steve: yeah), You know, people would just be completely outraged. (Steve: yeah).

So, yeah. And so, like Meg, I know that you, I mean, do you guys, I mean, I love the fact that the both of you probably do a lot of advocacy work as well, (Meg: yup) on behalf of people with different abilities. Is that correct?

Meg: Yeah, it is. And we try to give people to— and I’m going back a few points to like the coffee shop example— because we tell everybody accessibility and inclusion is not a facilities issue. It’s not a building maintenance issue. Everyone has a responsibility to it. (Steve: good point).

Everyone in your company needs to know the accessibility features, how to access them, where they are, where the accessible parking places in your building? Most people don’t know that. How many do you have? How do you reserve one? If your team has favorite restaurants that you go out to, or you’re a recruiter and you take people out to lunch, what are the 10 restaurants in your 5-mile radius that you know are truly accessible?

And have that list handy. A lot of times that you’re in a zoom meeting like this, you’re interviewing a candidate, you don’t know if they’re a wheelchair user. They didn’t tell you. They show up. They called accessible transportation. Well now, their meetings ran long, they need another pickup. (Steve: um-hmm). Does anybody know where to call? Does anybody know how to access that?

So just thinking about the day-to-day logistics and thinking about people with disabilities and how to make sure that they’re included, that you’re not going to that coffee shop that has four steps down and you got to go in the back.

We see this being an activity that employee resource groups for people with disabilities will do. (Steve: mm-hmm). Let’s go. Let’s send a couple of people out. Or when you go to your next restaurant, eyeball these 5 things. Like, if a 2-inch step makes it inaccessible for someone in a wheelchair or someone with a walker or other mobility issues.

So really having that list. And, you know, having them at your home too. Of knowing, ‘oh, if you have a party or a friend shows up’, and ‘oh, you didn’t realize they had an injury and now they’re on crutches’ or whatever. You know, so, we try to give folks really thinking about access and inclusion as part of their day to day. And how you would any other team event that accessibility should be a part of it, whether it’s just going out to lunch, interviewing a new candidate.

This one company that we worked with, they would welcome somebody at the main level and then their interview rooms were on the second floor, and they have this beautiful spiral staircase that went right up, (Janet & Steve both laugh), but it was an older building that had been retrofitted and the elevators were a quarter of a mile down the hallway.

So no one thought about that, you know, so now everybody’s got to walk a little farther. This takes them extra time. (Steve: mm-hmm). Now they’re going to be late for their first interview because they had to take the 10-minutes to roll down the hallway, being escorted by somebody else and go another quarter mile back. (Janet: back, right. laughs).

So thinking about those practical things of, you know, candidates with a disability and not even, I mean, somebody in a wheelchair, they actually can move pretty quickly, but what if it’s someone with cerebral palsy (Steve: right, right), or someone, you know, with Parkinson’s (Steve: oh yeah), that maybe can’t move as quickly or has more difficulty. (Steve: yeah).

Janet: …but still walking, (Steve: pulmonary issues). Pulmonary issues, right. (Meg: right). Is there, do you guys know… I’m sitting here every time I’m listening to the two of you talk— I know that there’s the WELL AP for buildings and as you mentioned, Steve, the LEED, right? That’s sustainability. It’s about air quality. WELL takes it a step further. (Steve: hmmm). But is there any other design measures that people…?

Meg: … this is what we need to create. Steve (laughs)…

Steve: We do, I know, I know, we do…

Janet: I was going to say, we got to go create it! We can go create it! Just because I don’t have enough on my plate, but I think we could. (chuckles).

Steve: No, no. There’s, obviously maybe there’s a little bit of cynicism with the U.S. green building council and how it’s kind of propagates and gotten so huge. But no, I mean, now resilience is just a ‘for granted.’ You know, those giant teacher funds that, you know, build or buy those buildings in Manhattan, they want the thing to be LEED Gold or better.

They don’t want to touch it without that, you know, went from a ‘what’s that?’ or ‘is that just something for nerds?’ or ‘is that something Brad Pitt mentioned in New Orleans after Katrina,’ (Meg: right), to ‘it’s mainstream’… it’s as mainstream as having air conditioning in a parking deck, you know, so (Janet: right). No, we need that. We need that.

Janet: Well, I even say is that that now is baked in, right? (Steve: um-hmm, um-hmm), WELL has now come since then, Trauma-informed Design, which I’m a part of, will be coming in right after that. I mean, it’s a changing field for sure. (Steve: right, right).

Meg: We need some certified sort of universal design quest that…

Janet: … quest, checklist. Right.

Meg: Yeah, that architects…

Steve: We need a triumvirate of like…

Janet: an understanding, an understanding and process… that’s the other part. (Steve: correct). (Meg: yeah).

Steve: Yeah. And you actually have an independent body, and you know, you can have your ceremony and put up your little cornerstone that says it. I mean, it should be a thing, you know, it should be like getting 4-diamonds from the AAA or so. It’s a pride thing. (Janet: right).

Now, I certainly, well, I’m not a rich man because I probably kill half my potential clients by telling them what they did wrong. And if they don’t want to move towards heaven, they don’t get, you know, I don’t work with them, but, you know…

Janet: (laughs). Well, you’re still surviving Steve, so, you know, right…

Steve: yeah, oh, I’m, life is very good, and I don’t need Bill Gates lifestyle. (Janet: yeah, yeah. laughs). But anyhow, um, no, but just, you know, to maybe end on my part on a positive, because I, you know, when you point out what’s wrong, sometimes it comes off as negative, (Janet: right). And again, I’ve always been a person, you know, that wanting to see all different people or, or that wealth of diversity was just something that seemed natural to me, and it’s just grown. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with creatives that have felt that way.

Not that the whole world we’re, we’re in a very polarized world, certainly as we live in, but not to overly do it. But to go back to that, that race based thing. First, we introduced the negativity, but, (Janet: yeah), you know, you can all tell me I’m handsome and look 38 or something, but I roll 60 next year.

So that means I’m old enough to remember when very unfortunately, some architects might’ve said, ‘Oh, this person’s African American, but, and they’re top of their class from a very good school, but they will probably be a glorified drafts person because I’m not sure if my clients are ready to see a person of color closing the deal or managing the project. (Janet: right).

Or again, maybe it’s terrible for me to say as a male, but I certainly know even at the newspaper I worked at, there were like city editors and managing editors that they would not give the most prime beat to a woman because there’s all these stereotypes of, ‘Oh, as soon as we get her trained to cover city hall, she’ll have a kid.’ (Janet: right).

Or you know, ‘there’ll be this time that she’s under the weather and that’ll be right when we are fighting with the other crosstown paper or the news to break it.’ You know, just terrible pejorative. But lo and behold, some of those women who maybe took the ‘crappier’ beat and worked through it became the publisher or the managing editor. (Janet: right).

And, that case that I happen to know with a small architecture firm when I thought maybe that was what I would do instead of criticizing and writing about it, because I can’t do the math or the, you know, the building would fall down if I were at the switch. (Janet: laughs).

I happen to know a small firm in my native Akron, Ohio, where the black person who the hiring manager knew was super bright but was a little bit trepidatious about, ‘Oh, you know, can they carry the water?’ Not only did they become the rainmaker for the firm, but they bought out the founder of the firm. He’s just getting ready to sell the business for a very tidy profit that will send his grandkids to the best schools, but you know, go off and do foundation work. So they will probably sell it to a rival firm for a tidy sum.

And I think the parallel obviously is with people with disabilities. Not that there aren’t already, but I truly think, and this is more Meg’s thing for me to shut up and pass the torch, but I think there’s people that are entry level, they’re run of the mill, they’re, you know, they’re a cog. And I think they should be at that C suite with the right training, the right accommodations, feeling comfortable asking for what they need. (Meg: right).

I just read a story that, you know, Publix is the big grocery chain in all of Florida. (Janet: right). I think they’re naming a new CEO or whatever, and they started as basically like a checkout bag boy, you know, and they moved up. So you know, maybe you didn’t come out of the Ivy League, but you worked you’re way up, and I think we’re probably maybe 30-years behind in that compared to other marginalized groups, (Janet: that’s right). As far as recognizing the strength, the problem solving. It’s not like ‘oh I hired two people I can go to heaven now I did my charitable act.’ It’s not a charitable act. It’s a, this makes good business. So with that I will pass the 440-relay torch over to my friend and colleague, Meg. (laughs).

Meg: I’ll happily take the baton. (laughs). So, I guess the only other thing that I would say is that, you know, we are seeing pockets of change when we think about accessibility inclusion. And earlier this year, Lowe’s, the home improvement store, and AARP teamed up to start featuring accessibility products, and how you could do that within your home.

Whether it’s, you know, shelves that you can pull down so if you’re in a seated position, you don’t have to worry about either not being able to reach it or even standing on a step stool, which as we all age, that gets harder to do, right? (Janet: laughs).

So we’re seeing, you know, big companies start to focus on access and inclusion, and we’re seeing hiring initiatives. You know, Michaels is one of my clients and I was on a call with them earlier today. We’re in our third year with them. They’ve hired over 350 people. And they were saying, ‘we have these 2 guys that are twins with autism in one of our warehouses.’ They’ve been working there for 4-years.

Both are now in leadership positions where everybody thought no way they’re lucky to have a job and now they’re leading teams. (Steve: hmm). And so we see real examples of when companies step into this realm and really enter into it with an ‘and yes’ mindset of ‘how do we do this?’ and ‘what’s the next thing we should be thinking about’ that they’re seeing huge successes. (Steve: right). (Janet: right). and making a lot of money off of accessibility inclusion.  (Steve: yeah, yeah).

Janet: Yeah. They left so much money on the table. (Meg: yes). And that was the crazy part. And I just want to throw out a little thing out to the universe right now, if Lowe’s wants to talk to me about making designer grab bars, I’m more than, (laughs), I’m more than open to start that part of my design empire. (Steve: yeah). (Meg: excellent).

So, well, because it’s so important. I haven’t seen any really great grab bars lately, (Steve & Meg laugh), but like when I do see them, I post them and I say crazy, sexy, cool, grab bars. (Meg: right). It’s to get people used to, and to think of what grab bars are and how they can see them as opposed to granny bars, (Steve: right). Right. And this institutional kind of look, we can make them beautiful and gorgeous. Just like we talked about with homes. (Steve: right), (Meg: right, right). And just have them be, you know, fit into your decor and not look, again, like these institutional pieces.

Meg: Right. There is a company out of the UK. I’ll think of the name in a minute, and it was started by a gentleman who had an accident…

Janet: ‘MotionSpot’…

Meg: Yes. ‘MotionSpot’ (Steve: oh wow), I knew it started with an M and I was like, I just need a minute. It’ll happen. (laughs). Yes.

Janet: Yeah. We interviewed them.

Meg: So, you know the story. It’s an amazing story.

Janet: It’s an amazing story. And they’ve been doing such an incredible job too. They take the idea of the aesthetic and the functionality and…

Meg: … design and function meet.

Janet: Meet, right. And so just, so again, if you’re listening, it will be on the website— ‘inclusivedesigners.com’ — and we will post that episode again, as well as the information for Motion Spot. (Meg: excellent).

And ‘Ponte Guilio’ is another, just grab bar group that’s an Italian company, but it’s also here in the United States. (Meg: right). And they’re also another one of my favorites to have again, beautiful, accessible bathrooms that, you know, buck the old idea of what inclusive bathrooms should look like.

So, but yeah, I know I’m keeping, I’m keeping an eye on the time, Steve, don’t you worry about it. (Steve: yeah). So is there any last minute. Did you want to finish up your conversation Meg on ‘MotionSpot’ or did you want to…

Meg: No, I was actually just bringing them up because you were talking about your grab bars and thought that they would be a great resource for you because I know they’re doing a lot in office buildings and hotels and all of those places.

And that’s another thing that we’re seeing, right? Is that there are so many companies like this popping up that slowly, and it will be very slowly, (Steve: hmm), but change happens slowly. And with companies like ‘MotionSpot’ and others that are teaching companies what they need to be doing and how to do it, (Steve: uh-huh), the more we see it in the mainstream, the better it’s going to be for all of us.

Janet: Yeah. When we talked to them, and this is important for our listeners to understand, which is that they did, it was a hotel. I know it was the Brooklyn hotel. I remember that because I come from Brooklyn— a shout out to Brooklyn— and the Brooklyn hotel was in UK, and they had made it an accessible building, period. It wasn’t just 1 or 2 rooms in this hotel. It was everything. Everyone had the same room that was all accessible.

And their bottom line, I want to say went up (Steve: yup), but I know that their profits had increased as a result of that. And that to me, I mean, if that doesn’t say it all, (Meg: right), (Steve: hmm). Right, I don’t know what does. (Meg: well, and look…) Oh, go ahead Meg.

Meg: Look at the accessible fashion industry. This was not (Janet: a thing) even happening 10 years ago, (Janet: right). It was still medical grade clothing that you would never wear outside (Janet: chuckles). It looked like a hospital gown with straps on it. And you had ‘Runway of Dreams’ teaming up with ‘Tommy Hilfiger,’ (Janet: Hilfiger, yeah), and now you’ve got ‘Target’ and ‘Kohl’s’ and ‘Macy’s’ and ‘Isaac Mizrahi’ now coming out with a line. (Steve: uh-huh). So in 10-years that that movement has started, that is a 400-billion-dollar industry. (Janet: billion, yeah). (Steve: I know).

So we tell companies all the time that we work, if you’re looking for your next innovation, talk to your employees with disabilities. (Steve: yup). Because they can tell you what problems need to be solved that no one’s paying attention to. (Steve: yup). And that’s such a perfect example to talk about. It’s not just about inclusion, it’s about being disability competitive. (Janet: I love that). Because if you’re competitive in whatever your industry is in market, people with disabilities are going to choose you over your competitors. And that’s what you want.

Everyone wants the market share and people with disabilities go, and their families shop, it’s a 15-trillion market opportunity. So it’s just silly if companies, buildings, organizations are not thinking about access and inclusion.

Janet: Ah, I just enjoy talking to you guys so much. I always enjoy talking, I call it my peeps, right? (Meg: laughs). Right. Our audience is peeps, right? We really do enjoy it. I just want to give you guys a couple minutes if there’s anything else that you feel like you want to add to the conversation or that we missed, overlooked or we felt like we just didn’t get in. Steve, I’ll let you go first.

Steve: I don’t know. I mean that that last thing, Meg hit that, I mean…

Janet: I know, she kind of knocked it out of the ballpark at that point…

Steve: She really did. That was like one of those grand slam home runs, clear the bags at Fenway, you know, go home…

Janet: She did. I was like, all right. Well now we’ve said everything. We might want to put at the beginning, cut it down to five minutes and call it a day. That’s right. (laughs).

Steve: I guess the only other thing I would say that maybe we didn’t is just, you know, I do a little bit of stuff with AARP and I’m old enough to be the member or whatever now, but you know, it’s just, I remember when they kind of started, you know, it was all these save social security, save Medicare, lobby Congress.

And now every magazine along with some celebrity that looks 15-years younger than their actual age, you know, (Janett: chuckles). There’s, all these stories about nerdy stuff about placemaking and inclusive parks and aging in place and how to retrofit your house cheaply.

So clearly there is a market there. (Janet: right). Whatever, you know, probably half the Madison Avenue advertising I see says, ‘oh, you know, 60 is the new 40’ and I get it. But BS, you know, if I pull an all-nighter for a client, I feel like I got the flu the next day. And I’m guessing most of the folks do. (Janet: laughs).

And if I go out and play soccer and wrench my knee, it feels like a, you know, 20-year-old would probably just, (Janet: walk it off), and go home. (Janet: right, laughs). And I’m like, ‘ah, should I go to an urgent care?’ (Janet: urgent care, right). (Meg: laughs). But you know, the point being, you know, what is it, something like 10-thousand people reach retirement age every day in America? And that number is just going to go up.

Janet: Yeah, it’s the silver tsunami, it’s already here and we haven’t hit the top of the crest yet, that’s the thing. (Steve: yeah). Yeah.

Steve: And, you know, with all due respect, the kids coming out with a master’s degree have 300-thousand in student loans (Meg: hmm), and are moving into a micro unit, (Meg: yup), especially if they want to live in a, you know, in a top tier city (Janet: right). And It’s the silver tsunami who has the money to invest.

So as Meg was saying, if you’re, you know, if your ‘bagel-ry’ has better bagels than Manhattan, if your croissant place outdoes Paris, how am I going to know if I only go to places that are accessible? (Janet: yeah), because that’s the way I vote with my feet. You know, I’m kind of a social media addict. I don’t TikTok, but I do all the other platforms. If somebody burns a pizza, you know, a thousand of my close personal friends know, and they tell their friends. If they make the croissant that’s half the price of Paris, and I don’t have to go fly into De Gaulle, I tell people.

You know, again, I don’t think this is just doing the right thing, I think there is a killing to be made with this. (Janet: yeah). You know, we’re, everyone on this call is old enough to remember, you know, ‘oh, bottled water. It comes out of the spigot. Who would pay for that?’ Ha-ha. (Janet: right, laughs). I mean, money isn’t everything, but don’t I wish my dad would have somehow put his money into bottled, (Janet: yeah), (Meg: laughs), you know, even if we owned one one-thousandth of the bottled water market, I’d be, you know, I would have had time to learn 5 languages and cure cancer or something in my spare hours. (Meg: laughs).

Janet: Well, you’re doing an incredible job being an advocate. (Steve: yeah). And then, but Meg, you said what is it, it’s a 15-trillion-dollar business. Is that overall?

Meg: Yes. That’s globally. (Janet: globally). It’s a 15-trillion-dollar market opportunity. (Steve: hmmm). (Janet: wow). Yeah, it’s like 250-million in the US alone. (Steve: hmmm). So really, if you’re not thinking about people with disabilities, you’re really missing an opportunity. (Steve: yup).

Janet: Wow. That’s a great, great way to end it. Listen, thank you so much both for being here and keep up the good work and we’ll be in touch when we create our universal plan…

Meg: I love it, let’s do it…

Steve: I know…

Janet: Ooh, great. (Steve: I know). I’m in on it, right. And I have a team, we can work this. We just need to get some funding and stuff like that. I’m in. And thank you for all the work that you guys do.

Meg: Well thanks for having us and inviting us on. It’s been a pleasure…

Steve: Yeah, very much a pleasure.

Janet: Right, thank you.

Steve: Thanks.

(Music/Outro)

Janet: I love how Meg is helping companies be accessible to all people of different abilities – including design and policies which help promote productivity. Even helping those that have dyslexia to make the workplace accommodating. And we need to remember that the wheelchair is not the only disability.

Carolyn: As Meg said about accessibility… “it’s not a facilities issue, a building issue, or a maintenance issue— everyone has a responsibility to it”

Janet: And Steve made some very good points too. He is so right that design that separates someone with a disability from their co-workers can make them feel inferior. I agree that we all need to design for dignity. We want environments that work for everybody, and that don’t need special considerations or accommodations because they’re already built into the environment.

Carolyn: So you are saying Steven Wright was right!

Janet: Really? Funny, but it’s true. (laughs).

Carolyn: You know I couldn’t resist, but you know, you are not wrong.

Janet: Nope.

Carolyn: But seriously, when Steve talks about urban planning, it’s getting around in our cities and streets. And for Meg, it’s access in buildings where people are employed. They both encourage using universal design concepts to ensure spaces that are open and available to everyone.

Janet: The pandemic created a paradigm change in the workforce, but we know disability inclusion in the workplace is a 15-trillion-dollar global industry.

A lucrative opportunity that many companies are leaving on the table. With 250-million dollars in America alone.

I have got to help them create these new design measures as we discussed! I am so busy, but I think it would be great! A quest if you will… A checklist along with process and understanding.

Carolyn:  And it sounds like you already have the right team to get it started.

And to our listeners, stay tuned for updates on this.

Janet: Absolutely! And we will share the link on how to contact Steve and Meg, and of course, the links to all the work they are doing, and all the many other things mentioned along the way during this discussion… all on our website at inclusive-designers-dot-com.

Carolyn: That’s: inclusivedesigners.com…

Janet: A big thank you to Steve and Meg. And, of course, to all of you for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts— such as Apple, Google, Spotify, and Pandora— you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it, Inclusive Designers Podcast.

And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page.

Janet: Yes, please do. And let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for topics you think we should be covering in upcoming shows!

And as our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed!’

As always, thank you for stopping by.

We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

(Music up and fade out)

Designing for: Technology & Innovation with Lotus Labs,                                        (Season 5, Episode 2)
Guest: Dhaval Patel, Lotus Labs

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: And welcome as well to another season of Inclusive Designers Podcast. Can you believe it we are already on Season 4…

Carolyn: Season 5, Janet

Janet: Wow, Season 5? Boy have these last few years flown by!

And I just want to say I do not look a year older…

Carolyn: Me neither.

Janet: Nope.

Carolyn: Nope. (laughs).

Janet: On a side note, did you know that Stitcher is no more? No mas. Nada. Zippo – and has left the building.

Carolyn: (laughs) But we did add Pandora in its place, so you can now find IDP there as well – or maybe you are already listening to it on Pandora.

Janet: It could be, our audience is smart. Or as we like to say here in New England, ‘SMAHT’…

Carolyn: Yup, they’re ‘Wicked Smaht’ – and we do have a great show for our ‘Smaht’ listeners today!

Janet: Yes we do…

Carolyn: And this will be the first of our ongoing technology and innovation series.

Janet: Yes it is, Carolyn. Tell them about our next guest, Dhaval Patel…

Carolyn: I would be honored to: Dhaval Patel, is the founder and CEO of Lotus. A company whose mission is to build technology that is useful to everyone, by optimizing for disability first. To that end, Lotus has built a wearable Ring that controls ‘un-smaht’ objects at home by pointing.

Formerly, he was a division leader at Apple, working in their iPhone, Apple Watch & AirPod divisions. His work at Apple inspired him to build technology that helps everyone, but could be especially life changing for disabled persons, seniors, and veterans. He also has 37 patents in sensing & haptics—and you know that’s the definition of ‘Smaht!’

Janet: (laughs) Not only will we learn about the ‘Lotus Ring’ he invented, and how it works, but Dhaval is also a great believer that a combination of universal and inclusive design is the ideal.

Carolyn:  And he will share his thoughts on why this hybrid may work best.

Janet: Yes, he will. We enjoyed hearing his perspective on design, and think you will too, so let’s get to it!

Carolyn: Absolutely. And with that, here is our interview with… Dhaval Patel— engineer, entrepreneur, and forever advocate for better design…

(Music / Interview)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers, Dhaval. How are you today?

Dhaval: I am great. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here. How are you?

Janet: Terrific. I’m doing swell. Now that you’re here, we can talk about your product, which I’m excited about doing, and hearing more about the journey and the genesis of your product and how it can help some of the listeners either for their own personal use or for their family’s use, or for client’s use. So, let’s just dive right on in. We did a little intro, but why don’t you tell me in your own words a little bit about yourself?

Dhaval: Sure! Quick audio description of myself… I’m a brown guy with black hair, mid-thirties, sitting in front of one of my favorite prints, which is the black and white print of the flat iron building in New York.

Janet: Yep, we should probably do that as well. You’re correct. We talked about this earlier. (Dhaval: yeah), blonde haired, fairly pale skin, individual who’s in her office right now. And so there’s a bunch of paintings behind me, and I’ve got my headset on.

Thank you for reminding me and for our listeners, we hope to continue to set that trend and make that something that is just a staple for what we do for each episode. So thank you for that (Dhaval: yeah). It shows us that we can all learn something all the time, right?

Dhaval: Thanks Janet. (Janet: yeah). Yeah, absolutely.

Janet: So Dhaval, tell me a little about your background…

Dhaval: Yeah, a little bit about myself. My name is Dhaval Patel. Hardware engineer by training, did my undergraduate and master’s degrees at Georgia Tech in electrical engineering with a minor in aerospace engineering, (Janet: oh), and master’s also in electrical with a minor in finance. (Janet: yeah).

Worked at a couple of different places and essentially ended up at Apple where I ended up being there for about 8-and-a-half years, (Janet: yeah), and managed a division at Apple for iPhone watch and AirPods.

And now founded Lotus, where we’ve made this wearable ring for people with limited mobility that controls objects at home by pointing. But happy to talk more about that as we go. (Janet: yeah). Yeah.

Janet: So, you have a remarkable career. So now what was the genesis for getting into this particular area and starting Lotus.

And for our listeners, we’ll have all this information on our website at inclusivedesigners.com. And so we’ll have Dhaval’s information, we’ll have all the information on both his ring and also how you can get in contact with him.

And so, take us back. So were you at Apple at the time that you came up with the idea for the ring? Was there a particular instance that started with the ring? What was the genesis behind the ring?

Dhaval: Yeah, so let me describe the ring and then also describe sort of how it came about.

Janet:  That sounds good.

Dhaval: So, in a nutshell, for people with limited mobility, we’ve created this wearable ring that controls objects at home by pointing.

Janet:  It’s as simple as that, right.

Dhaval: Yeah, but unlike Alexa, there’s no apps, no rewiring, and no internet. (Janet: right). And the reason to do all this was it really started with me. I was born with twisted knees, and over the years I’ve been on and off crutches. And one night, a few years ago in this house, I had gotten into bed only having realized I’d left the hallway lights on. But I was too tired to get out of bed, hop onto my crutches, hobble 10-feet, turn off the light, hobble back 10-feet and get back into bed.

So I slept with the lights on (Janet: interesting) the entire night, (Janet: right). And woke up in the morning thinking “if someone like me, an engineer managing a division at Apple with expertise in wall electronics” — because I’ve also worked at Lutron— and have 37 patents, “if I don’t even have smart home tech, who does?” (Janet: right). And that’s how we got going.

And initially I thought it was just a me problem. It turned out as I researched, 91-percent of US homes were built before smart homes even existed. (Janet: right). But there’s no easy way to upgrade.

Even if someone gifts you an Amazon Echo and you wanted to control your lights. Well the first step you have to rewire all your existing wall switches to connect to the internet, to be able to talk to Alexa. (Janet: right).

Then you have to put speakers in every room to control the switches you just rewired. (Janet: right). And if you somehow get past those two hurdles, you then have to pair every single switch one-by-one through another app. (Janet: right). And just the first step in this process is 11-hours and 2-thousand-dollars. (Janet: wow, yeah). And this is best case if you own the home.

Janet:  Right. That’s best-case scenario, right.

Dhaval: Yeah. Because if you rent the home, (Janet: you can’t do it). There’s no solution. (Janet: there is no solution). And as much as it affects everybody, it disproportionately affects people like me, people with limited mobility, 27-million people. Older adults, disabled persons and veteran soldiers, (Janet: right), who can spend up to 4-hours at home on self-care every day. (Janet: hmm. yeah). And so we ended up creating this ring that controls objects at home by pointing, but without apps, without rewiring, without internet.

Janet:  Right. We talk a lot about injustice and especially if, maybe if you do have some sort of disability or not as abled as other individuals, you’re more likely to be hitting the poverty level as well. So you’re also dealing with things like affordable housing or trying to find affordable housing. You know, you’re not likely to maybe have your own home where you would have that ability. So I think it’s pretty great that this ring takes away that. So explain it a little bit further, so, you don’t have to go into the technology of the ring, you’re smiling…

Dhaval: Yeah, we’ll keep it…

Janet:  We’ll keep it simple (laughs)…

Dhaval: We’ll keep it fairly straightforward…

Janet: Right. (Dhaval: yeah). But in all seriousness, what I think is fascinating, you can tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you can even remove the device.

Dhaval: Yeah, that’s right.

Janet:  Right. So if say, you left the apartment— and I don’t mean just, you know, for the day— but if you have to leave the apartment, you’re not leaving all of those pieces behind.

Dhaval: Yeah, you’re not leaving all of your smart home behind. (Janet: right).  Yeah, so the way it works, very simply, 3 simple step process. Step 1, you put on the ring, it has a single button on the ring and that’s it. Now, putting on the ring once, eliminates the need to have a smart speaker in every single room of your house, (Janet: right) because the ring goes with you wherever you go. (Janet: right). So you don’t need to have a smart speaker everywhere. So that’s step one.

Step two, for any existing wall switch you can attach our second half, which is a switch cover magnetically, (he demonstrates, we hear click). (Janet: right). So there’s no rewiring necessary, which like I mentioned, is also something you have to do today, otherwise, right? If you want Alexa to control your lights, you have to rewire every single wall switch to be able to connect to the internet. With this, you don’t have to do that, it just attaches to existing switches magnetically.

And step 3, all you do is point and click. So you point towards the wall switch and click the one button that’s on the ring. That’s it. The ring uses the same technology that your TV remote does, which is infrared. And so it’s very similar, just like a TV remote, all you do is point and click. And using infrared eliminates the need for apps, smartphones, and most importantly, internet. (Janet: right).

So in a nutshell, you put the ring on, snap on the switch, point and click. (Janet: that’s it). That’s it. We let you go from home to smart home in seconds. And like you mentioned, the added benefit of this is you can also take it with you wherever you go. (Janet: yeah). And we talk about this in disability advocacy a lot. As much as we often talk about sort of permanent disability, there’s everything on the spectrum from temporary (Janet: of course), and also situational, (Janet: right situational).

And so for instance, this is not just needed for people with limited mobility. It’s helpful to anyone. So if you live in a rental apartment today, which is a third of the US population— (Janet: correct)— it’s 114-million people— this is perfect for you because today, there’s no solution because of all the rewiring necessary with today’s smart home technology. (Janet: right).

And so, this added benefit of being able to take it with you wherever you go is: A, if you’re living in a rental apartment, you have a solution now; and B, more importantly, if you have a disability, then you don’t have to pay what’s often known as the quote ‘disability tax’ when you go on vacation.

Because now, as opposed to what you have to do today, you know, you may not be able to stay at every Airbnb you want to, or necessarily with friends and family in town because the, you know, the homes may not be accessible. (Janet: correct.)

And so you’re forced to upgrade to these 5-star hotels, to one of those 2 rooms up on every floor that are deemed accessible, but then you’re paying 500, 600-dollars a night. (Janet: right). With this, essentially you can convert any pre-existing space into becoming accessible wherever you go. (Janet: right). And so it’s also helpful when you’re traveling on vacation, even if you’re not just moving.

Janet:  Yeah, and you bring up a good point about traveling and, we discussed it just briefly, but it’s such an important piece, you know, in terms of way of life and quality of life. And then to be able to have something as simple as that, to be able to make something just a little more accessible for everyone I think is pretty great.

Although we did do an episode with Ed Warner of Motion Spot, and they had, really kind of helped a local hotel I believe, to put in different components to make it more accessible. And just as a comment to everybody out there listening, the hotel actually did better financially because they were the only, you know, game in town, so to speak. (Dhaval: yeah), which, you know, I get it, it really kind of goes to show you this is, it’s proven financially that it’s a good thing.

Dhaval: Yeah, and I couldn’t agree more, right? There’s no reason why you can’t align social impact with financial. (Janet: right). There’s absolutely no reason that has to be a given. It’s not a given.

Janet:  Well, there’s a lot that believe that there’s a separation between such, right.

Dhaval: Right. And, you know, I would hope through this and these and other conversations, we can sort of pierce that veil (Janet: correct). And, and in fact, that’s our thesis, which is, our thesis is: we only build technology that is usable by everyone, (Janet: yeah), just by optimizing for disability first, (Janet: right). Because by doing that, you solve for everyone anyway, except you don’t leave anyone behind. (Janet: right). In fact, you start with a person that may have a higher need to start, which is perfect for business and perfect for impact, and then you have a much bigger market that you open up also.

And so why don’t we do that all the time anyway? It just requires more planning upfront, (Janet: right). So why not do that? In fact, there are plenty of examples that exist today already, right? Closed captions. (Janet: right). if you’ve ever used subtitles on TV or while watching a movie, it was originally technology that was created back in the seventies for folks who were deaf. (Janet: right.)

But we all use it all the time. I mean, if you’ve ever been to a sports bar, or at an airport, or even if you’re, (Janet: I depend on it, laughs). Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can’t tell you the number of movies I watch where I can’t understand the accent (Janet: accent), or it’s very technical jargon. (Janet: jargon). And there’s a lot of things happening. And so I use it all the time.

And so it’s the same concept. We use these technologies for more than the initial scope anyway. And so why don’t we just do that from the get-go all the time, (Janet: right, yeah). And so that’s, that’s our thesis, and we’re just trying to adopt and propose the same philosophy, except in hardware.

Janet:  Right. Well, we’ll go march on Washington at some point and make sure that these things are just a given, baked into the bread, as we say, as opposed to, an afterthought, right? (Dhaval: yeah). Right.

I’m going to ask you a series of questions. And the first question is— I just want to make sure that I understand— so my ring, if I had my ring and I had a bunch of the devices on the outlets, I can just point and click to each one and then they would turn on and off… am I understanding that correctly?

Dhaval: That is correct. So today the things you can control are anything a wall switch controls, so lights are the most common example. (Janet: sure). But also fans. (Janet: mm-hmm). Also, appliances like window unit, ACs. (Janet: nice). And because we’re using infrared, we can also control televisions. No extra components needed because all televisions come with infrared. (Janet: right). And later down the pipeline, we’re planning on working on drapes, (Janet: ah), followed by doors.

And the reason is, we’re, instead of trying to work with any random set of objects, we’re focused on the things you have to interact with every single day. (Janet: right). In other words, what’s clinically known as ‘Activities of Daily Living.’ (Janet: right). These are the 6 things that everyone has to do every day, right? Everyone’s got to eat, go to the bathroom, shower, change your clothes, get out of the bed, and move around the house. Those 6 things are called ‘Activities of Daily Living.’

And if you think about it, to do those 6 things, and it doesn’t matter if you’re, you know, if you’re a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You’re still having, it doesn’t matter how much money you have in other words, you still have to do these 6 things. To do those 6 things, there are 3 underlying prerequisites, right? You need a light source. (Janet: right). In the morning it happens to be blinds, in the evening it’s electric lights, but you need a light source. (Janet: sure.)

The second you have to open and close doors, (Janet: uh-huh), to do these 6 things. And the third, whichever space in your home you end up in, you have to control some appliance. The most commonly requested one being television, but closely followed by environmental controls, like fans or window unit ACs. (Janet: yup).

And so that’s why these are the objects we’re focused on because everyone has to do them every day, except if you have limited mobility, just to do these 6 things in these 3 underlying prerequisite buckets, you’re spending an extra 4- hours every day.

And keep in mind, these are non-optional things, right? So imagine sort of waking up and being stuck in traffic for 4-hours every single day. (Janet: laughs). Non-optional. (Janet: no). And so it’s a very high frequency and high intensity pain point. (Janet: right). And so that’s why we want to start there and then ultimately help everyone.

Janet:  There you go. Yeah. No, nobody wants to be in traffic for 4-hours every day. (laughs). So alright, so one of the other questions I have for you is, dealing with people who have arthritis. I’m sure you’ve kind of thought a little bit about what that means. I particularly have my Oura ring on. (Dhaval: yeah).

My Oura ring is, kind of looks a little bit like your ring, but my ring nowadays as I’m getting older and, and it’s been so hot out, like I can’t always get it off my finger. And so I don’t, have you thought about that? And if so, what are the implications with that, is there, I’m assuming that they have to be charged, is that correct?

Dhaval: Yes. So there’s a couple of questions in there, and I’m happy to answer each one. (Janet: that’s great). So, let me start off with sort of arthritis as an example. (Janet: sure). We wanted to be very intentional from the get-go to do a combination of what’s called inclusive design and universal design. (Janet: nice).

Now, for anyone who’s not familiar with it listening, inclusive design, in very colloquially speaking, inclusive design is one size fits one, (Janet: right). Universal design is one size fits all. And they each have their benefits and advantages, right? (Janet: right). One size fits one, it’s obvious. No one gets left behind. You have something that caters to your needs.

Universal design often gets touted because it’s scalable, right, because it’s one size fits all. (Janet: right). And so we wanted to be very intentional from the beginning. And this is my expertise, the thing I did at Apple was human interface, UI, UX, (Janet: right, UX, yup). And in fact, I even ran the user studies. And so that’s my expertise.

And so what we did was, for the first 9-months, we just interviewed people. We didn’t even build anything. We just interviewed people with different kinds of disabilities. People who were deaf, people who are blind, people with limited mobility, even folks with cognitive disabilities and their family members, as well as clinicians, to get everyone’s perspective.

And so this is part of what we call Human-Centered Design, (Janet: right), which is you start with the end user, not sort of your product or solution, you start with the end user. (Janet: correct). And these are very detailed interviews. We’re talking 9-hours long. Spread out over 3-days for every single person, right?

We start off in, you know, chronologically, when you wake up in the morning, what do you do? What do you interact with? What are your challenges at that point? What products do you use? Where did you get them? Why did you buy those products? How are they serving you right now? Are any of these technological, or are they sort of, you know, physical objects? Things of that nature. And we distilled everything down to what we call a hybrid combination of inclusive and universal design. Not picking one or the other, but both.

And I’ll describe how that works. (Janet: okay). So, simplest user interface is point and click. Right? That’s why your TV remotes haven’t changed in decades. That’s why your input devices, like your keyboards and mat mice are very simple, right?

It’s simple to use, which is low cognitive effort and fine motor control, meaning very little energy, (Janet: correct). Which is easy to use, right? (Janet: right). So, low cognitive effort, low physical effort. So point-and-click. Now, for some reason, if you couldn’t do that, like you mentioned, leading cause of disability in the US is arthritis.

And so if you couldn’t do point-and-click for some reason, if you can’t use fine motor control, then we also allow using gross motor control, so you can use gestures to control the same objects. (Janet: nice).

But let’s not stop there. Let’s push the ball further. Let’s say you couldn’t even do that. Let’s say you’ve had a stroke, or you’re a paraplegic or quadriplegic, then we also allow using voice to control the same objects. (Janet: nice). And the added benefit of that is that it doesn’t need to be line of sight. You can control things that are not line of sight, like in the other room. And all of this is still completely offline. (Janet: right).

And that’s what I mean by a combination of inclusive design and universal design. The inclusive design is you have all these different options, and you don’t have to pick between them, it just works simultaneously. But the universal design is the fact that the underlying technology like infrared, and like the other components in the ring, are all the same for everyone, which is what makes it scalable. And so that’s the combination that we’ve used.

Janet: Yeah. So Dhaval, for our listeners, you touched on something that was kind of interesting, the whole idea of universal and inclusive design and human-centered design and how they’re not mutually exclusive. Would you like to talk to our listeners a little bit more about that?

Dhaval: Yeah. it’s a fair question. I think if there’s one thing my Apple experience as well as my startup experience has taught me is that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. I think there’s this preconceived notion you can only pick between inclusive design or universal design. (Janet: correct). That it can only be social impact or financial impact. It can’t be both. (Janet: right, yeah).

And, and I would just encourage in whatever product or service you’re designing, there’s probably a way where you can do a hybrid approach. Just ensuring that you try to combine inclusive and universal as much as possible, if people start doing that, the field will course correct well. And maybe it’s not perfect and maybe it’s not complete inclusive and complete universal, (Janet: right), but it doesn’t have to be the opposite extreme either. It doesn’t have to only be one or the other.

And just like in this case, I think my mission with this is, if Lotus is successful with what we’ve done, where we’re trying to align a combination of inclusive design and universal design, (Janet: right), and align social and financial impact. (Janet: correct). Us being successful, Lotus being successful, will encourage other companies to follow suit.

It’s not really the financial impact that I care about. It’s more that, if we make it big financially, that will serve as proof that “hey, you can do both, and be financially impactful and be socially impactful.” Right? (Janet: right). It is a possibility. It’s not this sort of pie in the sky. (Janet: no).

And so 10-years from now my test, my vision, my hope is: if we’re successful 10-years from now, designers will look back and wonder how in the world were we ever designing products that were not optimized for disability first. (Janet: correct). Just like you would look back now at products you’re looking at now (Janet: right), and look back to products in the 90s and wonder: “why aren’t all products look nice, feel nice, lightweight?” which is what Apple did right (Janet: yeah).

In the 90s, Apple was asking the question, why are all consumer products built like toasters? (Janet: right). Why are they big and heavy and bulky and don’t look nice and, or nice to touch and feel? And ‘hey, let’s change that notion. Let’s break that underlying assumption, and people will appreciate it.’ (Janet: yeah).

And I’m willing to bet that if we are successful, people will follow suit, and 10-years from today, designers will look back, wondering how we ever build products otherwise. And for me, that’s our metric of success. And I think that’s possible.

Janet: Right. Well, I hope to have you back before 10-years so you can tell us all the other great stuff that you’re doing, yes, as opposed to waiting for 10-years….

Dhaval: (laughs) it will be an honor.

Janet: So Dhaval, one of the questions I now have with the ring, and we’ve talked a little bit about arthritis and what does that mean, but now also, you mentioned that it can be voice activated. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that works?

Dhaval: Yeah, sure. So the intent was to make sure that there was always a modality that helped anyone that needed it if they needed it. And so the intent is the ring will have a motion sensor that allows the gestures, and it would also have a microphone, which allows voice.

Now, there are a lot of privacy concerns, which is why a lot of people don’t actually use their Alexa speakers today. There’re really 2 primary concerns… one is: its online. And so a lot of folks, even the ones— there are statistics on this— about 54-percent of people that even have Amazon speakers choose not to have more than one because they don’t feel comfortable putting it in private rooms like bedrooms and bathrooms. (Janet: right). And so the 2 reasons for that, one is its online, and second is: it’s always listening and then sending that information online. (Janet: right).

For starters, we’re completely offline, so your data stays in your home, doesn’t go anywhere. (Janet: oh, that’s good to know). That’s the easy one. (Janet: right, that’s the easy part). But, I mean, it’s completely offline, right, so there’s nowhere for it to go. (Janet: great).

In addition, every ring does not need to have microphones, if it’s not necessary. (Janet: right). And so for some folks, if they want the ability to use multiple ways, we’re probably going to have that. But otherwise, a lot of the times we’ll only have the features in the ring that that set of people need. And so it’s not like everyone has to have the microphone in it if they don’t want it.

Janet: Oh, so there’ll be different iterations of the ring, different maybe levels of the ring? (Dhaval: correct). I didn’t realize that. (Dhaval: that is correct). Alright, so that’s good to know.

Dhaval: That’s right. because there were a lot of people that we interviewed who said, ‘Hey, I love all of this, but I don’t think I’ll ever need the microphone’ (Janet: right). ‘And I, it makes me feel uncomfortable, so I don’t want it’. And so, in fact that’s what happened. This is the good part about human centered design. These are the types of things you learn when you just talk to people without an end solution in mind. (Janet: right). By the way, the 9-hour interviews, they were single blind interviews.

And we had an idea, but we never told them about the idea for the first 8-hours. (Janet: wow). It was only the last hour that we would say, “Hey, this is great. We’ve had this idea that we’ve been sitting on, what do you think?” And then whatever they would say, we would cross-check it with the first 8-hours of what they mentioned. (Janet: interesting).

You know, because people tend to be very polite and very nice (Janet: right) and no one’s going to tell you, pardon the phrase, your baby is ugly. (Janet: laughs). And no one’s going to tell you that. (Janet: what were you thinking? yeah, right).

We wanted to make sure that we were data driven and any feedback that we got could be cross-referenced with the user’s own feedback. (Janet: right). And so then we were, you could be more sure. And so that was one of the things that came out, which is not everyone wants a ring with a speaker on it, or rather, more specifically, not everyone wants a ring with a microphone on it. So we want to make sure that if you needed it, it is available. (Janet: right). But you don’t need to have every ring have it.

Janet: Interesting. Well, it goes to show you, as designers we know to do more upfront research before we actually go in and start doing the design, to your point, just makes all the difference in the world.  And so I find that whole part fascinating as well.

Then, so where do you see the ring going? Is there another type? I mean, we talked about different iterations— the one that might have the microphone, one doesn’t have a microphone. We could be as silly as, is it going to be in different colors? What are we looking at, you know, down the line? Is it going to be more designed or is it going to looks more like the Oura ring? Like what are your thoughts? What do you hope to do with Lotus, and what do you hope to do with the ring?

Dhaval: Yeah. So let’s, let’s answer this in sort of 3 ways. (Janet: okay). 3 different axes, if you will. So one is, you know, how does it look and feel? So the easy answer to that is we’re definitely coming up with different sizes. We already have 3 today. It’s sort of a small, medium, large, if you will, (Janet: right).

But by the time we’re in production—we’re about 9-months away from launch— by the time we’re in production, we will have a lot more ring sizes. (Janet: right). We haven’t decided the exact number yet, but there will be a lot more ring sizes.

In addition, we already have 3 colors right now. Sort of very silver, a dark gray, and a black. We’ll probably offer more as we go. (Janet: sure). So that’s just the first axis, which is look and feel right, (Janet: first axis, right), right, (Janet: yeah).

And, for anyone interested right now, this is a brushed aluminum, so it’s very light. And so in many ways, I would say colloquially speaking, it may look and feel like the “Oura ring, for instance. Right. So it’s similar-ish material, the Oura ring I think is titanium.

Janet: Is it a problem that I keep mentioning the Oura ring? Or is it a way to…

Dhaval: No. It comes up a lot. (Janet: I’m sure). I think the way I would describe us, is, think of us as the Oura for home.

Janet: Right? Oh, there you go. Yeah.

Dhaval: That’s, that’s one way of thinking about it, right? (Janet: absolutely). And so Oura is for preventive health, we’re not focused on anything of that nature, this is specifically to be able to control the sort of universe around you from your fingertip. And so in many ways, think of it as the Oura for your home (Janet: right), and ultimately for other spaces as well.

Janet: And, just think about it this way, after you put the Oura ring on, you still have 9 fingers to, like, put on your Lotus device, right? (Dhaval: yeah). So on the other hand and be like, “boop, boop”, you know.

Dhaval: (laughs) And it’s, it’s funny you mention that. That was one of the things that came up as part of those 9-months of interviews. We asked people, what would you prefer this device be? What form factor would you like?

And there were a couple of things that popped up. One, people don’t really wear their watches to bed. They either take it out, out of habit, or they take it out because it needs to get charged every night, like an Apple watch. (Janet: correct, yup). Or, and this is real, a real quote: “It gets caught in my significant other’s hair.” (Janet: oh, laughs). And so, so that was one set of reasons.

The other is any wrist-based device, not even just at night, but any wrist-based device requires both hands in order to be able to use it. (Janet: yeah). One to lift it up, to look at the display and the other to interact with it. (Janet: sure). In addition, you have to be able to look at the device as well, so you need both hands free and to be able to look at the device, (Janet: right), not either or, both.

Janet: And it’s usually what, an inch and a half, in like size?

Dhaval: Correct. Yeah. An inch and half, or 2 inches. Yeah, exactly. (Janet: right, it’s small). And so, it’s challenging because if one of your hands is tied up like you’re carrying a child, (Janet: yeah), or grocery bags (Janet: right) or you don’t have use of one arm, then it’s difficult. (Janet: absolutely).

Or if both your hands are free, but you’re looking somewhere else, then you can’t use the device. And so the common request we kept getting is: “Can you make a device that you don’t need to look at and can be used with a single hand.” (Janet: right). And so that was the second reason. (Janet: perfect).

And then the third reason— and this is especially true for the communities of folks that we’re talking about, disability communities to be specific— they wanted things, disability communities as well as older adults actually both had the same request, which was, “can you make something that does not draw attention to us in a way we don’t want attention.” (Janet: huh). And this goes to the whole person first versus identity first nomenclature. (Janet: right). Right. (Janet: wow).

Which is, “I’m not a wheelchair user, I’m someone who uses a wheelchair.” (Janet: right). Right. And so don’t define me by the assistive technology I’m using. (Janet: interesting). And this is exactly why a lot of users don’t wear sort of the life alert. (Janet: yeah), because it draws attention to them in ways that they don’t. (Janet: no).  Why do you have that device? What, you know, I don’t have this device. Why do you have that device? What does it do?

Janet: Right. Well, I think that, that particular device has the stigma of just being old, right? (Dhaval: correct). Like that you’re unstable on your feet and you’re old… (Dhaval: right).

Dhaval: The key underlying factor is what this device is really giving you, what the ring is really giving you is independence and autonomy, which is to really fulfill the desire that each of us has, is for dignity, right? (Janet: correct). The product is not the ring, the product is the dignity that you get from the independence that it’s getting you. (Janet: right).

And to that end, there’s a famous quote that I like, that I’ve heard of, which is: “when users go to buy a drill, they’re not buying a drill, they’re buying a hole.” (Janet: oh). That’s really what they’re buying, right? (Janet: right, right, right, laughs).

And so that’s really what the technology is for. You’re really, that’s what you’re getting. The whole goal is to get dignity from the independence, (Janet: yeah), or from dignity from the autonomy, or dignity from the agency that the ring is giving you. (Janet: right). And that’s why it’s important. (Janet: huh). And so, that’s the intent.

Janet: Well, I felt like that should have been on a fortune cookie somewhere. That was quite profound as far as I was concerned, (Dhaval: laughs) but you’re absolutely right. It’s about dignity and I think your ring proves that. I mean all of what I’ve seen and what we’ve talked about. And I’m quite excited about the ring and I’m excited for you, and I think it’s going to change a lot of lives.

So, but I will ask you now the tough question. (Dhaval: sure). I’m sure you have the answer for it. So now I got to think that this is going to cost me a lot of money. Right? Always, all the new stuff is really expensive in the beginning. What are we talking about? Can I afford this on my small IDP allowance? (laughs) Can I do that?

Dhaval: (laughs) It’s a, it’s a good question. Oftentimes the assumption people have is sort of, this technology is like tens of thousands of dollars…. We wanted to make sure when we were designing this— this is truly also part of the human-centered design—we wanted to make sure it was not just physically accessible in making spaces accessible, but it was also financially accessible.

And so, 1 ring and 3 switches we think will retail for about 299-dollars. (Janet: wow, I could afford that, laughs). Yeah. Which is the same price as an Amazon Echo Show today. (Janet: wow).

And so for the same price, as 1 single smart speaker, you get an entire smart home. And of course you can always add more rings and switches, they’re all inter-connectable. There’s no pairing necessary. And so, if your friends and family have rings and they visit you, their rings will still work and vice versa. (Janet: hmm).

And so there are network effects. It’s like the telephone, where the more people that have it, the more useful your own product becomes. (Janet: wow). And so yeah, for the same price point as a single smart speaker, you can get a whole smart home.

Janet: That’s amazing. Like I said, I could actually afford that. That’s pretty great. (Dhaval: yeah). Oh, that’s wonderful.

Dhaval: They did tell us that there must be a catch. This must be 10-grand or something.

Janet: Well, that’s just it. (Dhaval: yeah). Yeah. Well, I’m glad we answered that, and I was shocked. Right. (Dhaval: yeah).

So Dhaval, take us back. I noticed that you use sort of the switchboard, the flip back and forth. (Dhaval: yeah). and in my house, I’ve got the toggles for my home. I’m assuming it works for both, correct?

Dhaval: Yeah. So just so everyone listening, toggle switches are the small switches that you have to flip up and down, (Janet: up and down), and they tend to be common in homes built pre-1970s. This is not a rule, but tends to be the case, (Janet: right).

And then there are the newer switches in homes post 1970s, which are called rockers, which are the wider, taller switches that you push into the wall, up or down. Those are the rockers, right. (Janet: right). versus toggles that you flip up and down. The nice thing is we work with both types of switches. (Janet: that’s great). Right.

Janet: So, now we know we can use it on both the toggle and also the, what did we call it? (Dhaval: the rocker switches). The rockers. (Dhaval: yeah). What about the battery life? How is the battery life on that ring? I’m assuming that it’s also, would the battery life also be on the switch plate as well?

Dhaval: Yeah, the switch cover. (Janet: yeah). Yeah. So it’s, it’s a great question. One of the reasons that we chose the technology we did, is because of the concern that users had with their risk-based devices, which is that they have to take it off every night. (Janet: correct).

So for instance, unlike an Apple watch that you have to charge every day, Or every night. Or unlike an Oura ring that you have to charge every 3-days, you only have to charge this ring once in 90-days. (Janet: wow). And the reason for that is, it’s like your TV remote. It’s only taking power for the 50-milliseconds that you push the button. (Janet: oh, right on). And the rest of the time, it’s not doing anything. It’s sort of like your TV remote batteries, right? Like when was the last thing you even changed them? (Janet: chuckles). Do you even remember?

Janet: I was just, I was laughing. I’m like, my Oura ring, it actually lasts 3-days. I was like, it’s like 5… I guess I don’t do enough, (both laugh), in order for it to run out of battery. (Dhaval: right). Oh, that made me laugh. But yeah. But you’re absolutely right, it’s a very minimal amount of time that you’re actually using it. So that makes a lot of sense. (Dhaval: correct). 90-days is fabulous. Yeah.

Dhaval: Yeah. And then on the switch cover side, it’s the same. It’s also 90-days. And again, the same reason, right? It’s only taking power for the 50- milliseconds that it’s taking to switch your switch on the wall. (Janet: right).

The rest of the time it doesn’t take any power, which is unlike any of the ‘Internet of Things’ switches that you can purchase. A, because you have to do the rewiring. But the reason that exists is anything that’s ‘Internet of Things’— anything that’s IOT— (Janet: right), has to be connected to the internet all the time. (Janet: the internet, right).

And because it has to be connected to the internet all the time, it has to draw power all the time. (Janet: correct). Hence the wires. (Janet: right). The benefit of using infrared as a core underlying technology architecture is that it’s only interrupt based. It’s like your TV remote. It only takes power for the 50- milliseconds you need it. The rest of the time it’s not drawing any power.

Janet: Right. Well, you’ve kind of teed me up for my last question here, and I have a feeling I now know what you’ll say (Dhaval: laughs), and now I know how this is all going to shake out, but I’m a big fan of technology, but I also know sometimes when we’re designing for inclusivity, and/or universal, or human-centered design, all of that really, there are detractors who have said things like, “No, no, we don’t use technology. What if you lose the remote? What if you lose the charger? What if it breaks?”

But I think in these cases, it’s usually to make sure that they can get out if there’s an emergency, that type of deal. (Dhaval: right). What do you have to say about that?

Dhaval: Let me put it this way. This is, this is going to be more philosophical than perhaps might be intended.

Janet: Well, you just did the drill with the hole, (Dhaval: laughs), so you know, you’re on roll. I’m, I’m happy to hear it.

Dhaval: Well, have, have you seen “Hamilton” the musical?

Janet: I have not, I am probably with the 10 people that have not seen it in the United States.

Dhaval: Well, it’s, yeah, it’s wonderful. I would highly recommend it. There’s this line in Hamilton, which is, “What is legacy? It’s planting seeds in the garden you never get to see.” (Janet: yeah).

And from my perspective, I want to make sure that we are building technology that continues helping people in whatever way it does, even after we’re long gone. (Janet: right). And this is not to say that it can help everyone with everything all the time. (Janet: sure).

Every technology is good at certain things and has its limitations. (Janet: correct). But I wanted to make sure that we were building something, both as a product, technology, and a company that continue with helping people even after we’re long gone. (Janet: right). And that was the intent. That’s why our thesis is building technology that’s usable by anyone, by optimizing for disability first.

So this may not be the only technology we choose to work on, and there will be other things as we, we get more and more successful. (Janet: correct). But that will always be our North Star. And I would say that’s our vision. Ultimately, it’s to build this future where there is a universe of ring controllable objects. (Janet: right).

And where caregivers, family members and clinicians can potentially subscribe to device data. (Janet: correct). So that they get peace of mind. And any person, younger or older, disabled or not disabled, renter or homeowner, can stay at home with autonomy and dignity, (Janet: right), because dignity cannot wait for better times. (Janet: interesting). That’s Lotus.

Janet: Yeah. And you know, I mean, if you come up with a ring to kind of replace the, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” that type of device, I think it would be much more successful at this point, you know, and there’s a stigma with that.

But I really appreciate you coming on today. It’s interesting, you’ve hit on so many pieces that we would really like to kind of reference. I mean, you hit on like all the buzz words. (Dhaval: laughs, thanks) You came at it from all different angles. And I really appreciate that. We’re going to have a lot of fun doing the resource page. (Dhaval: laughs).

I think that your resource page, it’ll definitely be well sourced of definitions of different words. So thank you for that. It was an unexpected surprise. (Dhaval: chuckles). So if you want to know more about UX, Universal, or Inclusive Design, just go to our webpage ‘inclusivedesigners.com’ and we will set all of that up for you so you can have all those definitions, and we’ll do links and stuff like that.

Dhaval: Yeah. Perfect.

Janet: And I’m a big fan of the ring. (Dhaval: thank you). And so I hope when it comes out, let us know so we can re-promote it on IDP. And so we can also make sure that it gets the visibility that it deserves. And this has been terrific to talk to you. And please come back when you’ve got other things to promote.

Dhaval: We would love to.

Janet: We would love to hear from you.

Dhaval: Sounds good.

Janet: And if somebody wanted to invest in this company is that a possibility at this point, or what can my $10 get? (laughs)

Dhaval: (laughs) We just closed our fundraising pre seed round (Janet: oh), about a couple of weeks ago (Janet: wow). I’m happy to say we were 200-percent oversubscribed or close to it, (Janet: oh, that’s amazing).

And so, we’re not fundraising anymore, (Janet: right), but it does go to show that there are lots of people who believe that this has tremendous potential, which is wonderful. (Janet: that’s terrific).

I will say, if there is anyone that wants to support us, please visit our website. It’s lotuslabs.org. That’s L-O-T-U-S, like the flower. L-O-T-U-S labs, L-A-B-S-dot-O-R-G.

And feel free to sign up to the newsletter. We have a limited pre-order availability because we want to sort of prioritize people with the greatest need first. And so we’re doing limited batches. And so if you’re interested, or you think it can help someone that you know, or a friend or family member, feel free to go on and pre-order.

Or just reach out to me. My email is Dhaval, D-H-A-V-A-L, at lotus labs dot org {Dhaval@Lotuslabs.org}. And just share your thoughts and comments or feedback. We love hearing from users. Like we said, we believe in human-centered design. Nothing better than hearing from the end user.

Janet: Terrific. Thank you so much, Dhaval. This was really wonderful. We appreciate you and we appreciate Lotus and thank you so much for coming on Inclusive Designers Podcast.

Dhaval: Thank you. Thank you for having me Janet. It’s been an honor and a privilege. Thank you.

Janet: Thank you, Dhaval. Have a good day.

(Music/Outro)

Janet: I find what Dhaval said about a hybrid of Inclusive and Universal design so interesting.

Carolyn: It might need a new name, maybe ‘Uni-clusive’, or ‘Inclu-versal’?

Janet: Funny, but true. But whatever it is called, I really enjoyed his philosophy that ‘technology is usable by everyone when optimized for disability first’…

Carolyn: And he also said that technology should be invisible, appearing only when needed. And that technology isn’t the end-product—it’s the impact it has on human life that is.

Janet: And do you remember what he said about using extensive user studies before starting design?

Carolyn: it has a certain Ring to it…

Janet: really?

Carolyn: you know I couldn’t resist…

Janet: I get it. I know. Seriously though, I love that in creating the ring, they believed in getting users input, their stories, and experiences – and it’s so true that it provides meaningful foundational data which is so much better than just merely using statistics.

Carolyn: Last but not least, I have to mention the wonderful quote from the play ‘Hamilton’ that Dhaval says drives him. And the quote is: “What is Legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.”

Janet: Exactly… inspirational words for designers, and well everyone. And we will share the link for how to contact Dhaval, and of course, the links to the innovative work he is doing, and for all the many other things that are mentioned along the way during this discussion… all on our website at: inclusive-designers-dot-com.

Carolyn: That’s: inclusivedesigners.com…

Janet: A big thank you to Dhaval. And ‘thanks’ to all of you as well for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts—which now includes Pandora to replace the now defunct Stitcher— you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it, Inclusive Designers Podcast. And if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page.

Janet: Yes, please do. And let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for topics you think we should be covering in upcoming shows!

And as our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed’!

As always, thank you for stopping by. We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

(Music up and fade out)

An Award-Winning TiD Tool for Designing Schools (Season 5, Episode 1)

Panel: Janet Roche, J. Davis Harte, Christine Cowart, Molly Pierce

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome everyone, we have a very special show for you today. I am very excited to be not only hosting this episode, but also participating, as I was one of the researchers. With a great team that you’ll meet shortly, we created the Trauma-informed Design Evaluation tool for Kindergarten thru 12th grade. Otherwise known as the EDRA CORE award-winning TiDEvalk12 tool— if I might toot my own horn.

Carolyn: In my opinion, there’s no need to be humble, this one is definitely worthy of one or two toots of your own .

Janet: I really appreciate that Carolyn. This was a lot of hard work, and we’re getting a lot of really great feedback and it’s being explored literally around the world. So we’re very excited about it, so yes, ‘toot-toot’ for us.

Carolyn: Maybe explain the title…

Janet: I can do that, well, it’s TID- Trauma-informed Design; eval- because it’s an evaluation tool; and it’s for K through 12… so, TID-Eval-K-12 tool.

Carolyn: We’ll talk about the tool shortly, but Janet, before we get into your interview with the team… why don’t you start by telling us a little about Trauma-Informed Design, and how it led to form the Trauma Informed Design society.

Janet: Happy to… first, Trauma-informed Design, or TiD, is about integrating principles of trauma-informed care, as originally established by, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (or SAMHSA) and continually evolving into design. The goal is to create physical spaces that promote safety, well-being, and healing. This requires realizing how the physical environment affects identity, worth, and dignity, and how it promotes empowerment.

The Trauma-informed Design Society was started in early 2018 and is co-founded by myself, along with Davis Harte and Christine Cowart. Our panel today includes Davis Harte, or as we like to call her around here Dr. Harte, who like me is an inclusive design professional, and you might recognize her from other IDP episodes.

Christine Cowart is our in-house Trauma-informed Care professional, who has also joined us for past episodes. Also joining us today is Molly Pierce, who was on board as our Occupational Therapy specialist. All of their LinkedIn profiles are available on our website at: InclusiveDesigners.com

Carolyn:  And I’ll jump back in here to say: This assessment tool was created through research performed by the Trauma-informed Design Society, with assistance from over 100 participating educators and designers. It is intended to be used to evaluate schools and identify changes in the physical environment that can lower the stress levels of students and staff.

It is grounded in SAMHSA’s guidance for a trauma-informed approach, and the Trauma-informed Design Society’s framework. And we should also mention that this project was supported by American Society of Interior Designers, Foundation Research Grant.

Janet: And with that, I think it’s time to let everyone hear from the team about just what the tool is, and how it is already helping in the design of K through 12 schools.

Carolyn: Yes, I agree. And so here is our episode with Janet, Davis, Christine, and Molly… the force behind this award-winning evaluation tool.

(Music / Interview)

Janet: Hello and welcome to ‘Inclusive Designers Podcast’. We’ve got a great show for you today. We are going to be talking to my teammates for the Trauma-informed Design Evaluation Tool. The grant we got, which was through ASID, the American Society of Interior Designers Foundation. And we will go and talk a lot about what is trauma, what is trauma informed design, and what was the tool and some of the things that we did to create the tool and how we see the future of Trauma-informed Design.

So, without any further ado, I’m going to go around the room, and we will start with, well, I’ll start with myself. How about that? I’m not only going to be the host today, but I am also going to be a participant as I was one of the Trauma-informed Design professionals assigned for this particular evaluation tool.

Oh, and I’m here in Boston and I am in my office, so if you hear any background noise, occasionally we try to block it out, but you know, some, it’s not a perfect world, but here we are. With that, I’m going to introduce J. Davis Harte, or as we know her around here as Dr. Harte. So Dr. Harte, would you please introduce yourself?

Davis: Hello everybody. I am J. Davis Harte. I’m known as Davis, and I am happy to come to you today from Oregon in my office. I am the principal investigator for the Trauma-Informed Design K-12 Evaluation Tool. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Janet: Great, thank you Davis. Next up we’ve got Christine Cowart.

Christine: Hi, my name is Christine Cowart. My pronouns are she/her. I was the Trauma-informed Care consultant on the tool, and I’m happy to be here.

Janet: Great. Thanks Christine. Christine’s coming from the great state of Vermont.

Christine: I am indeed. I’m here in my office in Vermont, and if you hear anything, it’s likely to be cows. (laughs).

Janet: Thank you so much Christine for being here. Next up we have Molly Pierce. Hi Molly.

Molly: Hi, yes, I’m Molly Pierce, and I come to you from Oregon, and I come to this team with an extensive background as an Occupational Therapist. So I am just really happy to be here and be a part of this team and this podcast. So thank you.

Janet: Thank you, Molly. So let’s jump right on in. We’ve got a lot to cover today. Obviously, everybody can jump in at any point in time. Christine, we’ll start with you. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what is trauma and why it is so important for designers to understand.

Christine: Sure. So, when we’re talking about trauma, I like to operate under the definition that is pretty much well understood and perpetuated by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration. And the way they define trauma… “It’s an event that happens to an individual, that that individual experiences as life-threatening or harmful to their well-being that has lasting negative impact.” And so when you think about that definition, it’s much broader than what we sometimes think of as trauma. It really encompasses a whole lot.

And that definition is grounded in how the person experiences that event. So we can’t come up with a list of things and say, these are traumatic things because it’s about how it impacts that person. (Janet: yeah). And so what we know is from surveys and other studies that have been done that the majority of our population has experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime.

Why this is important to know is because when you experience more traumatic events over the course of your life, your long-term impacts can increase. (Janet: mm-hmm). And so what they found is, it has impacts on your health, on your likelihood to have chronic disease (Janet: hmm), and on your ability to make good choices. Really access your full ability to think logically and rationally about situations. Control your reactions to situations, and it impacts your ability to access life opportunities. (Janet: yeah).

So why this is important in design is because what we understand about trauma is that it is really— a person experiences something as traumatic when their stress levels are very high. (Janet: mm-hmm).

And so, we know that the physical environment can shape how a person feels when they’re in that environment. It can impact a person’s stress levels, and if we can lower those stress levels for the individual while they’re in a space, we are eliminating some of the potential things that might be leading to them being re-traumatized or triggered in that environment. (Janet: right).

Janet: So thank you so much, Christine, for that brief overview and why it’s so important for designers to understand what trauma is and not to just kind of brush it off. Davis, do you want to add to that? Is there something that you think is important for our listeners to understand about trauma and what trauma is and why it’s so important?

Davis: Thank you so much Janet, and Christine covers our foundation of this work so, so well, (Janet: she covers a lot). I adore how well she explains it because it is a very complex and nuanced process. And we want to highlight the point about how much trauma might affect somebody’s health long term. And I am the Design for Human Health Director and faculty member, so this topic is near and dear to my heart.

And I just want to spotlight a bit more the influence of traumatic experiences, especially in childhood, on the lifetime of the individual. So the impacts that it can have on folks can be something that stays with them, whereas also they can heal and there can be an opportunity for transformation. And it’s a living organism in my mind. You know, if a person experiences trauma, they may become in a pattern of harm and poor life choices and, and sickness.

And in that same regard, there is a real opportunity with sufficient resources and social support and the built environment to facilitate healing. So people can heal, people can change, and they can come out of the other side of a traumatic experience with new insights and resilience. So it’s just one of those, let’s not make it black and white, it’s much more colorful than that, and a hopeful topic. Although it seems like it’s counter to that. Right.

Janet: Yeah. Thank you, it’s all good and important points. Molly, did you want to jump in here and talk about the experience that you have, and you come at it from an OT perspective, do you want to add something?

Molly: Yeah, sure. Just, it is super complex, and every individual is unique, and they come with their unique circumstances. And currently I do work in schools. so kind of being in the trenches, living that lived experience of watching students and teachers stress levels. I was just thinking of this, this morning, that what is it about design and trauma?

And if you think of the body as a whole, the design piece of the school building is the skeleton. (Janet: hmm) And I think that’s, we have such an incredible opportunity to bridge Trauma-informed Care to inform design, and it’s really bringing in that common understanding and bringing everyone to that table, (Janet: Right), because it is complex.

Janet: It’s a really good point, Molly. Absolutely. And it is complex. In Trauma-informed Design, we talk a lot about understanding the individuals using the spaces and designers like to think that that is part of their programming, but really understanding what trauma is, and then with the lens of Trauma-informed Design and understanding each of the individuals in those particular spaces is so important.

Molly:  Yeah, I just, it was funny, before I came to the podcast this morning, I was actually in a school-wide, welcome back to school. (Janet: oh boy). And the director, actually, she was the Chief of Staff for the Oregon Department of Education, so state level (Janet: wow), came to speak to our school district and I wrote down a quote she said, and I wanted to share that because it just is so beautiful with the work that we’re trying to do.

She said: “Schools are sanctuaries where students feel safe, have a sense of belonging.” (Janet: right). And I think that is, that is exactly what we’re doing through Trauma-informed Care and Trauma-informed Design, is building that bridge so that we do create those school buildings that really are sanctuaries for our students and our staff to decrease those trauma stress levels.

Janet: Right. Thank you so much, Molly. You teed us up a little bit for the next section of what we would like to talk about and that is, that this particular episode of Inclusive Designers is really going to be about the tool, which is for K-through-12. It’s about schools, and trying to reduce those stress levels in schools. And how designers can help make that happen for, not only just students, but also for faculty and additional educators, or people in the education field.

So with that, we want to start talking a little bit more about the tool and what was the impetus for the tool. I know a lot of the answers, but I’m not going to keep talking the entire time. I know, I did one of my favorite things I like to do to any team is like, “Hey, I have an idea.” And the idea in this case was again, the American Society of Interior Designers Foundation was putting out this grant. And I thought we might be able to start moving the needle within Trauma-informed Design with the K-through-12 schools and creating this particular type of tool.

Davis, do you want to jump in and… (Davis: sure). you know, Christine, you can jump– both of you can jump in at any point in time, because I definitely came to the two of you, and I was like, we should do this.

Christine: I do want to jump in because this conversation reminds me of when you first approached me. You did exactly as you said. You came to me, and you said, “I have an idea.” (Janet: laughs).

And I’ll never forget, it was one of the hottest days of the year, and I was lucky enough to be in my pool on the phone with you. And I sat there, and I said, “okay, but I don’t understand what you’re telling me.” And you just kept saying, “well, there’s a grant and we should go for the grant.” And I said, “great, but what’s the idea?” And you kept saying, “we could do something for schools.” I said, “okay, but what?” And we keep mentioning the tool and I just, I feel like we might want to take a step back and tell people what we’re, what is this tool that we’re talking about.

Janet: I totally agree with you. Go ahead Christine. Knock it out of the park.

Christine: Well, I’ll do my best. (Janet: okay). So what we created was an actual tool that schools and designers can use, independently and together, to evaluate the physical structure of their school and their environment, both interior and exterior.

To identify changes that they could make or should make if they want to be able to reduce stress levels of the people who are in that school– so that’s student, staff, visitors. And really kind of give them a rating, like these are areas you should really pay attention to because they might be having an adverse effect on the people who are in your school.

And we embedded within that tool some explanation of different terms that we use and things like that, so that they can understand why we’re making certain recommendations. (Janet: right). And it can help them have conversations that were previously, possibly more challenging, because designers speak one language and educators speak seemingly another from time to time. (Janet: right, laughs). And we’re trying to give them the ability to make sure that they’re not talking past one another, but they’re talking in a way that they’re all on the same page.

Janet: Yeah, and you’re absolutely correct. And I think one of the things that made the tool so successful was the fact that it is a way to bridge the gap between designers and educators so that they’re speaking the same language.

I always find that there are educators who depend on the designers to tell them almost what they want, and designers think to themselves, “well, I know what you need.” And instead of actually having a complete conversation. So it’s a really important point. And yes, Molly, what would you like to say?

Molly: Well, I just wanted to add to that, that what’s really kind of our thought process was building that bridge between the designers who really understand spatial and interior design, exterior design, (Janet: right), with the educator who truly understands how the space is used, (Janet: correct), how students use it, how they use it, what is working and what’s not working.

But then also the administrators who now are the ones that are writing the checks who are really like, we do need a new school. So it’s bringing each of those voices to the table and it’s creating that unity rather than everybody in silos, it’s an opportunity, using the assessment tool as a way to really start having conversations about how do we really truly design and build a school that is Trauma-informed and is looking at all aspects, whether it’s an elementary school, a middle school, or a high school.

Janet: So I don’t know if Davis, do you want to kind of go and start talking a little bit about the impetus for the tool.

Davis: Sure! (Janet: Yeah). Well, there were so many seeds planted for this work before we penned the grant application. (Janet: oh my goodness), there’s so, so much background.

Janet: Well you, Christine, and I have been at this for a very long time. (Davis: yes, absolutely). Right, and so, that’s very much worth mentioning.

Davis: So the question is, you know, at what point did we say, ‘oh, it should be a tool for schools’ or even before, you know, how do we set it? There’s so much lead in time. some of the applied work that we did at the BAC with the middle school that we worked on, I feel like is a real solid seed that was planted (Janet: absolutely), yeah.

Janet: You and I both were working on that particular school in Dorchester, and that really started me down a path of really, I was just so annoyed. And I know it’s a poor section, but and it just bothered me how poorly the school was set up in terms of design.

Davis: Yeah, we just saw that when we toured the school and we got to know the staff, we didn’t have access to work directly with the kids at the time, (Janet: correct), but we saw ways to make design recommendations, but the ones that they did implement actually had a positive effect on those kids’ lives when they needed a moment to recognize that they were in a state of stress and they couldn’t learn and they should go see a counselor in a separate room, that they had a place to go, that they felt welcome, they felt safe, they could relax a little bit, they could, have an outlet to discharge their emotions and then they could return to class.

So that’s, for me, one of the most important origin stories for the TiD. We call it the TiD-Eval-K12 (Janet: mm-hmm). The Trauma-informed Design Evaluation Tool for K through 12. So when we were alerted that ASID Foundation had grants coming up. Yeah. Janet. I mean, you know, it was a bunch of ideas, (Janet: right), this tidal wave of need and (Janet: and passion), passion and what we love to do, and ‘hey, let’s do it.

It’s going to be, it’s, you know, all of it, all of the energy of ‘well, we have a way to help make some bridges here’. So, you know, I’m, I’m just thrilled with how well it’s been received (Janet: yeah), and how much more momentum it’s generating just by existing in the world at this point. And I know Christine’s eager with her passion and righteousness as well. (laughs).

Janet: I know. Well, this is where it does get very passionate. So my, my apologies in advance if we get a little raucous.

Davis: And I can jump in too with a little quick story of when I went to present on the tool at the EDRA Conference in Mexico City this past June. EDRA, which is the Environmental Design Research Association.

So, I was lucky enough to have my teenage daughter with me. And she, at the end of the talk said, “mom, all this time that you’ve been working on the tool,” and she’s sort of doing the shrug of the shoulders, “like, I didn’t really know what that meant, but now I can see that it’s just a bunch of papers, like a couple of papers and some questions” –  you know, she had this light bulb moment of, “oh, it’s, it’s accessible.”

And that was our point when we developed it, we wanted it to be accessible. (Janet: yes). People can have this PDF, 10 pages, something like that, with nice explanations. It simplifies things. In my mind, it’s a little bit of a shortcut to the conversation, but it’s also gives the room for really in-depth and nuanced conversations that really need to happen.

And along those lines, one of the audience members at this talk asked about, you know, have we validated it and checked it, and so forth. And that’s really important for design research (Janet: correct), and for research generally. (Janet: right).

But we really spent a lot of time when we were developing, saying every single school has its own personality (Janet: right). Right. Its own culture, (Janet: its own culture), its own geographic location, (Janet: right), its own history as a town. So we wanted to have the ribs of the work very clear, defining it with a lot of room for personalization by each set of folks working with it.

Janet: Yeah, and I just wanted to let our listeners know a couple of things, that when you went to EDRA, you picked up a CORE Award for the research that we did on this. So, CORE Award is ‘Certification of Research Excellence’ through EDRA. And both Christine and I have just gotten back from Los Angeles where we talked at ASID’s ‘Gather’. And we had a 90-minute conversation of not only about the tool, but the process that we went through to put the tool together.

And then just to let our listeners know that on the IDP— otherwise known as Inclusive Designers Podcast— website, “InclusiveDesigners.com” we will have links to a lot of this, the tool obviously, as well as a whole bunch of other information that gets brought up on this episode,

And then I wanted to also add to Davis’s point about the personalities, and as Molly had pointed out earlier, that it’s very kind of complex and that people are very diverse. But we have just found out that the tool will be used for the Uvalde Rob Elementary rebuild in Texas. And we could not be more humbled nor thrilled that they are using our tool in order to inform the new design building. So, yes, Molly, Molly’s like, “Yay!” And it is a ‘Yay!’ moment for sure. It’s a big deal. Christine, do you have something to add to that?

Christine: It just struck me because we knew that the tool was introduced to that community and that they had some conversations about it. But to have the community that is, you know, in the process of fundraising for the new school, to actually call it out and say, independently of the architect or us, to publicly say that this tool was helpful. (Janet: yeah).

It just really, really blew me away because it felt like what we wanted to come of this, which was a way to help the students who need it most, right? And to help the people who are most affected. (Janet: right). What better way to be able to help than to know that this tool was found useful by that community in particular. So it really, I, I’m getting ‘fer klempt’, I don’t know if you can hear it in my speech…

Janet: I was just going to say, I’m getting, I’m getting a little like, Yeah, it’s, it’s one of those things where we can get a little emotional over it and {we know that the main architectural firm there Huckabee, they’ve been putting in an incredible amount of work for the project itself.

And I know it was very emotional for them as well and obviously for the community.} And if we can just even play a small part in helping to heal that community, I couldn’t be more proud, and I know the rest of the team is as well. (Davis: yeah).

Is there anything else that we want to talk about the actual tool itself, you know, that was more of an overview. Do we want to maybe get into more of some of the nuances about the tool? So Davis, maybe you could tell us a little bit about how we started to design the tool, how did we go about that, besides the tremendous amount of hours. So we’ve gotten the grant. Now what?

Davis: Right. Exactly.

Janet: I remember thinking to myself, “yay, we got a grant. Like somebody wants to give us money for this research”. It was fabulous. And then, all of a sudden, I was like, oh my gosh, now what, what do we do? (Laughs).

Davis: Yeah, yeah. And so we knew kind of a ballpark vision we were aiming towards was, okay, make it accessible and have it be, all sets of people can understand it. (Janet: right). So I think in our minds eye, we had some domains that we were aiming towards, (Janet: yes), but we also knew it needed to be based on solid evidence, (Janet: right), and evidence that is wide reaching.

So I think the way we boiled it down was let’s get a better understanding of all of the frameworks that already are in existence for doing spatial evaluations (Janet: correct). And secondly, all of the frameworks and research that’s been done on Trauma-informed Care. (Janet: right).

And then we synthesized and sifted and merged those together. And then, that was kind of the theoretical foundation of it all, but I’m going to pass it over to one of my teammates to go on more, because there were many steps involved in getting us to our final results.

Janet: Right. But that was just in itself a very arduous process, if that’s my memory of it. I know that Christine and I spent an incredible amount of time. We already talked a little bit about SAMHSA, right? We started really kind of doing a lot of the empirical research that we wanted to do. I kept saying, I just want a very, very solid foundation, because our thinking was that as Trauma-informed Design Society, that we would be very capable at that point with that solid foundation to be able to start working with other communities and creating these other tools.

So, I know, Christine, please feel free to jump in because you and I, you know, it’s sort of where we started to really bond, our late-night hours, and going through hours of empirical research, and like I said, SAMHSA which we mentioned earlier. Go ahead.

Christine: That’s where I was going to jump in. It was really important to me that whatever we came up with fit well within this SAMHSA’s six key principles of a Trauma-informed Approach, because, you know they’ve been doing this work for nigh on 20 years trying to figure out the best way to work with people who’ve experienced .

And what they’ve come up with are that there are 6 key things that you need to weave into your approach. And they’re now just starting to recognize that some of that is literally the built environment. (Janet: yeah). So their 6 key principles are ‘safety’, ‘trustworthiness and transparency’, ‘peer support’, ‘collaboration mutuality’ and ‘empowerment, voice and choice’, all as one.

And then the final one we refer to as ‘having an equity lens’. They developed this before that language was common, and what they called it was ‘cultural, historical, and gender awareness.’ (Janet: right). And so what we literally did is we went through every single design framework that we found and every single, Trauma-informed Assessment for organizations (Janet: tools) And we mapped it to those 6 key principles. And we mapped it to our understanding of what a Trauma-informed Design approach would look like. And then we cross-referenced everything. (Molly: yeah), Molly, go right ahead.

Molly: Yeah, I just want to jump in, because while that was going on, at the same time, there’s a group of us looking at what are those design frames of references? What are those design tools, assessments that are out there? And there really weren’t a lot. So what we did, and then thinking about design terms and actually thinking of schools, that’s then how we kind of came together to look at, trying to figure out what those domains are and creating surveys that we could really understand when we go to talk to schools, their understanding of Trauma-informed Care. (Janet: Right).

And then maybe also those places in a school building that might’ve trigger— I hate to use the word trigger— or cause or increase stress levels, dysregulate students and teachers. So, I just wanted to add on to what Christine said.

Janet: Yeah, we were, and Davis feel free to also to jump in. There was a lot going on at that particular point in time as we were bringing together the tool, which also included getting schools involved. And now you got to remember, so some of these schools that we tried to get involved, they were happy to do it. I should add, they were wonderful. But they’re all trying to deal with the end of the pandemic or the end as we kind of knew it pandemic, and then, getting kids back into the classroom.

And we were up against a time limit, right? So, you know, here was the end of school and now they’re trying to figure out how to get these kids out of school, but also keep them safe from the last part of the big part of the pandemic. And then also trying very hard not to have their own nervous breakdowns about everything. And now we’re like, “Hey, we need a whole bunch of information from you.” So they were really terrific in giving us the information, which really included just a whole bunch of photos. Right? And then at some point we did have them talk to us about the photos and their floor plans that they provided for us. Right, is there anything else that I’m missing?

Christine: Yeah. Molly hit on it. We issued surveys that were two-fold. One was around their care practices. The other one was around the physical design of their school. (Janet: that’s right). And we anticipated and asked specific questions about certain areas of the school, (Janet: right), that we thought kids might be most dis-regulated in (Janet: dis-regulated, yeah).

And what we found out was, we were right about some of them, but there were others that came up to the surface. (Janet: yeah), So it was interesting because those survey results served as the basis for those conversations with the school to get to the bottom of, “well, why are you seeing this here?” and “why are you not seeing it where we thought you might.”

Janet: Right. And with that list, we also added entrances, we thought entrances were really important. It’s like the first portal that you walk through. And it’s also the like, first impressions, right? Does anybody want to add to that? (Davis: yeah). Go ahead.

Davis: That’s exactly right because, a lot of the times when design doesn’t work, people recognize that, and say, “oh man, this doesn’t work.” But a lot of times also just through environmental psychology understanding, they just become acclimatized to it, and they get used to it. And they’re not necessarily going to point it out and say, “oh, this is an issue.”

So this is why design research is so important because we can help make those connections for people (Janet: right), between what they’re experiencing subconsciously at, you know, less than a second, impressions are made. The symbolic communication that occurs from the spaces that we go into can really set the tone for the rest of the experience. (Janet: right). So that’s why we added entrances.

Janet: Yeah. For the listeners, you don’t realize we’re all nodding. And we also want to add, I’m just going to throw that out there as one of the co-founders of Trauma-informed Design Society, if you want to give us money for additional research, we’re always open for that as well. (laughs). So moving along…

Molly: Well I can jump in…

Janet: yeah, go ahead Molly.

Molly: Yeah, just the next phase after that before we even got to developing the assessment tool is, then we collected all this information from the schools, from the staff, the people involved, all the research.

Janet: And I just want to add that we also had an ‘IRB’ as well in place, which is an ‘Institutional Review Board’ approval for the work that we did. This wasn’t just us kind of going out there. We really wanted to make sure that this was a strong foundation that we were going to be researching. So we got an IRB because the research was really important to us and to make sure that it was done properly and well examined. Go ahead Molly.

Molly: Yeah, and now we created a visual because the next phase was to pull in our designers, (Janet: right). So, Christine can talk about this because she really helped develop those pictures and organizing them. And we created them, and we identified the spaces in the school and then we had photos from each school. Christine, you can talk a little more…

Christine: Yeah Molly, so one thing that we were faced with, and kind of outside of our control, was that we entered into this project not realizing that we would be trying to do essentially design assessments of these buildings in the middle of a pandemic when we couldn’t actually physically visit the buildings. (Janet: right). So we…

Janet:  … it was a little oversight on our part (both laugh).

Christine: The schools were just phenomenal. (Janet: they were). They really, they played ball. (Janet: they did). I mean, we had them scour and go into every nook and cranny of their school and take photographic evidence that we then had a massive amount of information from these schools as if we had been there ourselves. (Janet: right). And we realized that we wanted architectural input from people who are actively engaged in design work and familiar with the principles of Trauma-informed Design (Janet: right). And we needed to do this all remotely. And I don’t know who came up with the idea of Miro boards. (Janet: right, that was Molly?) Was it you, Molly?

Molly: Yeah. I think I really, because being an Occupational Therapist, I am such a visual person. I’m kind of this multi-sensory learner and I just realized— I did some coursework at University of Oregon with their Architectural program in Human Design— and architects are really good at using spatial tools. And so I learned a lot, and we weren’t familiar with it. We did have some support of a Boston Architectural student who also was familiar and had some background in Interior Design. And so she was able to say, “oh, well I’ve used this tool, this tool, this tool.” And then that’s kind of how it evolved.

Davis: Yeah, I heard your guy’s idea for let’s do this visually. And I thought, ‘oh, how about Miro board?” so…

Molly: …there you go. That’s it Davis.

Davis: Yeah. pull together the pieces. it’s a great tool (Janet: yeah) Yep.

Christine: So for anyone who’s not familiar, it’s essentially a platform, like a huge whiteboard on the computer that you can stick pictures on and put stickies. (Janet: right). And so it was like having a virtual working space that we could all share. (Janet: right). And what we did is put together a template for each area that we were looking at.

Janet: So we’ve got areas like, entrances as we talked about, hallways, gymnasiums, cafeterias, classrooms, (Molly: bathrooms), bathrooms, (Christine: outdoor spaces), and outdoor spaces. I think that that was pretty much it, right? (yeah).

Christine: And so we had a template for each area, and each school had their own portion of the board all de-identified. And then we had a selection of architects and designers who were going to review these photos for us and provide us feedback. And so each one of them needed their own board.

Janet: Right, Christine, I don’t mean to interrupt, but here I am. So what is I think is important to recognize… one of the things is that we asked those designers because we felt like they understood what trauma is. And we had some idea that they understood what we were looking for and asking for that particular help, that that was an important piece. And, and we got a lot of designers to help us sift through all of this tons of information.

Christine: Yes, absolutely. I did want to put in a plug here though, for the fact that I don’t know that we ever would’ve gotten those boards ready in the timeline we had, if it wasn’t for the help of our friends at Huckabee who stepped in and said, “You know what? We will help you put these boards together” because each one of them needed their own copy of a board. (Janet: yeah). “We will help you put these together and we will step out of the assessment piece, but we’ll help you also when you get all the results, sort through it.”

So, we were so lucky to have their assistance. (Janet: absolutely). And the boards, I would say magically appeared, (laughs). (Janet: they did!). But I know that was a lot of work that was put in. (Janet: right). And what we asked for was the architects and designers to give us up to 3 ideas for each area that might be helpful to lowering student stress levels; 3 things that might be harmful, and any other suggestions or questions that they might have.

Janet: Right, it was helps; hurts; and questions or comments. I think that that was how we put it together. (Molly: yeah). Right.

Christine: And then all of that information from each of those participants got entered into a spreadsheet and we looked for common themes.

Janet: Right. Yeah. And that, like you said, that was a bit of a bear. So to comb through and then also look for those common themes on those Miro boards and then put it all together. Then at that point, we started to create the tool. So, Molly, did you want to talk about the different domains? You want to kick that off?

Molly: Yeah sure. So then the process from taking all that information, so we have spreadsheets and oodles and oodles and oodles of information. And the first part of it was really to define the domains and bridging Trauma-informed Care with design.

And then I think a big important piece that we all agreed on was developing vocabulary. (Janet: right). So not just what the domains are, but really defining what that domain is, to have clear language that now we’re building that bridge through a common language to be able for designers in school and administrators or whoever uses this tool. They can take that, understand what we’re talking about, and come together and understand it together. So with that being said, the domains we came up with, and I’m just going to kind of list them…

Janet: You should rattle them off, right? People could still go to inclusivedesigners.com, it will be at the top, the link for the tool. So go ahead Molly. Thank you.

Molly: Okay, so: “safety, accessibility, biophilia and connection to nature, inclusion, wayfinding, visibility, comfort and aesthetics, lighting, choice and flexibility, acoustics, community and culture, and movement and play.”

Janet: Molly, can you give us an example of one of the questions in one of the domains? (Molly: okay). Let’s go with safety. What are a couple of examples under that particular domain?

Molly: Okay, yes. Well, I kind of just want to read it just to give context then to the questions. (Janet: sure). So safety, “the domain of safety is the highest priority in implementing a Trauma-informed Approach and is typically measured by how students and staff fill within the space. That’s just the first sentence. (Janet: perfect).

A typical question. The first question is: “is there adequate lighting in the parking lot? Are there lights along paths and entrances of the school? Are there security cameras? Does your school have ample storage?”

So what it was is, we took from the information from designers, from teachers, from what safety is, and maybe lighting— we need visibility, we need to see and feel safe as we go into a space, especially at night. So the questions are kind of all developing, whoever’s filling it out to really start thinking about these different areas and how safety could be a piece of that.

Janet: Davis? Do you have anything to add? (Christine: I just wanted…) Go ahead, Christine.

Christine: I just wanted to pipe up and say, and when we’re thinking of safety, it’s important to know that we’re talking about emotional and physical safety. (Janet: yes). So there’ll be questions in there that you might not think are relative to a safe building, but this is more than just the building. It’s how the building makes a person feel. (Janet: correct).

So that could be things like: are there places where you could have private conversations, which you wouldn’t really think of that as safety, but that would be something that we would think of safety under this approach.

Davis: Right. That’s exactly what I was going to add, so well done.

Christine: Oh, sorry Davis, (laughs).

Davis: I’m happy for you to describe and give a good example of what that would look like. Absolutely. I mean, yes, we might think of safety as well, “Let’s have lots of walls and barriers and, and metal detectors and ways to help people feel like they’re psychologically safe when perhaps actually that’s counter (Janet: counterproductive), to having, “look, we know each other, we belong, we’re welcome here, we’re safe to see each other and to know what’s going on, who is expected here and why, you know, if there’s a stranger coming in.

Then those ‘eyes on the street’— that’s the design terminology that shows that being familiar with and caring about your work and caring about coming to your place and having a sense of place. You know, “this is my place. I’m proud of coming here. I like coming here.” That’s deep, deep safety from my point of view and I think from the teams as well. (Janet: yeah).

Christine: I love that you brought up the cameras.

Janet: I was just going to say, I was like, can we talk about the cameras.

Christine: (laughs)

Janet: I was thinking in my head, I’m like, ‘oh, should I bring up the cameras?’ because Christine, we’ve had this conversation quite a bit. Alright. Just as a background, I come from Brooklyn, New York. So for me, a well-lit area with cameras and stuff is not a bad thing. Like you feel like there’s some sort of sense of security knowing that they’re there. But Christine, take it away.

Christine: Yeah, I have a very different feeling. Cameras make me feel like I’m in a place that might not be safe. My experience is built on the fact that I mostly encounter cameras in environments where they’re used for surveillance. You know, I work in prisons, so that’s one example. I also have traveled to countries where it was used to surveil their population.

And so for me, cameras make me feel unsafe. And so we included it in the tool, and we actually had this question when we were presenting in LA at the Gather Conference. If you look at it, it’s on there, but it doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. The score is a zero because we just want to have that conversation. (Janet: yeah).

Molly: And I, I love that you said to have that conversation, Christine, because I think that’s what’s so important to understand. Everyone coming to the table brings their own perception. (Janet: right). And so what triggers you or what brings up your stress may not with me, but it’s because of our childhood experiences or it’s because of those adverse responses and situations that we have. We come uniquely to that, and that’s what I hope that this tool does, is that it really, it’s an assessment. It’s just assessing, it’s bringing that conversation to the table, so we talk about it before the design of it starts. What are those areas.

And I think teachers, I mean, I’m putting a plug to advocate for teachers and staff because what I’m seeing, being in the experience of brand-new buildings, they’re beautiful. (Janet: right). But they continually don’t meet the needs of teachers and students. And so we continue to have adverse responses to environments. (Janet: right). And what I’m noticing is now in, well, at least in Oregon, it feels cookie cutter. The schools are still these cookie cutter structures, and that’s where Trauma-informed Design can create…

Janet: …can make a difference.

Molly: Can make a huge difference. (Janet: right). And meet elementary kids where they are and you know, they’re not all the same. (Janet: right). So, I just wanted to just say ‘yes, okay’… that about the cameras or any of these other questions, you might be wondering why is that on there? Well, it’s on there because we need to bring those conversations to the table.

Janet: Correct. Yeah.

Christine: Molly, I’d love to highlight something that you said, because you said it and then moved on, but it’s so important that these conversations should happen before design.

Janet: And that’s a really good point. Right.

Christine: … because so often we get brought in after, (Janet: after), right after the plans are already set. And now they’re trying to see, “oh, is it just, you know, colors or finishes or the furnishing we’ve put in?” (Janet: right). And we keep saying “no, it’s so much deeper than that, there’s so many things about the actual design that can be impactful.” So it needs to be at the front end. (J: absolutely).

Davis: And along those same lines, if we think about this with various scales. So for example, my sister-in-law just became a third-grade teacher. And she has intuitive ideas of how she wants to set up her classroom, right? But when we were together and I said, “let’s take a look at this tool I just worked on, it’s got a lot of things you might want to know about. (Janet: right).

So it validates the ideas that she already had and gives her justification for spending the time she wanted to spend to go into her single classroom. She’s not in the position to change her entire school, but yet she can change her own space in her own classroom for her students in a way that when they first walk in, they can feel respect and calm, and they are ready to, you know, be greeted and have a good learning experience for the year. (Janet: right).

So it’s, you know, looking at it from various scales I think helps people understand who this is for and how they can just pick it up and start with where they’re at, right? And build it from there if there’s momentum and capacity, and sure, let’s spread this to the entire district. Right? And you know, beyond, as we’ve seen now with people interested outside of elementary and high So, yeah, there’s that.

Janet: Yeah. (Davis: laughs). Yeah. Davis, you totally teed us up for the, the next part. And where are we going with this? Like we know that, like I said, creating that strong foundation, we can start applying that to other communities, other marginalized communities, and other types of social services. And we even see it as well as for aging populations as well as within the home, within offices. I mean, we see Trauma-informed Design applications for just about anything a designer could possibly touch.

Christine: You’ve mentioned marginalized communities, but we haven’t yet talked about why that’s important. Marginalized communities being more at risk for having increased levels for having experienced trauma. (Janet: yeah, of course, of course).

And like we didn’t at all, and I know why, because of time and relevance right now, but we didn’t talk at all about like the racial disparities or any of that. (Janet: right). Or even that experiencing racism as a form of trauma or, you know, so it all depends on how much we want to get into.

Janet: You know, Christine, we can talk at some point about that. I will assume, that Inclusive Designers Podcast will at some point have additional Trauma-informed Design episodes where we are really kind of also focused on some of the other work that we’re doing, including marginalized communities and the trauma of things like racism. (Christine: mm-hmm),

So it’s definitely on the agenda and we will talk about that. But for the moment, talking about the tool and keeping the tool in mind. And again, all this information will be on ‘inclusivedesigners.com’ for all the listeners to go and get engaged and start looking at and starting to understand Trauma-informed Design better. (Christine: mm-hmm), (Molly: yeah).

We talked about the tool, but I think for right now, talking about the future of what this tool has afforded us, and we’d start talking about what’s next. Maybe we could kind of go around the circle here, or Molly can start. Molly has her hand up. So go ahead Molly.

Molly: Okay, so where do we go next? This is a tool that we’re hoping, it’s an assessment tool, so it could be used as Janet said, for any of these spaces.

Janet: It is true. Davis- Any thoughts?

Davis: Yeah. I’m excited to, to see how the more gathering of feedback from and people using the tool can help us iterate. As designers, we want to iterate and develop more understanding of the kinds of positive impacts that will happen when these assessment design recommendations are put into practice. And they show up in the schools. What are the outcomes? We want to measure some outcomes. I’m really excited to see that part of the work unfold.

Janet: Right. And you bring up a really good point, Davis, that we do want to start talking to schools using the tool— the TiD Evaluation, K-through-12 Tool— because we want to start using that in other forms and also getting that information that speaks to us, that we can then push back out to other designers and say, this is what’s working and this is what’s working well.

And that is an important piece because as we all know, there’s still not a lot of information out there. This is all still relatively new and Trauma-informed Design Society is the leader, a global leader in fact, in this particular area. And our next steps are, we know that universities are coming up. It seemed like a natural progression that we’re now going to start working on creating tools for the universities. And so, it’s just going to really kind of mushroom from there. Christine, did you want to jump in?

Christine: Yeah. I see things all the time where people are saying, well, “that’s fine for schools,” or “that’s fine for this community or that community, but I’m doing just plain old residential design,” or “I’m just doing commercial design and anyone could be in this building. So I don’t really need Trauma-informed Design.” And I keep pointing out the prevalence of trauma in our society is such that (Janet: it’s huge). Just about everyone has probably experienced trauma in their lives, may be impacted by it.

And so why wouldn’t we do it for every design (Janet: correct), right? (Janet: yeah). Absolutely we see it in certain projects more common. You know, we see it in the human services fields. We see it in organizations that provide services to individuals. We see it, asks for it, in residential design for the unhoused. We’re starting to see it in courthouses. (Janet: yes). We’re starting to see requests for it in institutions that treat individuals, whether it be for regular medical care or for mental health. (Janet: right).

And as you and I always like to point out, the last frontier, the place the most marginalized, the place where people usually just don’t feel like they want to spend the money or that people in the community needs it, is really correctional facilities. (Janet: right). And the people where a segment of our society just wants to throw away the key. And yet we’re seeing it there, (Janet: right). It’s starting. So we need to make sure that what we’re doing is actually effective.

Janet: Right, yes Molly…

Molly: And I just want to add that just as we are all different individuals for different parts of life, and we have come together at the table to create this tool, this assessment tool. We all bring our knowledge. It’s almost like we’re one body, we’re uniting, but we all have different parts. And that’s exactly how design is. And I just go back to thinking again from my OT brain, if we think of development, the foundation, what is the foundation of any building? It starts out with the idea, the vision, and then the process of design.

And we want all voices at the table. And I feel like this tool is the beginning of really showing that we’re trying to break down barriers and silos within all the people involved in creating these spaces that support our communities. And that if we come together and we know we want things in, that’s a structure that then can dictate what and how users use it.

Janet: Davis, do you want to add anything?

Davis: I do have one more thing that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit is the use of the word design itself. Because if a person were to say be interested in what is Trauma-informed Design, and they Google searched it, they might find a whole other world of Trauma-informed Design that isn’t specifically talking about physical spatial built environments. (Janet: right).

And that world is our friend. We’re, you know, we’re neighbors with them that we’re in the same room at kind of the same table. But so those folks are doing incredible work as far as how processes are designed, and including the voices of social workers who are right here doing the lived experience work (Janet: right).

You know, this is important to us when we gather evidence as well, it’s really honoring people’s actual experiences and knowing that there’s this beautiful overlay between the different folks and groups of individuals doing this kind of work. (Janet: right).

So I don’t want anyone to feel confused if they’re like, “wait, this is Trauma-informed Design. I’m an Architect, or an Interior Designer, this is my jam.” versus “what are those folks over there doing? Writing about it and using the same phrase.” It’s, it’s compatible. (Janet: yeah). Yeah.

Janet:  I would argue that there are a lot of Architects now that are starting to use the phrase, Trauma-informed Design that do not have the framework that we use. And it is something that is a little concerning to me, but it is something that I think once we all start getting on the same page, that we will be better able to understand.

But I definitely think that there’s certain pieces where if I hear somebody talking about Trauma-informed Design and they aren’t saying some particular types of words that we know are so, so important within this conversation. And if they’re not being brought up, I know that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Christine: Absolutely.

Davis: Yes, yes, absolutely. It is important to be really careful about what people are claiming if they don’t have an understanding of the human physiological responses to stress, for instance, (Janet: right, right). Then I might keep looking until I found a firm or a team who really understood what trauma is from all levels. Yeah, yeah.

Christine: Great point…they still need to learn. We’re hoping that the tool can help them gain a better understanding.

Janet: Right. We can usually tell when a designer doesn’t understand what Trauma-informed Design is by the language that they use, or the lack of language that they use. (Molly: yeah). And I know one of the benefits of looking at the website– at TraumaInformedDesign.org – and looking at our society and the work that we’re trying to do, they will benefit and have a clearer understanding of what Trauma-informed Design is, or as we’d like to call it, around the office, TiD. And you know, and that’s in part what the tool is about.

Christine: We hope to be a resource to them.

Janet: Right. Yeah.

Molly: And you know Janet, that’s exactly why we did this is, it’s that language, right? It’s the knowledge by creating those domains, we’re trying to help build that knowledge base and understanding of what trauma is, but also what design is. So we’re trying to bridge it. Right?

Janet: Right. Yeah. The important piece of this ultimately is, is that we want people to know that they can get information. If they have questions about Trauma-informed Design, please reach out to the Trauma-informed Design Society. You can do so at TraumainformedDesign.org. And I get requests every day for different people, for different things. So if you have any questions, just let us know.

Davis: Yes.

Janet: You can go to InclusiveDesigners.com to go look up the tool and find out all the information that we’ve kind of provided here. So as we wrap up this episode of Inclusive Designers, is there anything else you guys want to add about the process or the tool or all the research we’ve done? Or maybe even just what do you want to talk about for the future? I’ll just kind of go around the studio. I don’t know if, Davis, you might want to start?

Davis: I am so, so grateful for all of the incredible work that the designers, the schools, and ourselves that we were able to come together in this way. It’s like I’ve mentioned before, it’s the ultimate, let’s take the indignation of the way the planet is right now and put it into an optimistic, forward facing, solution finding applied, uh, project. So I’m just delighted and appreciative every day for the work we do.

Janet: Thank you Davis… Molly?

Molly: I think I just want to, like what Davis said, just, I have this huge sense of gratitude that we find our people and we can all come together and we can all talk about this and we all get it, but it’s collectively coming together and really being able to empower each one of us and those that are different than us to maybe start to embrace another way of thinking and to blend it with theirs. (Janet: right).

I think, isn’t that the power of knowledge and learning? And we’re just bringing a tool that we collectively came together from a lot of voices, and we try to synthesize it, but it doesn’t mean it stops there. It means we do appreciate your feedback and that continues to grow this work.  So I just want to thank, thank everyone.

Janet: Right. A good point, Molly, to mention we do want your feedback. We want to hear from you. And so with that, Christine, final thoughts.

Christine: How am I supposed to follow them? They’re both so great at summing up their experience.

Janet: I know. We could just wrap it up. It’s all good. (laughs).

Christine: I come to this as a personal passion to spread a new way of interacting with one another and interacting with our environment. And I just feel like we all, each of us, have the power to improve someone’s day and then another day, and then another day and eventually their lives.

And it’s such a mind-blowing thing when you understand interactions from this perspective of understanding how trauma can impact a person’s behavior. And I just feel like if more people understood that and understood how it impacts themselves and others, we would have a much different society.

So please just don’t be afraid of the word trauma. (Janet: yeah). Don’t be afraid of the concept that we’re basing something in trauma (Janet: right), or that understanding. It’s all about healing together in relationship. (Janet: yeah).

And thank you, thank you for those people who trust us with their funds to do this great research and to find ways that we can help spread it, that simplify it and make it accessible to others. And if there’s anyone out there who’s looking for something and feels compelled to help us for do more,

Janet: (laughs) something to fund…

Christine: You have the power, as I just said…

Janet: (laughs) we’re always open to ideas…

Christine: it’s all about feeling and being empowered. You have the power to further this research.

Janet: Thank you. And thank you everyone for spending the time, both our listeners and also for the panel today; Dr. Davis Hart, Christine Cowart, Molly Pierce. It’s been an incredible opportunity to work with such smart, thoughtful, caring individuals who are designers or brilliant thinkers and researchers. And I have grown so much as a result of having worked on this particular project, and it’s something that I am extremely proud of, and I am extremely just elated to have been a part of.

And if we can just even just change one school and make some sort of impression. Of course, we like to think it would be for everybody and for every school, but at the end of the day, I think we really, I mean, I know we’ve done an incredible job and I think we’ve really kind of changed and pushed the needle forward.

And so I am forever grateful for being a part of this team. And I know, I know how hard we worked, and I think it shows. And I think that that will also help to create a better foundation for all the other work that we’re planning on doing.

So with that, I just want to let our listeners know that we will have all that information again on our website, InclusiveDesigners.com, and that, you know, reach out to Trauma Informed Design Society at: TraumainformedDesign.org – all one word– if you have any questions for us. With that, I think we’ll end it for the day. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us today. Bye guys.

Christine: Bye.

Davis: Bye everyone.

Molly: Bye.

(Music / Outro)

Carolyn: That was a great overview of how the TiD-Eval-k-12 Tool shaped up.

Janet: I’m so proud of my team and the hard work we put into this tool. And how it will ultimately change the way we design for the built environment for the future. I mean, I didn’t know when I said to these guys “I have an idea” that it would become this incredible award-winning tool that is just taking off and is going to be applied across many different areas in any kind of piece of built environment. It’s really kind of great.

Carolyn: So I’m now realizing that I’m not the only one you say “hey, I have an idea” to.

Janet: No, in fact I think they all get a bit nervous when I say, “I have an idea”. Christine now actually says it’s the four scariest words she hears coming out of my mouth is “I have an idea.” It usually means more work for everybody.

Carolyn: Well I’ll say, don’t stop because your “I have an idea” to me led to us starting this podcast. And we encourage others to do so too, because it’s that kind of brainstorming that leads to new advances and benefits us all.

Janet: So true, we are so very proud of the work we are doing and how well received it is by the design AND school communities. We could not be more thrilled at the outcome. Sometimes I do have a few good ideas.

Carolyn: Yes, you do. And we should mention that this tool that you and your colleagues developed is really starting to catch on. I think you may have mentioned, it’s now being explored around the world.

Janet: Yes, and we’re now looking to expand this version into studying universities, here and abroad, where we can start applying our tool to higher education. It’s really quite amazing.

We could have never imagined when I said to this incredible group of core researchers that we should apply for this ASID– American Society of Interior Designers Foundation Grant, that so many places would be interested in adapting it for their purposes in ALL of their universities, as well as using the existing tool for their own version of K-through-12 grades.

I think I can speak for everyone on this panel that it goes beyond our wildest dreams, that this tool we created will to continue to expand. We have big plans for it. Or at least I do! (laughs)

Carolyn: And when you do, we’ll get everyone back together and do an episode about that. But for now, we should probably wrap up this one, don’t you think?

Janet: I do. A big thank you to our panel to Davis, Christine, and Molly for joining us today. And ‘thanks’ to all of you as well for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts— which now includes Pandora to replace the now defunct Stitcher, you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it again, Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon button, or the link to our GoFundMe page.

Janet: Yes, please do. And let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for topics you think we should be covering in upcoming shows!

Carolyn: And as our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed’

As always, thank you for stopping by.

Janet: Yes, thanks again. We’ll see you next time.

(Music up and out)

Creating Functional Spaces & Solving Design Crimes!
Guest: Ed Warner, Motionspot

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: Carolyn, we have a great show to share with everyone today,

Carolyn: … and once again, we are going global!

Janet: Yes we are!

Carolyn: We’ve got a smart…

Janet: … and witty!

Carolyn: … and generally wonderful guest from the other side of the so-called pond from us in the US… Ed Warner from Motionspot in the UK.

Janet: Motionspot has it all dialed in. I am excited about the work they are doing. Creating accessible spaces in the home, the workplace, and in hotels. And we even discuss The Queen! —I never thought I would be discussing The Queen and Design on the same podcast, but here we are!

Carolyn:  Ed even said the accessible design work for the Queen was a “step change” in the UK, helping to alter the mindset in the industry.

Janet: Uh huh. We also discuss the ‘design crimes’ being made— I love that term — and how to solve them. Ed will share some great examples of how Motionspot is raising the bar beyond the minimum required standards to design environments for people with a range of physical, cognitive, sensory needs— including neurodiversity.

Carolyn: But first, let me tell you a little more about Ed Warner. He co-founded the inclusive design studio Motionspot with his friend James Taylor…

Janet: (chuckles) … and FYI not the American folk superstar.

Carolyn: Nope. (Janet: Nope, laughs). So true. And what started as a personal quest to help James adapt his home after an accident left him paralyzed, led them to start their own company to design spaces that are accessible, inclusive, and beautiful. Motionspot is now an award-winning industry leader in inclusive design. They are based in the UK but work on projects around the globe.

Janet:  Including here in the US… it’s so impressive. We are very excited to have Ed on the show and could go on and on about him, but maybe it’s time to let him speak for himself, don’t you think, Carolyn?

Carolyn: Yes I do! And with that, here is our interview with Ed Warner… co-founder of Motionspot, creative visionary and inclusive trailblazer.

(Music / Interview)

Janet: Hello and welcome, Ed Warner from ‘Motionspot’ to Inclusive Designers Podcast. How are you today?

Ed: Hello, Janet. I’m really well thanks. Great to be here.

Janet: And you are calling in today from the UK, correct?

Ed: That’s right. I’m calling in today from my home studio in West London.

Janet: Oh, very nice. Well, welcome. I had found you in the magazine ‘Metropolis’ a little while ago. And I felt like your philosophy and Motionspots’ philosophy really was along the same lines on how I approach my inclusive designing. And I thought it would be interesting to talk to you about how you got started, your philosophy, Motionspots’ philosophy. And just to kind of give our listeners an opportunity to really hear the importance of having maybe even an inclusive bathroom within your own home, even if you’re not in a wheelchair.

Ed: Sure, uh well, Motionspot is an inclusive design business based in the UK but working internationally. I set the business up over 10-years ago now after the personal experience of an old school friend of mine and our co-founder James Taylor, who experienced a spinal cord injury in a diving accident, age 25.

He spent 8-months in a spinal injury unit in the UK and then returned to his home in South London as a wheelchair user to live his life as independently as possible. He returned home to a flat that was a beautiful home but was quite inaccessible to meet his needs. And he had a range of specialists come around and make adaptations for him.

I happened to have dinner with him in 2011. And he said to me over dinner every morning I wake up and I’m reminded of my condition because of the products around me. (Janet: Huh). And I looked at his home, and the home was, sort of resembling more like a clinical care home than his own home, full of so many products that tended to be sort of synonymous with aging and disability (Janet: Right).

And I’m a big believer that if you get the environment right for people, you can really positively impact cognitive and physical health. So I did that stupid thing that friends tend to do and said, oh, I’ll help you find some decent products. They must be out there. (Janet: laughs). And realized there was, there was very little on the market in 2011. So that was where Motionspot started.

Janet: That’s a really terrific story. And you’re so right about the cognitive and physical health of somebody. I talk frequently about my dad. He’s 87, so I’ve been helping him put in beautiful grab bars and ways to approach the bathroom that he has to make it more accessible for him at 87. And that includes for him to feel more comfortable, right? Like that he doesn’t think that he’s going to slip, or he is going to fall, right? So there’s certain things that I’ve helped him with.

But the reason why I bring that up is, is that he actually used the word disabled. Like, well, now I’m disabled. And even just those grab bars, and even though they’re beautiful, I mean, they’re the chrome that he loves, they’ve got designs on them. They look like just handles that you would have on your shower door anyways. But he is reminded of the fact that they are indeed grab bars, right?

But I think what’s interesting, like what you just said, is that if we can keep doing more beautiful work, like the work that you’re doing, I think it helps people to age in place, age in place comfortably.

And not sit there and be reminded that maybe they’re not as spry as they used to be, or maybe they are in some cases truly disabled. So, kudos to you. So, yeah, do you want to add anything with that?

Ed: Absolutely. Because I fully agree with the experience that your father has had. And I mean, that was what prompted us to start our business. It was to see how we could design really beautiful spaces that happened to be accessible and inclusive. And that very much started in the home because that was based on James’ experience. And we quite quickly built out a business that predominantly focused around accessible bathrooms for people in their own homes, because it’s the bathroom where so many disabled people and older people want the greatest independence. (Janet: Right).

It’s also the bathroom where the biggest ‘Design Crimes’ tend to happen. (Janet: ‘Design Crimes’, chuckles). But as our business has grown, we’ve expanded out into homes as well as commercial areas, helping to design really beautiful, inclusive workplaces and hotels, as well as housing, predominantly, housing for older people in retirement.

Janet: Yeah, we can talk all day about the failures of hotels, but I love that word ‘Design Crimes’ and you’re absolutely correct. My dads’ bathroom, I mean, it was done 25-years ago, and he didn’t need anything at that time, but let me just point out that they also didn’t put any places for towels, like a hook for a towel, like to come out of your shower.

I mean, it’s a beautiful bathroom, do not get me wrong. It is top of the line for where it was at that point, but it is definitely… I was so floored when I was like, well, where do you put your towels? He’s like, well, they’re over there by the toilet. But the shower is over on the other side of the room! So you’re absolutely, ‘Design Crimes’, I’m going to steal that from you.

Ed: Please do. Please do. Please, please use it. I mean, that experience is, I’m nodding because we come across that all the time. The default position around design for disability is designed for function and whoever comes into a home will design for function by putting some grab bars up and maybe putting in a roll-in shower floor, for example. But actually, designing for function doesn’t design for functionality. (Janet: Right).

So your point about missing robe hooks or towel radiators that keep the room warm, but actually potentially scald exposed skin. You know, the functionality of these bathrooms and other spaces needs thought.

And there’s got to be a much greater understanding that we shouldn’t just design for function. We should design for aesthetics as well as function. And you know, our big belief is, our design principles are shaped by the people who are ultimately using these spaces.

So, you know, we’ve got a brilliant, brilliant design team. Many of whom have got the lived experience of disability themselves, but actually, we really believe in evidence-based design thinking. (Janet: Right). So for us, we run so many focus groups with people with the lived experience of disability, or whatever the protected characteristic is, to get their feedback around what works and what doesn’t work within spaces.

And that’s what’s really exciting about our business. And also where the industry is moving. We are learning all the time as to how to make things better. The more we do and the more we speak to people.

Janet: Yeah. What you’re saying to me is always very exciting. Again, I recognized really early when I was reading that article that our philosophy is really lined up, and you’re absolutely right. Letting our listeners know that using evidence-based design and that this is the way that we should be designing anyways, and it should just become normalized. So, we’ll have all that information on our website, inclusive designers.com.

But I just want to back up just a little bit– how did you get started? So you said 10-years ago, you know, this wasn’t something that you came out of school with your friend James Taylor going, you know, like let’s figure this out, or that you had design background? I’m, I’m not quite sure, can you talk to me a little bit about your journey?

Ed: Yeah, I’m not a designer by training. So my background is in sales and marketing roles for a number of big food and drinks manufacturers. So I had good experience of development of product. And also good experience of understanding customer need, and fitting the product to customer need, and managing supply chain to get those products in front of customers.

But I’ve always been really passionate about design in my personal life. I’m fascinated by the impact that design has on people. And it was the insight that James gave me that really kind of opened my eyes to think actually, “Why? Why is this happening for him?”

And it’s not just him, that this is happening to… there are millions of people who are experiencing some form of challenge within spaces, whether that be in the home or outside of the home. And those individuals don’t want to be seen any differently. They don’t want to be treated any differently. They don’t want different options. They just want a range of designs and products that look great, but also work for them. So that was how I got into it.

And in the very first stages of building the business plan, it was all about, the usual thing with business plans, exploring the market, you know, how big is the market? (Janet: Right). And it became very clear, very quickly that this is a massive (Janet: Massive) market we’re talking about (Janet: It’s huge, laughs), and those numbers keep increasing. And I’m sure you’ve had a number of guests on your podcast talk already about the size of the market. (Janet: Yeah).

I then looked at the challenges that people were facing in that market. I went to speak to quite a range of manufacturers in this space in the UK, back in 2011. And a number of them said, “you are mad.” No one wants to pay for good design because these manufacturers were free issuing equipment through the National Health Service that does put in some adaptations free of charge to residents in the UK, but also housing associations that were providing these adaptations at very low cost. And the manufacturers themselves didn’t have to innovate to sell those products. (Janet: Right).

And I went to some trade shows in the UK, and they were just all really depressing trade shows. (Janet: Right). You’d walk in and it would be depressing equipment in, you know, finishes of light blue or light gray, and it just felt like I was in a hospital rather than in, in somebody’s home. (Janet: laughs).

And I got on a plane, and I went to Scandinavia and went to some trade shows in Scandinavia. And I don’t know if you’ve traveled to Scandinavia in terms of your work in design,

Janet: Not in terms of my work, because again, it’s relatively new for me. but I was getting ready to go to Scandinavia because one of places that they also have, they have like villages for people with dementia. That fascinates me. They have it all dialed in. I mean, they really do.

Ed: They do. And what they think about, Scandinavians, and this is a broad generalization, but is mostly true, is (Janet: Sure), is they think about design from the outset. And they think about design from a universal perspective and actually this is just good design for everyone. This isn’t an accessible space versus a non-accessible space. This is just about designing great spaces that look right for everyone. (Janet: Right).

So it was that again, inspired me that it could happen (Janet: Yeah), and came back to the UK, and initially in 2012, put a very small team of people together that included an interior designer, an occupational therapist who brought the skillset as to what someone required, if they had a specific condition, (Janet: Brilliant), and a really good builder, contractor, (Janet: Yup), and we started fitting out really beautiful, accessible bathrooms with that small team.

And that has since grown to, you know, we’re a team of 24, as I said, based out of a London design studio, but doing work across UK and internationally. So that’s how we started.

Janet: Yeah. Your story is quite fascinating that you also, I mean, you’re not just talking the talk, right? You’re also walking the walk. You have people who are on your staff who have different types of abilities. And so you get a very unique perspective with that as well, right?

Ed: Yeah. It’s really important to us from the outset is to get different perspectives into the business and help shaping the design principles and products. And that will continue as we grow. And we are really keen to involve greater numbers of people, whether they’re actually working in our business, or collaborating with us to give feedback to look at how we can further kind of improve our design principles and ultimately the design of our client.

Janet: Right. Yeah. We just did a podcast with Sour, and we talk about the idea of co-design and how important that process is, especially within this particular field. Right? So it’s important for us to keep that open. And I really applaud you for having had all the boxes checked. You know, you had the designer, the occupational therapist, you had the contractor. And so putting that team together I think has really helped to push your success.

So switching gears a little bit, so let’s talk a little bit about what the work is you are doing in the United States. I know you’re very excited about it. And the products that you’re providing for us. And I don’t want to sound ignorant here because I know the answer, but I want you to answer it. Like, is there any difference between the products that you have to have in the UK versus the products that you would have in the United States, you want to talk about that?

Ed: It’s a good question. There are some differences in product selection in those two markets. Most notably because of the ADA standards that you have in the states have some similarities with the standards in the UK and Europe, but there are some notable differences.

The work that we’ve been doing to date in the US is very much focused around design of inclusive workplaces. So as you know the ADA standards are very clear in the US. They’re very, you know, rigorous in the way that they’re both implemented and there are a number of surveyors that will go out and give reports on how accessible a building is versus ADA standard.

The challenge with ADA standards— and it’s the same with our building code in the UK and it’s the same with standards globally— is those codes are very much focused around a baseline standard which doesn’t necessarily deliver access for everyone. Those baseline standards are predominantly focused around design for physical disability, in particular wheelchair users. But in reality, only 8-percent of disabled people are wheelchair users. (Janet: Right).

So, the work we’ve been doing in the US is to help clients with a number of workplaces across the country understand how they can raise the bar beyond those minimum ADA standards, and design environments to suit people with a range of physical, cognitive, sensory needs— including neurodiversity, which is a big thing we’re being asked to design for at the moment.

But as our company has grown, we’ve been asked to design inclusively outside just disability. So we’re asked to design for faith and ethnic background and culture and gender. So we’ve been putting inclusive design standards in place with clients. And then evaluating their workplaces against those standards to present them a set of recommendations as to how they can improve those spaces. And then working through product solutions with them to make sure the space isn’t designed as a functional secondary space but looks and feels like the rest of the building.

And the main difference with ADA standards and Part M, which is our standard in the UK, is actually primarily focused around toilets, around washrooms. So the layout of an ADA bathroom is different to the layout of an accessible toilet in the UK. And the type of products that are used are slightly different, and the position of grab bars is slightly different. So, you know, our design team need to have knowledge of ADA Standard as well as Part M to be able to supply the products that we’re able to in the US.

Janet: Yeah, I think that that’s really kind of interesting. We’re going to try to do a global overview of the ADA. And who’s doing what, where, what’s really working, what’s not. And we hope you can come back. We’re not finished with you right now, but I just wanted to let you know that we would like to have you back at some other point in time.

Ed: We’d love to support that and actually just connected to that, I know you’ve had a recent podcast with Dr. Matteo Zallio. (Janet: Yes!) based out of Cambridge University. So we’ve done a lot of work with Matteo. I know Matteo very well. He’s done some amazing work with us providing research on different codes across the world and has, you know, had a really important role in shaping the global project I’ve just been talking about.

Janet: Well, we have him lined up. Just so we are clear, we have him, and I think maybe a couple of people in the Asian arena. So we’re going to do a… I’d like to say it’s an extravaganza, but it’s just another podcast. So,

Ed: Autumn extravaganza!

Janet: … extravaganza, but it will be our part to talk about it.

Ed: Yeah. I’m on for that, yeah.

Janet: So, but anyways, but you bring up a couple of good points, again for listeners that just don’t really know. This is not just for people in wheelchairs. Right? It’s two parts. In your discussion around, you know, it’s usually bathrooms, right? Like this is the highlight of the business, right?  But you know, it’s around also religion, and then also families, and gender issues, and so on and so forth. So, however you would like to break it down, you know, discuss whatever you would like to discuss first.

Ed: Sure, accessibility in inclusive design so often starts with bathrooms and washrooms. (Janet: Yes). Because that’s what people see, and that’s where some of the biggest problems happen within a building.

Janet: Right, design crimes. (laughs).

Ed: The design crimes happen. But actually, as clients sort of understand more about the principles of inclusive design, they realize that getting a wheelchair accessible toilet or bathroom located in a space is a sort of foundation stage for what they need to be thinking about. And the work that our team does is getting them to think about someone’s journey through a building.

And actually, we start often with someone’s journey from home to that building because an employer has a responsibility to get their staff from their place of home into their place of work in a safe way. (Janet: Right).

And then navigating through that space, what are all of the touchpoints that are important to think about from a design point of view. And that could be everything from how’s your entrance designed, how easy is it to define where your entrance is within a building.

So many of these new office blocks are heavily glazed structures, and (Janet: Oh, yeah), if you have a visual impairment (Janet: A visual impairment), or a cognitive impairment (Janet: Mm-hmm), you can’t determine where the main entrance is. (Janet: Yeah). Having some form of foyer area to enable people to compose from their transition from outside into a building is really important. (Janet: Right).

Making sure the seating area is right, the height of that seating, so if someone has arthritic hips or knees, or struggles with their core strength, that they have suitable seating for them. That the experience on the reception desk is right. There’s a hearing loop behind reception. You know, there are so many elements that go into the design of the building.

In answer to your question about how things are progressing beyond bathrooms into other protected characteristics outside of disability, we are getting involved in elements like design of faith rooms that, you know, at the moment, so many of our clients we speak to in the early stages of projects and they say, “oh well, we just, we reallocate a meeting room if someone from a different faith needs to pray in that space. And, you know, that meeting room wasn’t designed as a prayer room. (Janet: No). It’s not private enough. It can’t be locked. You know, there’s no ablution facilities for foot washing potentially before prayer.

So these are all sort of considerations that we help clients think about, as well as design of kitchenettes. So, you know, how are you separating halal food preparation from kosher food preparation. (Janet: Right, yeah). How are you celebrating different religious events like Ramadan to be able to screen off eating areas if you need to?

And so many of our conversations at the moment, and I know this has come up in a podcast before with you, is around design of all gender bathrooms and toilets (Janet: Right), and what the provision of those should be.

So, it’s kind of fascinating. Our business, as Motionspot started, designing really beautiful, accessible bathrooms and that so often is the first point of contact with the client (Janet: Sure). But then the penny drops and there’s such a greater understanding that actually the bathroom is just the starting point of it.

Janet: Right. Yeah. You are 100-percent correct. So it was funny, I just had a conversation with somebody the other day and it was around that. And it was a women in leadership type of programming and I said, “you know, like even office spaces are not gender neutral and don’t have special provisions for females.”

Meaning, it’s like, well, we have the same amount of stalls for men as we do for women. Like, well, all right, we know just by walking by the bathroom, there’s a long line of women out the hallway. Like, so maybe just maybe, we don’t have enough bathrooms. And so the women on this call were like, “that’s right”. And then I said, but even like in the office spaces, they’re also really geared towards men. Do you have any insights with some of this? I would be interested to hear about that.

Ed: We’ve done quite a lot of research on this area and it’s an area, particularly when it comes to gender in the workplace, that we’re planning to do a lot more research on this year. So you are right, currently provision of bathrooms and toilets in the majority of workplaces globally have too few facilities for the female workforce. (Janet: Right). And our big kind of recommendation whenever we talk about provision of toilets within a space is to ensure that there is adequate choice for everybody. (Janet: Correct).

So, you know, we’re working with a client at the moment who’s just designed a big 500-thousand square foot campus in Scotland. And they were saying, “how many female toilets do we need to male toilets, and then do we move everything to all gender and actually don’t have any female toilets and any male toilets?”

And we did a lot of research with their staff, but also using our own evidence that suggested moving all toilets to all gender is not the right approach. (Janet: Really). And I must clarify that when I talk about toilets to all gender, these are what’s called “super loos”. So you get the toilet, the basin, all in one cubicle. This isn’t a run of toilets that then has wash basins within the same space. So, they’re enclosed private spaces (Janet: Right).

But all the research has shown you shouldn’t turn everything to all gender. You should have a really suitable provision of female only toilets, (Janet: Right). You should have a good provision of all gender toilets.

You should have some male only toilets, but in terms of percentages, actually the percentage of male toilets should and could be less than all gender. And then you need totally separate wheelchair accessible toilets. (Janet: Right).

It is a fascinating kind of topic (Janet: Yeah), that I would say is still fairly early in terms of the research. But what is coming out and is a trend for us this year that we’re seeing is actually designed for the menopause within workplaces, (Janet: Really!). Yeah, this is something we’re seeing as a major trend for the UK in particular.

And we’ve got some, some really interesting research that’s going to be kicking off this year that begins to look at how you can design inclusive spaces for staff and visitors who are experiencing either perimenopause or the menopause.

Janet: I just put an exclamation point after menopause on my notes. (laughs). I would love to see what work you’re doing around that. As somebody who is of an older age, this fascinates me. And you know, and it was just even saw the other day, it was a commercial talking about menopause, and it was a public service announcement. And I was so floored by that. Well I guess it is something to talk about and they’re right. And holy moly. So, yeah, any kind of information you could push out to our listeners we’ll have all that information on our inclusive designers podcast webpage, again, inclusivedesigners.com.

So let’s switch gears a little bit. I noticed also when I was doing my research and I found that this might be kind of fun to talk a little bit about, you were quoted in the Times, is it the London Times, Is that correct?

Ed: …the Sunday Times, yes.

Janet: Yes. London Times, Sunday Style section, right, exactly. (Ed: Thank you). And it was prior to the Queen dying. And so she was about what, 95, 96 at that time. And they were talking about how they have implemented some of this type of work, some of the accessibility for her in some of the palaces. Some of the palaces or just Balmoral. I wasn’t too sure.

But I found this fascinating, and I want to label this part of the segment: ‘If it’s good enough for the Queen, it’s good enough for you.’ Do you want to talk a little bit about that article? And, we will also have that article up for our listeners to look at. It’s just kind of fun if nothing else.

Ed: That would be great, thank you.

Janet:  Yeah. What was your takeaway from that?

Ed: Yeah. Thank you for picking up on the article. We were actually delighted to have been featured in that particular article. And we’re moving into a new design studio in March of this year, and I’ve just had it framed. (Janet: laughs). It’s going ‘pride of place’ in our office, (Janet: As well it should, yeah).

Yeah. “A Design That’s Fit for A Queen.” It was really interesting when that article came out because as you know, the queen is, uh, was, held in such high regard, not only in the UK but internationally (Janet: Correct). And people were aware of her age and could quite clearly see, you know, how her age was beginning to impact what she was able to do in terms of numbers of public engagements, (Janet: Right).

And when that article came out, I think there was a realization that, even the Queen at 96 needs some additional support in the home. And of course, she doesn’t want her home looking and feeling like a hospital. (Janet: Neither, right). She wants it to be appropriate to suit her home as well as her needs.

And for us, it was a step change in thinking in the UK that actually just got people asking the question of, you know, “this can happen, and this can happen and still look beautiful.”

So many people in the UK, and I’m sure it’s the same in the US, as they get older, they put off the decision to either move into a home that’s suitable for them or adapt their home because they’re fearful (Janet: Correct, yeah), to, we’ve discussed it already, that it will look disabled…

Janet: it’s going to look old. It’s going to look like institutional, right? Granny bars…

Ed: And they will feel disabled. (Janet: Yeah). And you know, that article gave kind of further reinforcement really that, you know, people can and should be thinking about this ideally as early as possible in life. (Janet: Correct).

And, you know, one of our biggest frustrations is when someone in their late 80s approaches us and says, I urgently need this adaptation in the home. And they may have had a condition that they would’ve had leading up to it for many years, but actually, they don’t adapt the home until at a point of crisis. (Janet: Crisis, right). And by the time of crisis, it’s often too, too late. (Janet: Yeah).

So we are trying to change the thinking that, you know, we should all be living in futureproof, adaptable, beautiful homes like the Scandinavians. And if as designers we can be encouraging and inspiring the industry around what to do, then we can all be, ultimately, living in homes that hopefully will be suitable for us as we get older.

Janet: Right. Yeah. And it’s really talking about living in your forever home at that point. And look, there’s definitely going to be certain needs that will need to be addressed by people who have special abilities and trained to take care of these things.

And it also can be something that it’s not a permanent situation or an aging situation where, like you said, it’s just only going to get more into some sort of crisis. I mean, it could just be something that is a temporary situation.

I mean, I know that when I broke my leg, I had  just redone my own bathroom and my own shower and I had the handheld, I had a bench in there. I had the ability to get over the threshold and now I wish I had put the threshold down just a little bit more now that I know better.

But at least I had the ability to have some sort of independence and I just could put on this little plastic, you know, thing over the boot and then be able to get in and out of the shower by myself.

Ed: That concept of flexibility and temporary support is something we see a lot of. And actually one of our most popular products in the bathroom at the moment is a set of removable grab rails and shower seats. So you can fit grab rails and shower seats to a bathroom wall.

And you can literally, without any tools, you can unscrew those grab bar and shower seat when you don’t need it and fit a cover plate over the fixing. And all you see on the wall is this subtle stainless-steel plate. (Janet: Right). And you know, there are manufacturers at the moment working on what to do with that plate. You could turn that into a soap dish or a towel rail or a holder.

But it’s that concept of flexibility and adaptability that is so important in bathrooms (Janet: Correct),  you know, we talk about it as dual design features. (Janet: Nice). So I think you mentioned it right at the start of this conversation when you were talking about your father’s bathroom. It’s the little features that if you didn’t need them, you wouldn’t even know were there. (Janet: Right).

So, you know, another example of it is sort of some integrated hand grips within a wash basin, and it helps a wheelchair user pull underneath the wash basin. (Janet: Yeah). But you can also hang hand towels off those hand grips. (Janet: Yeah). It’s a dual design feature that works for everyone.

Janet: Yeah, it’s absolutely true. Well, I’m kind of mindful of your time Ed.

Ed: Ha, thanks.

Janet: So is there anything else that you would like to add at this point for our listeners? Is there any points that we haven’t touched on that you would like to emphasize? Anything that you really want these listeners to understand about what it is that you and Motionspot do and/or a philosophy, or something? I just want to make sure we get everything out on the table today.

Ed: Thanks, Janet. Just two things I’d like to bring to listeners’ attention. And the first one is, the potential to design really beautiful accessible hotel accommodation. So, certainly in the UK, accessible hotel accommodation for so long has been really poorly provided.

Janet: It’s been horrific.

Ed: And the rooms that have been supplied, have looked like those clinical institutional rooms. And if you speak to any finance director of any hotel, they’ll tell you the least popular rooms are their accessible rooms. Because if someone is put in that room, the first thing they do is go to reception and say, I want to be moved from this room to another.

And we’ve seen a real step change in the UK but also through international hotel operators who are committing to designing 10-percent of their rooms to be fully accessible. So we’ve been working with hotel operators to help them understand how they can design really beautiful bedrooms and bathrooms to be accessible. But also how can they design other features in the hotel, whether that be reception experience, eating, drinking, (Janet: Right), and general sort of access throughout the building.

And we’ll send you some examples of some case studies on this because there’s some great examples of really clever, integrated, track hoist in ceilings, (Janet: Yeah), and really kind of beautiful accessible bathrooms that we’d love to send you. And there’s some really interesting return on investment statistics that are coming out.

Janet: That’d be great.

Ed: So, for example, there’s a hotel in Manchester called Hotel Brooklyn (Janet chuckles- *because she is from Brooklyn NY), that installed 18 accessible bedrooms and bathrooms.

And, you know, they’ve been doing some return-on-investment work that says those accessible rooms have generated them an additional 50-thousand pounds, close to, probably now with exchange rates, 65-thousand US dollars of revenue because those accessible rooms are so popular and disabled guests are actively booking conference rooms.

They put on a wedding for a bride with a disability this year. So, there is all of this sort of hidden income that comes in just from businesses really embracing accessibility in the right way. So, think about accessible hospitality is the recommendation.

And the other area I wanted to touch on is just the advance of accessible technology and the impact that technology is having around inclusive design. And we’re seeing some brilliant products come to market at the moment that will keep people safer in their homes for longer.

And whether that be technology around monitoring health and well being to ‘wash-and-dry’ toilets. We’re seeing a lot of ‘wash-and-dry’ toilets for care bathrooms at the moment. And Japanese style toilets that take away what is a very personal care task and enable people to live independently in their homes for longer.

We’re looking at some mirror technology at the moment that if someone had sort of later stage dementia and they weren’t able to recognize their own reflection in the mirror, at the press of a button, you can transform your mirror into a picture frame or an image of something that’s really special to that individual. So there’s some really interesting things happening with technology.

The one recommendation I’d make is if you’re going down the root of integrating technology, think about how all this tech can communicate with each other, and have the right desired output, rather than being standalone systems that operate independently of each other.

Janet: Talking about the advancement in technology, I’m a big fan of it, but I also know that technology doesn’t always work. So how do you get around that? As a designer, I think there should always be like a backup system. And is that your thoughts as well?

Ed: It is, yeah. Technology in our view is a really important overlay that can enable people to live well and independently, but you could have the best technology and you could put it in a really inaccessible space, and you’re going to have a really inaccessible experience. The technology on its own will not deliver the accessibility and inclusion in the space. (Janet: Right).

So first and foremost, you’ve got to think about how you get the layout of your space, right? What products go in there that will enable that space to meet your needs, but also be adaptable to suit your needs in the future. And then overlay technology that may further enhance your experience at home or in a commercial space. That’s how we see the role of technology being played. (Janet: Yeah). Because importantly, if the technology then fails, you’ve got a space and physical products that will work for you.

Janet: Right. Yeah, exactly. And I found that mirror to be interesting. So one of the things I’ve seen so far is the, you know, putting a curtain over the mirror. I actually didn’t know that. My mom had suffered from dementia, and she didn’t ever get frightened by seeing her face. So I know that this wasn’t necessarily a problem for her, but I know it’s a natural phenomenon.

And so like, I’ve seen the curtains, but I think that that’s fascinating to like, be able to press a button and then maybe a picture of like a baby or a cute kitten or a puppy can come up, and help to lower those stress levels, especially if they’re like sundowning or something of that nature. I’m going to check that out. Yeah.

Ed: Exactly (Janet: Yeah). Exactly that. And, you know, we are big believers in putting designs and products into homes that everyone will want. So if you had an elderly parent that’s, you know, passed away and the house came up for sale, we want to make sure that whoever is buying that house, who may be a younger individual, looks at that space and goes, “wow, that’s a really contemporary bathroom or kitchen that, you know, I don’t need to come in and spend a load of money stripping out.” (Janet: Right). And putting my own design into. (Janet: Yup).

And a lot of the work we do is also connected to sustainability and looking at reducing environmental impact. (Janet: Brilliant). And if you can design inclusively and design beautiful designs from the outset, (Janet: Right), you don’t need to go and fit another bathroom or kitchen or whatever the design is in a home if it works. (Janet: Right).

Then I think if I was to move into a house with a bathroom with a mirror that had a curtain over it, the first thing I’d do is remove the curtain. But if there was a smart mirror there that had the capability for me to put something else on it. (Janet: Yeah), or if I wanted a bath and I wanted music to come out of that mirror, there is the capability for it to be able to do that. And that’s what we’re trying to promote is to think inclusively from the outset so it can appeal to everyone.

Janet: And I would add that there are some days nowadays that I would just assume look at a kitten in the mirror as opposed to my own face. (Ed laughs). But that’s just…

Ed: … Wouldn’t we all Janet, wouldn’t we all.

Janet:  It’s just, you know. (Ed laughs). Yeah, Carolyn’s like, I’m just going to cut that part out, and I’m like, all right. (Ed laughs). But I think one of the things that designers really have to know is that, you know, people get reluctant to do it because they’re afraid that it will look like a granny flat, right? It will look like a, we call them granny bars here and institutional, right? And so how do you kind of get around that?

And I think also, when you’re talking about, like, more of these places like hotels, that there’s a real financial advantage that they can take, well, take advantage of. That they can go in and implement these things and then, the revenue will follow.

And I would argue, kind of going back again to the residential, is that if you can go and provide a beautiful space, I don’t think anybody’s going to sit there and go, “oh, look at all these grab bars.” If it just comes with the design seamlessly, nobody would go and sit there and go, “oh, you know, this is not what I was hoping for” and then, so nobody’s going to lose any value off of their homes.

Ed: Absolutely. (Janet: Right). Yeah. And the only way of changing that mindset is through use of really inspirational content, whether that be through photography, lifestyle photography, or video, is to show what is possible by designing either a really beautiful, accessible home or accessible hotel or accessible workplace to get designers acknowledging that it is possible. (Janet: Right).

And designers, by their very nature are super creative people (Janet: Right). And what unfortunately happens is they’re constrained by regulations like ADA and other accessible building codes across the world. (Janet: chuckles). And they panic and they say, “if I start thinking outside the box, I could get sued here if I get it wrong. (Janet: Right).

And what we encourage is: yes, the fundamentals of ADA have to be in place, but you as designers can and should be super creative in your thinking, (Janet: Thank you!) and let’s design right.

Janet: Yes! Right, I got excited about that because we have talked multiple times, you know on ‘Inclusive Designers Podcast’ about just that. The fact that designers have come to me and have asked me essentially how to get around the ADA. Like, how do I get around this? It’s like an obstacle and it shouldn’t be an obstacle. You’re absolutely right, it should be the challenge. And I tell them that all the time, it’s the challenge. You’re the designer… you figure it out.

Ed: Yeah, totally agree. And to your point about the financial advantage, whether you are a designer designing someone’s home, whether it is your home, yourself that you are designing, or you’re a client that’s looking at the design of a commercial space, whatever you spend on inclusive design during the design stage for both the principles as well as the product, will pay back so many times over.

We worked with a workplace client in the UK that the head of capital projects turned around to me the other day, and she said, “every one pound I spent on inclusive design saved me a hundred pounds in retrofits at a later stage.” (Janet: Interesting). So that’s hundred-times benefit of getting it right from the outset. (Janet: Yeah). And that would equate in dollar terms. This is a global opportunity to get it right from the outset. And, you know, unfortunately, it’s the way the world works. We need to demonstrate the financial benefit. (Janet: Bingo).

But actually there are more and more case studies coming out that if you think about it at the right stage, this not only will create really beautiful, accessible spaces, but it will save you money in the long run. (Janet: The long run). And in fact, for some businesses it will make you money (Janet: Make you money), by doing it.

Janet: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that’s terrific.

Ed: So, hospitality and technology, and I suppose closing message for me is really sort of reinforcing what we’ve been talking about and, you know, it is so possible with the right level of design thought at the right stage of a project to deliver really kind of beautiful, accessible, and inclusive spaces for everybody that don’t necessarily have the cost anymore if they’re thought about at the right stage.

And you know, I’m delighted to have been invited onto your podcast today. And well done for growing the following because we need more of these types of podcasts, and information that’s free to access for everybody to help inspire and get people thinking differently.

Janet: Well, thank you Ed Warner. I appreciate the comments. Thank you so much for coming on our show today. Thank you so much for doing what you do and for all the work that you’re doing. I think it’s fabulous and I’ll have you and Matteo on in maybe in a couple of months or so.

Ed: We’d love to come back.

Janet: Thank you again for coming to Inclusive Designers. We’ll have all of our information on inclusive-designers-dot-com.

Ed: Great!

Janet: Please check us out and please check out Ed Warner at Motionspot.

Ed: Yeah.

Janet: Well, thank you so much, Ed.

Ed: Pleasure.

Janet: I mean this was really fantastic.

Ed: Great to speak to you both.

Janet: Yeah, thank you.

(Music / Outro)

Janet: I really enjoyed talking to Ed… his comments and philosophy are right in-line with our ideas here at Inclusive Designers Podcast. And I am really inspired by the work that Motionspot is doing. They understand the importance of evidence-based design thinking. And believe in transforming spaces— and lives— through beautifully designed, inclusive environments that provide independence… in the home, workplace, hotel, and well, everywhere.

Carolyn:  And in their latest research, they’re exploring cutting-edge designs and products for the workplace and other venues, to make spaces equitable for people of different faiths and genders.

Janet: And don’t forget menopause! I am so curious to hear their findings on that!

Carolyn: Right? And in terms of accessible technology, there are some great advances being made —like that mirror that can change to a picture— who wouldn’t want that?

Janet: I know I do… but as Ed agreed, technology should be an overlay component of good design. If not, you can put the best technology in a really inaccessible space, and you’re going to end up with an inaccessible experience.

Carolyn: Which leads us to his use of the term ‘design crimes’ to describe the examples of bad design, or places where the ‘function doesn’t match functionality’.

Janet: Yup, we’ve all seen it, especially in bathrooms. Hotel design for accessibility is so poor. Maybe we should think about doing that as another episode.

Carolyn: So true, (Janet: um hmm). And according to Ed, case studies are proving that if you design beautiful, accessible, and inclusive spaces right from the outset, it will save you money in the long run by not having to adapt it later.

Janet: Yes, I am so pleased that Ed brought that up. And how about that Hotel Brooklyn in England, (shout out to Brooklyn!), with the financial advantages of having accessible rooms! Listen up people!

Carolyn:  You are the queen of shout outs to Brooklyn (Janet: laughs, Yup). And speaking of queens… Ed discussed that even Queen Elizabeth required accessible updates in her castle as she was aging. It set a great example that these changes can happen and be beautiful. And you don’t have to be a Royal to realize that this can help people who want to age-in-place comfortably.

Janet: Exactly….  and we will share the link for that article, ‘Design That’s Fit for a Queen’… plus how to contact Ed and the links to the incredible work he and his team at Motionspot are doing. And of course, many of the other things that were mentioned along the way during this discussion… all on our website at inclusive-designers-dot-com.

Carolyn: That’s: inclusive-designers-dot-com…

Janet: A big thank you to Ed. And ‘thanks’ to all of you as well for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts, you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it again, Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page.

Janet: And just as a reminder, drop us a note if you have any questions, or topics you’d like us to cover in upcoming shows! As our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed’ As always, thank you for stopping by. We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

Living in a ‘VUCA’ World – The Importance of Co-Design!
Guest: Pinar Guvenc, Partner, SOUR Studio

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: Carolyn, we have a great show to share with everyone today! But first, I’m happy to say that ‘Feedspot’ still has us as one of the “Best Design Podcasts on the Internet”

Carolyn: … and a big ‘thank you’ to you our listeners for that!

Janet: Exactly

Carolyn: And I think this episode should continue to keep us on that list too.

Janet: Definitely, and especially because our guest today is Pinar Guvenc… a partner at SOUR Studio, where they understand the importance of co-design, and also what it means for inclusive designers.

Carolyn: Fun fact, not only is their name ‘SOUR’ a play on the words ‘Social’ and ‘Urban’ but it also describes their “we’re not going to sugar-coat it” attitude.

Janet: And that attitude helps her, and her team, tackle global design challenges, using collaborative research to find the best solutions. She has some great examples that she will share.

Carolyn: But first, let me tell you a little more about Pinar Guvenc… She is a partner at SOUR, an international, award-winning hybrid design studio with the mission of addressing social and urban problems. At SOUR, Pinar leads their business and design strategy. Their work includes projects from architecture to urban design to product design.

As they describe themselves, quote, “we don’t shy away from challenges. We embrace the discomfort. We take our time— to research, synthesize, and ideate — in order to generate data-inspired and purposeful design solutions,” end quote.

Janet: Pinar will also explain what it means to live in a VUCA world, and the difference between complex and complicated systems.

Carolyn: If like me, you’ve never heard the term ‘VUCA world’ before, stay tuned, Pinar will explain it…

Janet: Yes she will, and we don’t want to keep anyone in suspense for too long, so let’s get to it!

Carolyn: Absolutely. And with that, here is our interview with Pinar Guvenc… Design strategy expert, co-design advocate & practitioner, educator, and forever student…

(Music / Interview)

Janet: Hello and thank you Pinar so much for joining us today on Inclusive Designers Podcast. How are you doing?

Pinar: Good, Janet. Thank you for having me. How are you?

Janet: I’m doing great. I know we just did a little overview about you, but I would love to hear in your own words who you are and what is SOUR and what do you guys do?

Pinar: Of course. Well, I’m Pinar, I’m partner at SOUR. We are a hybrid design studio with the mission of addressing social and urban problems. So as a mission list studio, we get to work on very diverse typology of work, whether that’s from architecture to urban design to product design. And our mission also really calls for us to have ongoing collaborative research.

So it’s very much in our DNA to practice co-design because that’s the only way we could actually serve our mission. It would be very naive for us to believe we can tackle global challenges on our own. I think we’re globally getting to that realization as well. And so that’s what we’re practicing.

And I guess the SOUR is a play on the words social and urban, but we also believe it represents our attitude. (laughs). We don’t shy away from discomfort. We embrace being in the gray. And when we first launched, we said there’s enough sugar coating in the world, so it’s time to get real and be SOUR. So that’s it.

Janet: Interesting. I love that, I really do. It’s, you know, like something like a lemon, right? It’s sour, but there’s something really great and refreshing about it.

Pinar: Yeah, It’s an acquired taste (Janet: Right). And it suits well with us because sometimes people don’t understand us, ‘What do you do exactly?’ Like you get to need to know us. You know? So I think in that sense it represents us. I remember this, this was actually like fun fact when we were first incorporating, I remember our attorney being, like noticing the foreigner names, right? And like maybe, (Janet: Uh, oh), “You do know what ‘sour’ means, right?” (Janet: No!). (laughs). And I’m like, yes.

Janet: Oh my goodness.

Pinar: He was very judgmental.

Janet: He was very judgmental. Oh my goodness, right, oh, I hope you fired him.

Pinar: Yeah. That might be the last time we chatted.

Janet: Oh, that’s wild. Well, let’s kind of hop into like what this means about co-design. I find this topic interesting and especially when we talk about being inclusive designers, right? I mean, it kind of goes hand in hand, but it also, I think it makes us better designers. Do you want to talk a little bit about your theories and your ideas about co-design?

Pinar: Of course. So, you know, obviously when we talk about like the definitions of co-design or parts of story design practices or inclusive design, it feels like a no-brainer and very common sense. But then just because it is common sense doesn’t mean it is common practice. (Janet: Right).

So we like to go back and kind of support it also by just like our current status quo in the world and system theory to really like go into the roots of why it also actually is a survival strategy. It’s not even a nice to have anymore. So, we live in a VUCA world today for people who know that, or don’t know that?

Janet: Yeah, I was going to say, explain to our listeners what VUCA World is, (Pinar: Yeah), and I find this fascinating too.

Pinar: Yeah, so VUCA stands for ‘Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous’. And it is basically used to define the world that we live in today. And if the pandemic, the war, and all sorts of crazy things happening in the world aren’t, is not enough proof, I don’t know what is. (Janet: Right).

So because we’re in a such complex domain and it’s only getting more complex, when we look into like systems theory, how we address a complex system is very, very different than a complicated system.

Where in a complicated system, you go in and you analyze, you call in experts. There’s some like good practice recommendations. You pick one, you go with it, right? It’s the world of, ‘you know what you don’t know’. So you need to learn what you don’t know, and you figure it out.

But complex systems are the world of unknowns. You don’t even know what you don’t know, right? And that’s the world we live in today. (Janet: Right). So we can’t have an analysis engineering approach. And if we do, we’re always either missing stuff or not testing assumptions, right? Like, there’s a great chance that we’re leaving so much behind that we’re not even aware that’s there.

So a complex system actually calls for probing the system and seeing reaction and therefore really adapting to that, and then finally coming up with an emergent practice. So basically, it calls for innovation, (Janet: Right), right? It calls for rapid prototyping, it calls for rapid experimentation and especially safe to fail experimentation to be able to implement within.

So because having innovation, like design innovation process is necessary for the world that we live in today, the only way we can really innovate in the most proper way is through collaboration. (Janet: Right). Right.

And you know, I think we love to read success stories on like this, you know, big tech person just came out with this… it’s, it’s never that, right? There’s a huge army of people creating things. (Janet: Right). It’s always Interdisciplinary collaboration. (Janet: Yeah),

And it has to be embedded in our DNA, in our practice and how design precedes really in projects and product development processes. So with that, I think just collaboration basically is the only way we could really address where, like, our world today…

Janet: some real problems, right? (Pinar: Yeah). The VUCA World.

Pinar: The VUCA World, and that’s why we have to co-design because collaboration is a very loosely used term. Like even a vendor relationship is called a collaboration, where collaboration is really not that, Right? Collaboration is, parties are involved, but they also have shared goals.

There’s like a partnership involved and co-design enables that partnership. Co-design treats all stakeholders as equal. It values lived experiences as much as professional experiences. And it doesn’t mean, and I’m highlighting this because sometimes I get like a knee jerk reaction from the design community to the concept of co-design where like, but we’re the designers, you know, we can’t design together.

Janet: Right. We’ve had this conversation offline (Pinar: Yeah), is the idea that everybody thinks that they know everything or that they can get it. We do a lot with trauma informed design, and I’m always surprised on how many people think, well, an hour ‘lunch and learn’ ought to do it, right? It kind of floors me. I’ve spent probably just this last year alone, about 1200 hours looking at it, studying it. But yeah, if you feel like you’ve got it over lunch, you know, it’s, it’s good for you. Right.

Pinar: Yeah. And also, it’s such a narrow view, right? Like, to me, when a reaction comes like that, I am realizing how we’re looking at this design process through such a narrow lens, because by co-design we don’t mean people going on Rhino together and trying to 3D model together, right? Like what we mean is authentic partnership in the process.

So, engaging stakeholders from beginning and not necessarily like, sharing ideas and prototypes with almost ready to launch or close to finish. Right? (Janet: Right), which has been the more traditional ways of this working. Like really engaging in exploration, synthesizing the data together, co-ideating, (Janet: Right), And then giving prototype and idea feedback.

This partnership is the process, and it does need to be adapted based on the industry you’re in, the geography you’re in, all the stakeholders involved, like all those are determining factors on how a co-design process could happen in a project.

But the principles are the same, right? (Janet: Right). People are treated as partners, power is shared, and there’s an authentic engagement from commencement to completion. (Janet: Right). So yeah. So because of VUCA, it’s the only way we can survive the world today.

Janet: Right. I do find this, it’s so interesting and just even in my own travels, I’m always surprised on… it’s, I feel like it’s the proper way to think. I feel like it’s something that we, in order to survive in this VUCA world, as you said, I think that that’s the only way to do it. (Pinar: Yeah). And again, and I’m so surprised when people are so unwilling. Do you think it’s just— I don’t want to sound flip about this— do you think it’s sort of like old-fashioned thinking or is it a control thing? Or what exactly do you think, like what drives people to say: ‘No, no, I got this’.

Pinar: Yeah. I mean, I think there are two factors. One being like, we’re creatures of habits, (Janet: Sure). If we’ve been used to doing one thing one way, we want to do that. So that resistance to change might be in place. (Janet: Right). But I think there’s also the myth around co-creation or co-design, like it would take more time, it would be more costly, right? (Janet: Right). So those two, uh, biases towards the process could be a turnoff, I think. (Janet: Sure).

Again man, it’s so wrong, right? Like those who practice know that with a co-design process, you’re like 50-percent ahead of the game because the insights you’re generating are so much more meaningful and accurate for the project that you’re potentially eliminating so much cost that will come up in the back-end or even like mid-project if you don’t do it.

And also that speeds you up in the design process. All designers would agree that if we have a brilliant design brief, that helps in the design process, right? So how we re-frame the problem, how we identify the problem and create a framework for designers through co-design process, I think that really also speeds up and informs the design so accurately.

So I think we need to really change our mindset about what we don’t know, the fear, right? (Janet: Right). So the fear of like trying something new, it might cost more, it might take more, and really, just prove ourselves that we’re wrong, right? (Janet: Right). Like, it’s not necessarily the case.

Janet: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, you come out with a better product, right? (Pinar: Yeah). That’s the sort of the ultimate goal here, that makes so much sense to me, you know. And especially with the human experience within the built environment, (Pinar: 100-Percent). It just, right, makes us happier and healthier and wiser and smarter and, (Pinar: 100-Percent), and likely even, even more wealthy, you know? (Pinar: Yeah!). So, it comes down to, even though it might be more money up front, is it one of those things, right?

Pinar: Yeah, and it’s not even that much more money, right? (Janet: Right). I think like compared to what the end result could actually be to correct it or to do another round of prototyping. Like all those costs are higher than engaging diverse participant and compensating people for their time. Right?

So I think we need to really understand that. And it’s interesting because if you go to a person and say, would you do something very risky or with high budget without validating your assumptions, they would say ‘no’.

But not doing co-design is basically that, because there is no way as humans and in our own teams, and no matter how big of a company you are, you won’t all have the representation that diverse representation needed for projects. (Janet: Right). Like never in your team only can you represent that. (Janet: Yeah).

So we’re already going in with assumptions, our biases, prejudices, we’re human, all of us have it. (Janet: Right), conscious, unconscious… (Janet: Well that’s just it, yeah), yeah. So I think when a person would say like, ‘no, of course I would validate assumptions,’ but then could follow that process, forgetting that that’s what we’re doing when we’re not doing co-design. We just like move on to design with our own assumptions and biases and not even realizing that potentially, because it’s not like designers are malicious people. Like, let’s exclude others.

Janet: I don’t know, I’ve met a few Pinar. I’m just going to throw that out there. (laughs). So, alright, but you know actually, (Pinar: that’s a whole other episode), it’s a whole other episode. Exactly. Malicious designers and, (P: laughs), well, but this brings up a couple of different points. One is this new program that, or program, or what did we decide to call it?

Pinar: You can call it the framework if you want.

Janet: Framework. Okay.

Pinar: Yeah.

Janet: You have this framework and it’s called, Why Language Matters, right? (Pinar: hmm). And when we talk about DEI— and I think DEI should also add an A on there for Accessibility— but, you know, we’re, we’re getting there. But I would love for you to talk to our listeners a little bit about this, because I think it’s so important.

Let me just give you a brief example as to, like you said, we have our own biases and our own things that we’re taught that maybe are just wrong. For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine, I was under the impression we were calling it ‘The Ukraine’. And I was told, ‘no, no’ pretty quickly on that you don’t say ‘The Ukraine’ and, and how it’s demeaning. And it was part of this thing that was, if I understand it correctly, you know, it was sort of to degrade Ukrainians.

And, I had no idea, right, like that that was something that for me was such an eye-opener. But you have this beautiful, well displayed framework about why language matters and, and talking about it in terms of equality. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Pinar: Yeah, we recently published that just because in the end, all the processes that we’re involved in, it doesn’t matter if you’re in design, r-and-d, supply chain, they’re very human processes because they’re driven by humans. Even AI is driven by humans, (Janet: Right). AI has the exact biases that its creators carry.

Which is funny because we, actually went with this, like, I just want to like quick caveat, when this like mid journey visual explorations started to happen and we would just dump in bunch of different words to see what visual is going to come up. We put in ‘people and architecture’ in, the words, and nothing. AI wasn’t able to bring up anything. Isn’t that depressing? (laughs). It was just like, there was an astronaut and a weird like architecture, but like what, we were like, ‘what?’ like there’s nothing that AI could come up in ‘people and architect, architecture’ – very insightful for our industry.

Janet: … that’s really insightful, right?

Pinar: Yeah! Because AI is basically scanning anything out there on that and then like comes up with a visual and it wasn’t able to find much, which is sad but true, but also a very sheer realization that we need to do something about it. (Janet: Right).

So basically, I think because everything that is out there is driven or led, or managed by humans, we in the end have to properly communicate with each other, Right?

So, when we did a publication on co-design frameworks too, like one thing we did mention is understanding positionality. Where are we all coming from? What is our own biases? Again, prejudices, experiences that might have impact, positive or negative in the process. Just being aware of that, right? Like going into any process. And then, how do we distribute power also, like maybe there’s a very strong dominant figure in the team, how do we make sure they’re not leading the entire conversation and people feel intimidated and not speak up and all of that, right? (Janet: Right, yeah).

So the initial step is really just like recognizing the positionality of the team and also who’s not here, (Janet: Right), who’s missing, (Janet: Right), why are they missing? So like really just doing a quick reflection on the team and status before going in. And you can do this like throughout the project too.

And then, the next step is the communication, right? Like once the team is there, how do you communicate with each other? Many people, if you’re working on an international project, language is a huge barrier, right? (Janet: right). Trying to understand each other. It’s like…

Janet: …what is sour? (laughs). (Pinar: Yeah, exactly!). What is, do you know what sour means? Right. (Pinar: Yeah).

Pinar: Exactly. (Janet: Right). And you know, one like simple phrase in your culture might be totally offensive in another. (Janet: Correct). So there’s cultural differences, experiential differences, things that we might just be more sensitive to, like certain trigger words based on our own experience, ability, whatever that is, right? (Janet: Right).

So, once we understand people better, that also helps us to think about how we communicate with one another. And it’s just something that we need to exercise on. And just be mindful of the principles, like on an ongoing basis, both for our internal processes first, and then on how we’re communicating things out to the world.

I think what fascinates me, with all this like creative agency capabilities and like powerhouse creative agencies out there, brands follow universal messaging in so many things, which is sometimes fine. Like in a brand identity, you want universal messaging, right? (Janet: Sure).

Like you want to keep things consistent, but then when you launch products, we don’t recognize that we need to adapt language and communication based on both the geography that we’re in, but also the generation that we’re like appealing to, or speaking to, or just different personalities and characteristics, that “intersectionalities” that people might have. (Janet: Right). How do we appeal to that? How do we make sure things resonate with people?

A great example is, we’ve been doing this project that we started mid-year on exploring how people adopt sustainable practices, right? And this is for a consumer goods company that launches a lot of products with more environmental-friendly packaging or formula and things like that. And yet, they don’t see quick interest or adoption of these products and eventually they get discontinued. Right? (Janet: Right).

So, the product is not the problem. It could be, it might have lousy packaging or labeling, whatever. That’s like one other design problem. But also when these things come out, how do we launch it? How do we communicate to people is so, so, so important. (Janet: Right). And so, in understanding that we did really in-depth interviews, like one-on-one interviews and dyads in 11 markets, from Columbia to France to Canada, and in Lebanon, US, let me see, Mexico, Greece, there are a few more. And interview, like talking to people about sustainability in general, right.

And the people you assume that might care, leaves are like composting. They’re like way advanced than I am. And like I consider myself a responsible consumer. (Janet: laughs), I’m like, ‘wow, I don’t do that’. Yeah, and then why do I even have that perception that she might not care, or he might not care, right, like that, like I’m calling out on my own bias. (Janet: Right).

And that was like a very sheer visualization also to the client too because we would compile those and basically create a short documentary. (Janet: Right). But what we also did, we interviewed people from their offices in the same markets too. Because if we really want to achieve a human-centered design, we have to interview both the people who are going to use it and the people who are going to create it. Right?

Because you can’t necessarily dump all the responsibility on the consumer and you can’t necessarily just have this very high level, sophisticated, all like insider knowledge infused, messaging to put it out into the world and expect people to adopt it. Right? (Janet: Right). So it really had to become this common understanding. So that common understanding can only be studied if we basically co-create with everybody involved, the client itself and the consumers.

Janet: Right. Yeah, I was going to say, back to the whole idea co-design. (Pinar: Exactly). I just want to, give our listeners, make sure everybody knows that we’ll have all of the information for Pinar and all the stuff that we’re talking about on our website@inclusivedesigners.com. That’s first things first.

And I actually have a background in marketing, and I want to tell our listeners a real quick, kind of cute story, and maybe at some point, Carolyn, we’ll actually just cut it out of the program, (Pinar: laughs), but here we go.

So the, the funniest thing that I ever heard of was, I guess in one particular country, you put the picture of what is in the product, right? So whatever is the products on the inside of the jar or can or whatever, you put the picture on the front. And I think it was like “Gerbers,” I mean, did not understand this, and had the picture of the baby on the jar. So, (Pinar: Oh), right. So the thought. (Pinar: Oh), Right. And, you know, obviously people did not do their homework right. So that’s a notorious, (Pinar: Yeah), example.

And then the other one was, it was a car in Spain, and it kind of dates me, like maybe early or mid-80s or so, and it was the Nova car, (Pinar: Okay), and in Spanish, I believe that means ‘no go’ (Pinar: laughs). Right? So, you know, again, simple kind of like, oops, right.

Pinar: Oh man, I have a recent one I saw, the like, surface cleaner out in like the market and then it said like, ‘ocean bound plastic’, and I was like, so when I use this, this goes to ocean, (Janet: laughs), like that’s what’s happening? Oh, it’s a good way to like de-motivate me from buying, that’s what they’re trying to do. Honestly that’s what I thought.

Janet: They’re clever. I think they really hit the nail on the head with that one. Well that’s just it, you know, like, yeah. Well, you know, again, co-design people, Pinar is telling us, telling the world this is why this is stuff is so important. So anyways, I’m sorry I interrupted you about why language matters and this framework that you put together.

Pinar: No, it’s basically like this type of practice really helps feed understanding of that. Because, in one dyad we saw and we were doing on purpose different generations abilities, experiences, like when we’re like recruiting all these people. And there’s this like example where one millennial, living with his parents was saying, ‘oh, like my mom doesn’t care about like sustainability’. I think this is in like Mexico. And yet he is describing his mother, like consumer behaviors.

She’s definitely more sustainable than I am, whatever we call sustainable. She repurposes what she’s using. She isn’t consuming as much. She is very good at like upcycling things. She’s such a like environmentally friendly consumer. But when you tell her sustainability, she’s like, ‘I don’t use those products, like, what are those’? Right, because the word doesn’t resonate with her. Right? (Janet: Interesting, yeah), it’s just that, what is this, like new word that came out.

But if you tell her this is less waste, she understands that and she totally respects that. (Janet: Right). But when you feel like be more sustainable, she was like, “I don’t, like, I don’t, this is like a new thing. This is like your generation”

Janet: That seems like a lot of work, right?

Pinar: Yes, it’s the same thing, I’m like, you’re more sustainable than any of us here…

Janet: …than most people I know, but okay, yeah, exactly. That’s interesting, right? And so the language really does play a large part of all of this. (Pinar: 100-Percent). And so, yeah, so again, just, you know, for our listeners, it’s all on the website. Please go take a look.

And then, you know, you and I have had, like I said, a little side conversation about when we’re talking about co-design and the importance of designers to listen, not just to their clients, but to the people around them, (Pinar: Yeah). Right? (Pinar: Yeah). Otherwise it’s being designed in a vacuum. Correct? (Pinar: Yeah). I mean, so, (Pinar: Yeah). Right.

Pinar: Active listening is a skill that needs to be practiced, polished, developed. (Janet: Yes). It’s like exercising. Like you don’t become a good listener, and like, “oh yeah, I listened.” Like, no.

I’ve been to like so many workshops and like corporations, where we’re doing like a design innovation workshop or like a co-ideation workshop, and I would witness, it sometimes feels like, “oh, like they need hearing aids and they’re not wearing them.” (Janet: laughs).

Like they would speak over each other, (Janet: Right), or they’re just like waiting for their turn to speak and really did not listen to you. They were just being polite and being quiet, right? Like it feels like that so many times and I’m kind of like, wow, how do we get stuff done in the world?

Janet: Well this is, and also, this is why we have a lot of problems, and I can only hope that I’m doing an okay job listening to you today. That’s my, my hope.

Pinar: (laughs) Oh yeah, totally. But this is active listening. You’re like reacting to what I’m saying too, like, you know, and I think it’s important to, like, understand that we are all responsible of that whatever we do in life. Designers, not designers, right. (Janet: Right). And it’s a practice. Like I don’t think anybody is like born like a great listener. Like we’re as kids, terrible listeners, right? (Janet: laughs). Like it’s just skill we acquired later in life. So we need to like polish and practice and improve it, right? So I think there’s like number one that.

And number two, sometimes designers actually need to get out of the way. Sometimes we’re not the right people that should be listening because we don’t know what to do with that information. (Janet: Right). So, like for example, when we team up with people with disabilities on projects, like 90-percent of the time, an occupational therapist would be facilitating the conversations because how would I understand the implications of disabilities and how that is necessarily having the impact on that interaction, (Janet: Right). Right?  (Janet: Yeah).

I need the right person to be able to communicate to me in the way that I need to hear. (Janet: Right). And the other times that that person is not facilitating, sometimes, especially when there’s distrust in this communities (Janet: Sure), then you know, rightfully so, many overlooked or under-served communities have huge distrust towards institutions or corporations, for various reasons.

Janet: Or all of the above, right?

Pinar: All of the above. (Janet: Yeah). So in those cases, we would actually have trusted community-based organizations facilitate sessions, right? (Janet: Uh huh). Or like, sometimes they’re not intimidated by us or they’re okay to talk to us just because like, we’re at this like a much smaller boutique design studio that more like coming in, like almost like a mediator. So we would, they would be open to talking to us, but do they really trust us? Would they really share? Like, what’s the most meaningful, you know?

So like sometimes it’s just about knowing that should we be the ones listening, right? Like maybe we, we could definitely try to listen, we can be present, but we also need someone in the room who has practiced listening and hearing the community.

So I think depending on the circumstance is really about just like, how do we be better listeners, and should we be the one listening, or should we be the only one in the room listening? Also curating that process based on the audience you’re working with or in the project context you’re working in.

Janet: Hmm. Yeah. So true. Like, I was consulting in a design for a women’s shelter. And I found it interesting, one of the workers that was there, and she was in on this meeting, and I was hoping to go around the table in order to talk to them and hear their experiences so we can provide them with, you know, some really good design ideas and what have you. (Pinar: Yeah).

And, the woman sitting next to her, said to me, “oh, she’s only been here two weeks.” Like basically, and kind of like put her hand on her arm. Like it was almost like a do not speak, do not talk about it. And all I could think to myself was, is that, (Pinar: Hmmm), you know, yeah. Even in two weeks, I’m sure she has a lot to say. Right? I thought the other, you know, the woman that was telling her, and telling me that she doesn’t have any voice and she doesn’t have anything to say. (Pinar: Wow).

And all this other stuff wasn’t important because she’d only been there for two weeks. But it was also, I mean, it was quite the show. I mean, she put her arm on the other woman’s arm, like that was a ‘do not speak’. And this is a woman’s battered shelter. Like I thought to myself, (Pinar: Oh my god), what in the world did I just witness. And myself and, um, my colleague when we walked out of there, you know, we shared…

Pinar: like the observation to you,

Janet: the observations!

Pinar: I want to talk that person…

Janet: and now I want to talk to her more. (Pinar: Yeah). Like the fact that you told me I can’t, (Pinar: Exactly), uh yeah, I’m going to need to talk to her, right?

Pinar: Exactly. Yeah, I mean this is the importance of ethnographic research too, in general, right? Listening also is not enough sometimes, it’s very much observation and understanding context and like dynamics. (Janet: Right). That’s why we love dyads, right? (Janet: Yeah). Because how people talk next to each other sometimes is very different than how they speak one-on-one. (Janet: Right). And also, like, I remember this example like, sorry, didn’t mean to cut you off, but made me think of…

Janet: No, no, no, no, I can listen to you all day.

Pinar: Power of observation…

Janet: Yeah, active listening Pinar. (laughs). I am telling you right now, even if I was washing the dishes, I’d still be active listening to you. (Pinar: Aww), so go ahead…

Pinar: Yes, thank you. Like we were doing this workshop with MIT age lab and there’s like a room of 80-plus-year-old men, (Janet: hmm), which was a very fun group have (Janet: Uh huh). to like, have a design workshop with (Janet: Yeah), I mean, it was super fun.

Janet: Just to be clear, we love them, but yeah, yeah. It’s sort of standard, typical…

Pinar: I love like where elders and like kids in my experience are people who give it to you straight, (Janet: Right), like whatever they think. (Janet: Right). And I’m like, you’re a great co-creator. We need more of that. (Janet: Yeah, yeah). And not to like, you know, sugarcoat things. (Janet: laughs).

Anyway. So they’re like, they’re called, I think they’re lifestyle leaders, that’s what they’re called. (Janet: Interesting, yeah). And they consult and advise on various different projects. So I was asking them if they had any issue dressing up in the morning, like is dressing a problem for them? And, except for one person who clearly needs a caregiver’s help to be able to dress himself, (Janet: Sure), they were all like, “No. Got it.”

So I asked, it was winter, I asked like, can you then put on your jacket and take it off for me? So, you know, like imagine yourself going out of the house and you’re wearing your jacket on is more like, I don’t know, a 20-second act, at least for me, right, with my own understanding and bias, I would think like this is going to be quick for the entire room to do that, I think we like settled. It was definitely close to like six-minutes.

So to me that’s not okay. Right? Like as observing that was like, this is a design problem. It’s not your fault. Right? (Janet: Right). Like if you have, let’s say limited range of motion, and you’re not able to like put your arm through a jacket that easily and it takes you several times or you put one through, how do you get the other. If these are all hard challenges in like the dressing process, to me that is a design problem that needs to be addressed.

Whereas for them, they normalized it, right? (Janet: Right), like they were just like this part of aging. (Janet: Yeah). This is what happens when you’re older. (Janet: Yeah). Right? (Janet: Right). Which is totally human, right? We normalize things. (Janet: We get used to things, yeah). Even like really traumatic things, we normalize it, just for, as a coping mechanism, (Janet: Yeah, exactly, yeah).

So that’s also why it’s really important, and I know we talked about this before, to really observe, understand, be present, listen to the words, but also listen to the behaviors, like what you’re seeing, like what you saw as a very powerful example of how that power sharing is not happening in so many environments. (Janet: Right). Right. If you’re like with a gesture like being shushed. So I think we have to understand active listening is important but diversifying your means and how you’re listening is also very, very important.

Janet: Right. Yeah. I’ll give you another example. I’m helping, my dad is 87, and in order for him to continue to live independently, we’re doing a whole bunch of stuff. We’re adding more grab bars. We’re adding more ways for him to get around. (Pinar: Yeah). And he would like some sort of little mirror, light source what-not next to the light source, next to the window when he’s shaving. (Pinar: Hmmm).

And I kind of don’t understand why between the window, it is morning, right, he’s going to be shaving, (Pinar: Huh), not at like six o’clock at night when it’s pitch black this time of year. (Pinar: Yeah). So there’s the light source from the window, big window. There’s the light source from the mirror, there’s the overhead light.

And so why does he, and I think, you know, again, I know our eyes yellow as we get older, and so I’m sure he is having issues seeing himself. I get that. (Pinar: Um hmm). But I want to know what his routine is. What, how does he go about this? Like is there something else that we can do?

And I have other people sort of like boots on the ground, sort of non-designers that are, well contractors, that are helping do this. And they’re just like, “well, have you found a little light yet?” And I’m like, “no, I want to be able enough to see what he’s doing to warrant this. Maybe there’s another way to go about this.”

And I think that they think I’m out of my mind (Pinar: laughs), like that, it’s sort of whatever Jack wants, Jack gets. I get that… that’s my father’s name. (Pinar: laughs).

You know, like, I feel like there’s maybe another way to approach it and maybe it is just a light, right? I don’t want to diminish his discussion in this or thoughts in this, (Pinar: Yeah, yeah, yeah), but I also want to see what he’s doing that makes him think that this is something that he needs. (Pinar: Yeah). Right, you know.

And again, it is probably right. Just so we’re clear in case dad, you’re listening, you’re always right. (Pinar: laughs), But like at the end of the day, like, I just want (Pinar: Jack, you deserve the best), Jack, you deserve all the best. Exactly. And so, but you know, and I think that that’s such an important piece.

And then the other one was, is that when we were trying to figure out how to put new grab bars in his already complicated shower, and it was interesting to me and they were, now you got to, sometimes you got to think these things through and like actually stand there and physically kind of go through the motions. (Pinar: Yeah).

And so they were going to take off one part of the shower, and I said, but the problem is, if he falls from that? Like, because the door is right there, then now he’s in front of the door. And so we can’t now open the door while he’s on the ground. (Pinar: Yeah). Right, so, and they were like, “oh, right.” You know. (Pinar: Yeah). So, you have to kind of get in there and get all dirty (Pinar: Yeah). And it goes back to I think designers not thinking that they have the time or the money to do that, I mean, but some of this stuff is so important for health and wellbeing. So…

Pinar: Yeah. And also if we don’t have these considerations, how are we going to grow in our profession? (Janet: Correct, yeah). You know, like, to me it’s just, I don’t want to say it’s lazy. Maybe sometimes it is lazy, but also, it’s just that…

Janet: I think it, I, well I don’t you think that there’s some laziness? I totally do…

Pinar: I think there has to be, there has to be. Like the budget, I feel like for a creative person, it’s an excuse sometimes where like some things, I mean, yeah, you didn’t have like written out, spelled out in your scope of work that you will sit in a shower for half an hour to like understand something.

But it is necessary like for you to really just do better design. And I don’t want this like also become an excuse for people. Yes, like inclusive design is not universal design. Inclusive design is one size fits one, right? So it’s really inclusive of the person’s needs. And the idea is that as you design for the edge case, you would actually include a broader audience.

But also it is very important to understand that— I mean we get excited about AI and technology, but like with growing technology— that’s going to help this also scale, right? So because the biggest criticism we get, well its such custom work. How are we going to scale this? (Janet: Right). Like, there’s no way we’re going to be inclusive, but that’s only because of our own limitation. Like how many factors (Janet: Right), or restrictions (Janet: Yeah), in the design brief. (Janet: Mm-hmm), our brains can manage on its own. (Janet: Uh-huh). Like if you have like 20 things we need to watch out for, we’re already like, ‘no way, let’s eliminate 10 of that’. (Janet: laughs).

But this is actually the excitement I have around AI where, well, a machine is going to do all those considerations for you now, right? There’s a lot of conversation around participatory design in order to create inclusive AI. But I think we also need to discuss more and more the reverse where like how AI will actually empower inclusive design. We’re actually working with Nvidia and WPP on a simulator…

Janet: Explain to our listeners what WPP is…

Pinar: Yeah, a creative agency, a global creative agency. (Janet: Um-huh). And Nvidia has this platform ‘Omniverse’ that really enables us to simulate things. So right now the simulator is just a hand where the ability of it we can alter. So, I have like full dexterity and fine motor skills. We can reduce that and see how that interaction changes with a 3D model. (Janet: Wow). So how I’m lifting up a glass now might look completely different then. Right? So not to replace co-creation, but to really be able to create rapid prototyping and understand what design futures we need to watch out for from the beginning.

The only reason why you’re having that challenge in that shower is that because everything else in that shower hasn’t been designed with the consideration of those accessibility needs (Janet: From the get get-go), from the get-go. Right. (Janet: Right, yeah). Exactly right.

So you’re adapting it. You’re trying to hack it to make it work, (Janet: Sure), and that’s challenging. (Janet: It is challenging. Yeah. Thank you. laughs). So, in that sense. Yeah, it’s super challenging… (Janet: Thank you for that. Right). Jack? If you heard us Jack, (Janet: Jack), Janet is trying (Janet: I’m trying).

Janet: (laughs). I know. Well, but there’s a lot to be said for that (Pinar: Yeah), and yeah, well, without going into that particular rabbit hole, I’m sorry I interrupted you…

Pinar: No, no, no, it’s basically like we need to go through that experience personally as designers ourselves, in order to understand “Well, okay, how do we scale this? How do we iterate this design process more frequently, so we include more and more,” right?

So unless we go through that, like suffering of like, I don’t want to say suffering, it could sometimes be fun, but also sitting in the shower for 30-minutes maybe is not fun. (Janet: Right). We need to go through that experience to generate the insights into like ‘how do we go, like evolve from here, like how do we grow’? (Janet: Right). So it is necessary for all designers to go through that.

Janet: It is necessary. Well, in a true way to be very transparent here, I actually have taken a shower in that bathroom, and it’s just, the design, it was kind of done sort of like in the late nineties, but like even that, it was just a poor design. I mean, they didn’t even have a place to put your towels. Like, ‘Why? What, what, what? Hello?’ I didn’t even realize that until like I’m standing there looking around and I’m like, ‘Why isn’t there, like a, like something’… (laughs)

Pinar: Exactly. Well, I feel like I see, would see that in 2022 in New York City. You know, I don’t think it’s like about the era, I think it’s the construction industry.

Janet: I think it was, right. They were like, “what evs” (Pinar: And our industry in general, yeah), what evs, not a big deal. (Pinar: “What evs, by code, we’re like complying with code”). By code, we don’t need a towel rack. Exactly. (Pinar: Exactly). We’re good. (Pinar: Base line). I mean, it’s, it’s a beautiful bathroom, but it’s just, I mean, it’s just really not very functional. (Pinar: Yeah).

So I know we’re kind of coming to the end of our time together. I think, I don’t want to say goodbye to you Pinar just yet. (Pinar: laughs). So I was hoping like, you know, do you want to talk a little bit about Open Style Lab? Is that something you guys want to talk about?

Pinar: Yeah, I mean, I personally, I serve on the board of Open Style Lab and leading strategic partnerships there. And Open Style Lab is a non-profit organization that was initiated at MIT and now is based in New York City with the mission to make style accessible for people of all abilities.

And, with that, it’s also a great case study. And I think in itself it has been an organization that really inspired the design industry on what co-creation can look like.

Because, even at its like origin at MIT when it started as a social service project, it brought together occupational or physical therapists, engineers, and designers with people with disabilities to co-create together throughout a course of a 10-week to find inclusive solutions. So that model, I think, became an example to so many industries in so many different ways that I’m very proud of the team there and just to be part of it.

And I personally learned from it so much. so, so much. (Janet: Wow). And I think even like at SOUR, we learned it’s more about how co-creation can be practiced than anything else. And yeah, for the listeners, if you want to check it out, our most recent summer program in 2022 was sponsored by Genentech, where it was all co-created with the SMA community.

And thanks to Genentech and, big pharma money, we had, (laughs), we actually was able to showcase that co-creation during fashion week in New York Fashion Week. (Janet: How cool). So, it was the first fashion show of the week two, (Janet: Yeah), which really anchored the conversation. (Janet: Wow), and if you Google it, you would be able to find information on that. (Janet: Yeah). And, the intelligence built in, in all the garments that you wouldn’t even know it unless you read about it. So yeah, I encourage everyone to check it out.

Janet: Yeah. Well, again, we’ll have the link on our website, inclusivedesigners.com, for sure, but I just thought I would ask you about it. Like that sounds just quite amazing. Pinar, is there anything that you want to add; is there anything else that you feel like we’re missing? Is there something that you’re like, ‘you know what, I really need to say this part’ about designers and co-designing and collaboration, and is there anything else, any kind of other notes you want to hit on?

Pinar: I guess quickly I can talk about a good to have attitude to practice co-design…

Janet: …like a bad attitude. I couldn’t help myself. I could not help myself. (Pinar: Just be sour). Sour, yes. There you go. That’s great.

Pinar: Key words, like really first, like, we talk about reflexivity, like reflecting on yourself and always, right, like to do a self-check. It’s good for your own personal mental health, but it’s also good for your practice. Also keeping an elastic attitude. And what I mean by that is like knowing that your teams might need to stretch based on the project you’re working on.

Sometimes we have project teams that are bigger than our own studio team just because we have to bring in the right people for a project. So practicing that elasticity for each project I think is important.

And a little bit of being agnostic. And I don’t mean it in a religious way, although that’s totally up to you if you want to do that. I mean it more like an outcome agnostic. Of course we have client briefs and commissions and sometimes very clear asks, but also, we need to understand that throughout co-creation, we might land on better ideas. We might need to reframe the problem, right? The discovery is so big in co-creation that being a little bit of outcome agnostic and being comfortable with that grayness is actually good for you. (Janet: Right, yeah).

So that’s just what I want to highlight. And yeah, we’re, we’ve considered ourselves forever students, forever learners. So we’re happy to like, collaborate and learn from everybody too. (Janet: Right, yeah, exactly). Yeah.

Janet: That’s so it’s such an important part too. And again, going back to that, you know, people with talking about trauma-informed design, they feel like they can figure it all out after a lunch and learn. But I said that 1200 hours, that was just me absorbing new information. (Pinar: Yeah). That’s not all the other hours I’ve worked on the actual projects for this, (Pinar: Exactly). So it’s so important to be, like you said, elastic, to be able enough to understand this and whatever this is, (Pinar: Yeah), and to really kind of make sure that you learn about it too.

Like even just for today, I thought, because you know, again, we had had this conversation prior and, and so I bought John Silber, who was the president of, Boston University when I was actually there. And he had put into BU something like 10 million square feet of new construction. (Pinar: Wow). Right, which is, for anybody, that’s a lot, right? (Pinar: Yeah). I mean, he oversaw it. He wasn’t wielding a hammer by any means of the imagination. (Pinar: laughs. Yeah, yeah).

But it was interesting because his father was a, um, architect. And so I think he had some interest in it. So he wrote this book, and I did read it in order to be more informed to interview you, because he talks about the absurdity of some of the architects that put these buildings together, won’t mention any names, but we’ve all seen it (Pinar: laughs). We’ve all seen these pieces of architecture, (Pinar: You know, you know). You know, you know. And you know, you know, when you see it. (Pinar: Oh yeah).

And that was an ego thing, right, that’s a, you know, look, you know, like this is… (Pinar: It’s a statement, I’m making a statement). It’s a statement piece, (Pinar: Yeah). Right. You know, and I guess there’s a place for that, but sometimes, you know, (Pinar: Maybe in arts, laughs). Yeah, maybe. Exactly.

Pinar: I mean, if other people are going to use it, maybe not. (Janet: Well, that’s just it). I mean, unless you’re like designing a palace for a king, (laughs), maybe that’s like where you make it a person specific interest.

But I don’t understand how you can treat a building like a sculpture. If it’s like open to public, it’s going to be, you know, used by people, like how do you disregard that? That I don’t understand. (Janet: Right). I respect all the work that goes into that. (Janet: Of course). No disrespect to that (Janet: Of course).

Janet: I think the name of the book is like, ‘Absurdity of Architecture’ or something like that, you know. (Pinar: laughs). I’m not promoting his book, obviously. But it’s interesting.

There’s also, you know, designing for human health, we talk about some of these designs all the time. And we also did a podcast with, Don Ruggles, right? And he talks about the importance of beauty in architecture and how it makes us feel and makes us, you know, happy. But if you see this thing that’s just like, going every which way and sideways, it’s just probably, again, not mentioning any names, (Pinar: Yeah), but nope, nope, nope.

Pinar: We’re not bitter. We’re sour.

Janet: We’re sour. Yay. (Pinar: We’re not bitter). Nope. It was sour. (laughs). That’s great.

Pinar: …it’s like, 20 years from now we’re having another interview, Janet, that you’re interviewing me. I’m like completely bitter at that point. Like ‘those people’…

Janet: …’those people, you know who you are’. Right? Exactly. it’s going to be a whole thing. Oh my goodness.

Pinar: …is this going to bloopers. Like we should have an entire, like, bloopers show just like this.

Janet: I’ve always wanted a blooper reel.

Pinar: I would love that. I don’t take ourselves that seriously clearly. So I definitely encourage for the promotion of this episode…

Janet: Oh my goodness. That was brilliant. So, but anyways. (Pinar: Yeah). Pinar, thank you so much. I love the fact that I have an opportunity and a platform to talk to people like yourself and forward thinkers and people who have really, some really great, great ideas and are trying to change the course of how we design.

And so I just, I, again, I could just talk to you all day. Please, please, please think about coming back. Maybe we’ll do a Pinar two. (Pinar: Aww… laughs), Like, you know, we’ll do one of those. (Pinar: Ongoing talk shows), and I, and I’ll keep practicing my active listening in the meanwhile.

Pinar: Oh, well thank you so much, Janet. You were an incredible listener, and conversationalist, and it just felt like an organic conversation and not like a script interview, which I don’t do well in those anyway. I feel like I, (laughs) if it’s like very, you know, too rigid.

Janet: Well, you know, how many times did I have to figure out, it’s framework. You’re like, it’s just framework. Say framework. Use the word framework, right. So yes. There is that too. Right? Exactly.

Pinar: Oh, yeah, totally understand. It was such a treat as always. I feel like anytime we all connect, it’s just like this.

Janet: Pinar, before I let you go, is there anything that you want to add?

Pinar: Yeah. So I encourage everyone to just like reflect on your practice today, and if you have doubts or questions, just reach out to the people you think might have an answer there. Be very open to collaboration… and be sour.

Janet: Be sour. Perfect.

Pinar: There you go. (laughs). Like from now on I’m going to wear like a sweater that says, ‘be sour’ and tees…

Janet: Well you should get t-shirts that say, ‘Be SOUR.’ And mugs!

Pinar: I think it’s going to happen. Our team has been asking for it too, so I think we’re going to do it.

Janet: Be sour.

Pinar: I got over the trauma of the, like attorney. (laughs)

Janet: Well, I just want to throw it down before we leave that, are you guys still in Brooklyn?  (Pinar: Yes, yes, yes). Yes, right. I hail from Brooklyn. I lived in, on Garden Place and Sydney Place growing up as a kid. And yeah, so we’re doing a little shout out. We do occasional shout out because we did one with Judy Heumann, like, because she grew up in Brooklyn too, or, (Pinar: Aww), you know, born in Brooklyn I should say. (Pinar: Yeah). So we’re always like, I have a little posse of us from Brooklyn.

Pinar: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Representing Brooklyn, based in Brooklyn Navy Yard. (Janet: Representing). Yeah. (Janet: Exactly. Woot, woot, exactly). Yeah.

Janet: Pinar, thank you so much. This has been really terrific.

Pinar: Thank you. Thank you, Janet. Thank you, Carolyn. It was amazing. Thank you so much.

Janet: Thank you.

(Music / Outro)

Janet: I find what Pinar and her group are doing to be so fascinating! She is, well,…

Carolyn: Sour?

Janet: Yes, but in a great way.

Carolyn: You know I couldn’t resist… (laughs)…

Janet: I get it! Seriously though, Pinar and I really enjoyed discussing topics of great importance for inclusive designers. I love her ideas that we need to have attitude, elasticity, and agnostic approaches when we are co-designing! Our own biases and unconscious assumptions really do not help us when designing for the built environment. Or anywhere for that matter.

And that whole concept of ‘Why language matters?’ we need to keep Cultural, Situational and Ability differences in mind when we design… and when we talk to each other.

Carolyn:  I agree, and I think Pinar is right that… designers need to understand that through co-design, they might land on better ideas. They should be very open to collaboration, and if needed, to re-frame the problem to find the best solution. And I loved what she said: “we should all be forever students and forever learners.”

Janet: Exactly…. and we will share the link for how to contact Pinar, and of course, the links to all the innovative work she and her team at SOUR are doing. And also for many of the other things that were mentioned along the way during this discussion… all on our website at inclusivedesigners.com.

Carolyn: That’s: inclusivedesigners.com…

Janet: A big thank you to Pinar. And ‘Thanks’ to all of you as well for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts, you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it, Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page. And now you can also find us on the Feedspot List of Best Design Podcasts.

Janet: Yes you can! And as our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed’. As always, thank you for stopping by. We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

Music up

Adaptive Environments for Healthcare & Beyond!
Guest: Alex Tan, Design Innovation Director, Philips

(Music / Open)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music / Intro)

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: Carolyn, we have such a wonderful show today! But first, we are thrilled to announce that we are still in the top 20 on Feedspots’ list of “Best Design Podcasts on the Internet”— whoo!— and a big thank you to you, our listeners!

Carolyn: yes, and it doesn’t surprise me at all, but I might be a little bit biased… and I think this episode should definitely keep us on that list. And with that news aside, we welcome you to our first podcast of 2023.

Janet: Yes, moving right along, our guest today is Alex Tan, who is indeed creating a difference within the built environment, and using a collaborative and evidence-based approach to design. The ground-breaking work he and his design innovation team at Philips are doing is changing how hospitals envision the future of both the NICU— which is the neonatal intensive care unit— and adolescent mental health care emergency rooms.

The way they research and implement these next generation spaces, using adaptive research and ambient technology, is truly terrific for any designer for whatever environments they will be creating. We are thrilled to interview him and discuss his process.

Carolyn: But first, let me tell you a little more about Alex Tan, who is the Design Innovation Director at Philips. According to his own bio, Alex is…. ‘a visionary thinker and leader with a diverse background that spans across many industries and design disciplines. His leadership style is very hands-on; he leads through example and inspiration. He and his multi-disciplinary design team collaborate with research scientists to invent and set the design vision and direction for the future of Healthcare, through a co-creation design process and prototyping’.

In his own words; ‘We are the tip of the spear that pushes the boundary of the possible. Our solutions combine hardware, software, environments and services, and aim to solve key challenges in Healthcare.’

Janet: Alex will introduce us to the innovative tools they created and how these human-centered design solutions are making a difference in their pilot emergency room spaces today.

Carolyn: And we even learn about his side project, a design of his own invention, a plush toy that is ‘brightening’ the lives of little ones everywhere.

Janet: (laughs) That is a pun that will make more sense later… but we’ll let Alex tell us about this as well as some important insights that will be of benefit to all of us in the inclusive design field…

Carolyn: And with that, here is our interview with Alex Tan… designer, creator, and innovation director…

(Music / Interview)

Janet: Well, hello and welcome to Alex Tan here on Inclusive Designers Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today, Alex.

Alex: Yes, thank you for having me on board.

Janet: Thank you. So, why don’t we just jump right on in, and I know that there’s a couple of projects that you’re working on. I think what’s kind of interesting is that there’s so many different parts of dynamics about your process and why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you created these types of things with Philips.

Alex: Yeah, we have, there’s definitely several projects that we work on in Philips, and I think the two that will be worthwhile to talk about this, of course, the Lotus NICU of the future. So that’s one. And the other one, we don’t really have a name for it, but it’s really how to reimagine behavioral health actually, in the emergency department. So I think those are the two projects that were, you know, it’s worthwhile to talk about (Janet: Right), that we can, you know, yeah, look into the process of how we do it and yeah review a bit more.

Janet: One is within the NICU, and one is within the emergency room in terms of behavior… is there one that you want to showcase in the, on the top of the hour?

Alex: Yeah. We can start with the NIC actually as one of the examples.

Janet: Yeah, why don’t we start with the NICU, and this is a pilot program right at this point?

Alex: This is actually, it started off as pilot program, but it’s actually been installed in hospital, actually in Florida, in one of the NICUs actually. So it is, you know, we strive to bring everything into the market because that’s, I think, you know, where it makes the impact actually. Although, you know, I work in the innovation department, we do a lot of research, front end research. We strive to test it out and implement it in the market, so, you know, to really have that impact.

Janet: Right. So why don’t you explain to us a little bit about this particular product, because the piece you’ve got in the NICU is really quite fascinating. You’re looking at all the like different senses— touch, smell, taste, sound, and light— all the things that as inclusive designers, I encourage designers to really kind of look at. So why don’t you talk a little bit about that and then the process and get our listeners into what those particular projects are.

Alex: Yeah. So again, definitely can talk about it. So the project I think started as one of these, you know, of course Philips, you know, we have products in the NICU, you know, we have different things like, you know, monitors, we have, you know, ventilators for the baby.

And, you know, all these are very, very much right now, kind of very separate elements, right? They don’t inform each other. They don’t work together as a complete kind of system. So we kicked off this project, you know, this is, I think several years ago, I’d like to say 2018, where as a project to really try and understand the space of the NICU and how can we create a kind of complete solution to address all the different needs, right? Because with all these individual products, you don’t really connect them together to deliver, you know, more value for the users. In this case, the clinicians, the nurses, and you know, ultimately the baby, themselves.

And in this project, we were very lucky to have worked with some of these thought leaders within the NICU space. And we were introduced to this whole integrative developmental model actually. So meaning that, you know, the idea that you want to, when you look at the baby or treating the baby, you want to be as inclusive as possible in terms of looking at not just your physiological aspects, but also some of the psychological aspects or knowing where sound comes in, where you know, their sensory perception of pain, you know, lights, you know, heat, all these, you know, sort of, temperature, touch even.

And there was this kind of, yeah, model that was created that we kind of worked closely together with the clinicians to really look at how we can create solutions along this kind of, you know, this whole circle actually. So this, yeah, integrative developmental model that we were working on.

And it’s kind of interesting. I think in the aspects of talking about inclusivisity is that, you know, that the parent was also very much part of that solution, right? So we had to include not just the baby and all these different needs of the baby, but the clinicians, the physicians, the neonatologists, the nurses, and the parents, and how much the parents actually played a part in the baby’s, care actually impacted the results. And there’s lots of evidence right, (Janet: Right). So having skin to skin contact with the baby, talking to them, you know, being present and being engaged in this whole process of, in the stay NICU really helped improve the outcome.

So this was a very well-known study, but there were not actually any products or solutions here for the parents, actually. So what we strive to do is just kind of a holistic solution that looked at “How could we create something for all the different stakeholders within this NICU space?” (Janet: Right). So we have, you know, some of the solutions were really looking at a dashboard, for instance, for the physicians to be able to track all the different aspects of the baby’s development, right? So like, like I said, not just the heart rate and the breathing and these kinds of things, but also the temperature of the room, the sound levels, you know, are they getting enough sleep? Are they in pain? Those, all these kinds of things.

And also, we provide a dashboard for the parents as well so they can actually participate in the care of their baby. And being able to be informed “Hey, how’s the baby doing?” And be able to, you know, have almost like a calendar or agenda that they could collaborate with the clinicians to deliver care. So, “Hey, look”, you know, this is maybe a good time, for instance, for them to come in to do kind of this kangaroo care, so this skin-to-skin contact with the baby. And that really, you know, helps their development. So we’re looking, yeah, very much a holistic solution and look at how this room could really facilitate all these folks coming together, all the technologies coming together to work in concert as one.

Janet: Yeah, I think that’s, like it’s really key in the fact that I think it’s fascinating that it took us until 2018 you said, to think like maybe we should be asking the parents, like, who spend the majority of time there, how, what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, and how they’re behaving within the built environment as well. Right? (Alex: Yeah). Now are you saying that the, so it’s basically, explain it to people that maybe are in the car that are not able to look it up right now. What, like what is this? What, you know, it’s, it’s a touchscreen, right?

Alex: Yeah, so yeah, if I could, to describe what it is, I think it’s definitely, it’s several things. So, it’s firstly the whole room design and the lighting and everything together. So we actually designed the space itself to determine where, how the equipment’s laid out, right? (Janet: Right). So, you know, because in a neonatal ICU, there’s lots of equipment for the baby, there’s a lot of clutters. So how can you design the optimal space for the clinicians to work in there, for the parents also to stay over, right, and provide care for their baby.

So that’s one of the first things is really the environment, spatial design. So looking at the positions of the light, looking at where the monitors needs to sit. So that’s, I think the first thing.

The second thing is this, the dashboard actually. So this is a piece of software that would actually bring in all the different disparate, electronic medical records, all the different monitors, all the equipment data that’s being produced around the baby and bring it together in one place. Because right now all the, you know, doctors and clinicians need to go to different computers, different screens to search up this data and kind of combining in their head to form a picture or diagnosis of the baby. So we’re actually bringing it together in a dashboard that makes it very apparent to get a quick overview of what’s happening, right.

The other part is that we also based the design of the organizational information around this integrative developmental care model, which looks at this 360-view of the baby, you know, through all the, the body organ systems and the kind of, softer care aspect. So that was also something very prominently displayed in our dashboard. So I think that’s, that’s the other thing.

And then the other part of the dashboard that I said is a piece of software, at least for the parents to be able to then come in and be able to view, change that same dashboard, that big screen in the, the baby’s room to a different, let’s say, rendering of the information so it’s more friendly for the parents actually. So it’s not, you know, the clinical jargon. It has been translated and helps them, you know, track how their baby’s doing, that helps them almost kind of suggest education or training videos for them to learn about the development of the baby. So these are the main key aspects, right? So the environment and this kind of what we call the collaborative dashboard. (Janet: Right). So those were the two key elements.

There were some other, you know, let’s say elements that we design as well. So looking at smaller things in terms of around the incubator, having a camera that would basically look at the baby and use that camera technology to sense the vital signs. So you don’t have to put these, patches on the baby’s skin, which are very painful because kind of when they’re premature, their skin is like paper thin. And every kind of electrodes that they put on it and you take off it really tears their skin. So we try to also create a better way of sensing the baby’s vitals. (Janet: Well, that’s interesting). So this is, you know, basically part of that bigger research project. (Janet: Right). Yeah.

And I think also to your point earlier, you know, about clinical care not involving parents or even just the family of patients, I think that’s something that, it’s still a challenge, right? You know, I think a lot of science are now beginning to kind of see that the more the family members are involved in the care of the patient, the better the outcomes and the, you know, better the, the faster the healing is. Right.

And you already have, you know, I’ve kind of seen two schools of, let’s say, practice. Some doctors are really much about “Hey, we want to open up the patient’s chart to the family so they can see everything” right? The family can know everything, so they can be more informed and help with their care journey and the care decisions. And others that say “No, no, no. We don’t want, you know, the families to see that because they just ask more questions and there’s just more work for us to do”. (Janet: laughs). So, you know, there is definitely this kind of, you know, two sides to it (both laugh).

Janet: Right, it’s a complete two sides to the coin, (Alex: Yeah, yeah), for sure. Well, I mean, again, I do think it, you know, I mean, just the word inclusive designers, I mean, that’s what we try to do. And I think getting that family input was really beneficial for you guys. Like, do you remember, was there any particular thing that really stood out to you when, I mean, were you doing interviews with them or were you following them? What was the, what was your process?

Alex: So we definitely, the team spent time in the NICU, and we did a lot of shadowing, right? So going to the NICU, we got permission to kind of observe and just almost be a, like a fly on the wall to observe the staff at work and where the family gave permissions we’re also in the room. And we, we kind of spoke with the staff members and interviewed the families to just kind of get to understand what their thoughts were. Right?

And it’s kind of also striking that this whole new way of looking at this family centered care, this developmental care for the babies. It’s also not something that, in medicine, is being practiced, right? So it’s unequal. We went to hospitals that were very much embracing this, and some hospitals that’ll say, “No, no, we want to keep everything, away from the parents.” So that was the two sides. So we kind of observed this (Janet: Really?). Yeah. (Janet: Wow). And that was kind of eye-opening.

We were actually lucky and not so unlucky in that one of our team members actually, during the project was, you know, she actually had a premature birth (Janet: Oh really), and she spent a long time in the NICU. (Janet: Wow). So she was actually able to provide us a very good, first-hand insights, right. And she also helped drive a lot of the, you know, thought and thinking about, “Hey, look what are parents looking for”, you know, so that was very lucky for us, for our project, but of course, not, not lucky for her.

Janet: Right. (Alex: Yeah). I understand. (Alex: Yeah, I know). Right, it’s a little hard to say lucky in that particular situation, but it there is, I mean, it was advantageous. (Alex: It was advantageous), I guess maybe that’s a better word or something. (Alex: Yes, exactly). So what was her take away? That she was like, you must have, like or this must be, or…

Alex: Yeah, so the one big thing, and we kind of suspected it already, and she kind of emphasizes that, just the sheer amount of information that she had to absorb, right. So she was at a hospital that did not really practice this family-centered care as much, and basically, you know, at the start of her NICU stay, they just gave her a big binder, really, and just say here, that’s all the information there, read it. And there was, you know, it’s just like brochures, all kinds of information, not organized. So that was one of the things that was really overwhelming for her, right, trying to just keep track of “Yeah. You know, what do I need to know?” It’s important, you know.

Janet: Right, I mean, when her brain spinning anyways, right? Her child is in the NICU, like, will they survive, all that stuff and (Alex: Yeah), now try to absorb all of this information.

Alex: Exactly. And actually, one thing I would like to say, her baby’s now doing really well, (Janet: Awww), yeah, he’s, he’s doing great (Janet: That’s good). And one of the things I would say is that, yeah, it is overwhelming, right? As parents, you, you know, the last thing you kind of expect when you’re, you know, you have a pregnancy is, “Hey, I’m going to bring a baby back and a nice nursery”, and that’s kind of just kind of you know, (Janet: Out the window), yeah, (Janet: Right), out the window, exactly. And, you know, you are then spending months in the NICU. So that was one of the, the key things, right?

And I think the other thing was just trying to balance work and, you know, work life with the, you know, having to visit the, you know, the NICU. Because as parents, you want to be there to spend as much time as possible with the baby. And every moment that was away was, of course, you know, yeah, you know, kind of frustrating, right? (Janet: Right). So you have to balance that.

And each time she came back, she’s like, “okay, what are some of the updates? Right? What has happened to my baby?” What, you know, so she wanted to know all these things, and that was very difficult to also discover, you know. So that’s one of the first things that we did in our dashboard was to be able to almost list out as a summary for the parents, “Hey, what happened while you’re away?”

Janet: What happened while they’re away, oh, that’s great. (Alex: Yeah). Yeah, right.

Alex: And, they also had a kind of a, a planning calendar to say, “Hey look, what are the plans for the baby today? You know, are we going to do some, you know, kangaroo care? Are we going to give medications? Are we going to do certain procedures or go for a scan?” So that was kind of very nicely laid out which helped, you know, parents feel more comfortable.

And we also of, of course, incorporated this camera idea for parents to be able to remotely look into the NICU. And this is already existing right now, (Janet: Right), some hospitals have that, to see their baby and, you know, be able to, yeah, just kind of connect with them, see how everything’s doing. But we extended it to include all the dashboard elements so that, you know, on an app on their phone, or a tablet, they could basically, be able to track progress with their baby. So this is really the ambition of what we’re looking to do.

Janet: Right. Yeah. No, I mean, it’s interesting that whole work balance, right, because we don’t really have really good family leave in the United States. (Alex: Yeah), so, I got to think it would be awfully hard to leave, right? (Alex: Yeah). Like, to top it all off, but you know, that everything is sort of planned out and thought out and that you don’t have to maybe go through a binder or something, (laughs), to try to find it, I think is really kind of terrific. So those were a few of the takeaways that you had. (Alex: Yeah). So then the, and you talked about the design implementation of what you did to help to correct that. (Alex: Yeah).

I wanted to say there was something else that you had mentioned at the top. It was that there was the, just kind of fascinated about what I was listening to, (laughs) and then all of a sudden, I was like, I wanted to come back and ask and circle back on that question.

Alex: Was that about the spatial design…

Janet: …the spatial design. Yes, it was about the spatial design. And I wanted to kind of expand on that. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that and what were your discoveries and how your process came to be for those spatial designs?

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things we looked at, you know, again, in NICU, you know, throughout the country, different hospitals also have the very different philosophy. So, you know, you have the, let’s say the open bay concept, right? So where you have lots of babies in little pods in this one big open room. And the new model of it is really moving towards a single-family room, meaning that you have the baby in the room by themselves, you know that this room is enclosed.

The advantages of that is that, you know, it reduces the disturbance right from other babies crying or other things. So you kind of create this more sound, (Janet: Calming), calming environment. (Janet: Right). So I think that’s one of key, aspects, I, you know, we, we saw that there’s a trend actually. So many of the new NICU built in the US are all single-family rooms.

So with that right in the design of room, we also wanted to accommodate all the different functions of the room, right? So in a sense that, at certain times, you know, because it’s, it is in the hospital, there needs to be medical procedures happening.

So sometimes, you know, babies do crash, and they need to, you know, and there’s an emergency, they want very much the bright lights on and be able to, you know, do an intervention, right. And other times when the mother is there, maybe with, with her baby, and as I said, performing kangaroo care. And this is sometimes they’re trying to encourage, you know, for many hours whereby they sit in the chair with the baby, you know, from 2, 3 hours to 5, 6, 7 hours, you know, just lying there with their baby.

So you want to create this calming, relaxing environment. So we wanted to be able to adjust the lights to that. And also during more just, you know, daily rounding of the physicians to check up on the baby, you maybe want a different type of light, or they’re doing charting and caring for the baby, such as changing the diapers or, you know, changing out the sheets and things like this. You want different lights. (Janet: Right).

So we actually created this, you know, the concept of this adaptive environment that would change and flex according to the different workflows, the different needs and desires for, you know, the people in there to the aspect of, hey look, you know, when the baby is maybe vacating the room and the janitor or the cleaners need to come in, you want also really nice, bright lights, so they will clean the room nicely. To be when the baby’s sleeping, yeah, keep everything calm the lights down. (Janet: Right). And also, they have, yeah, kind of digital signage out there to say “Hey, baby sleeping, do not disturb”.

Janet: …that’s actually cute, right? (Alex: Yeah), I mean, that makes so much sense though, right? (Alex: Yeah).

Alex: So, yeah, and as a company and Philip coming in with you know, to try and use some of these technologies to be able to give indication outside the room about the status of the room. Because with the rooms and the closed doors, you don’t know what’s really happening in there, right, so if you don’t to kind of barge in on the mother and the baby or know something’s happening. So using those technologies to project, you know, that information outside was again, one of the things that we try to look at holistically. How this room could perform as a, you know, as a well-oiled machine in a sense, right?

Janet: Right. And the whole system, right. (Alex: Yeah). I mean, that’s, other part of it. We talk about it a lot, you know, I mean, you’re helping. the baby with their circadian system too, right? (Alex: Yeah). By changing out those lights. (Alex: Exactly). And, and I saw that you’ve got some biophilia, (Alex: Yeah), projected on some of the walls and stuff like that. (Alex: Mm-hmm). So, more ways to calm, (Alex: Yes), the central nervous system. Right? (Alex: That’s correct). And then, like you said, and then to have that information being projected on the outside so that, you know, there’s no kind of disturbance and stuff like that. I’d be interested to hear from you, we talked a little bit about light, you know, we talked a little bit about sound. And I guess the touch part is that kangaroo, right? (Alex: Yes). You called it….

Alex: Yeah. Kangaroo Care,

Janet: Kangaroo Care. (Alex: Yeah), Right. And having that baby with the parent. And can you talk a little bit more about your design aspects for that particular type of programming, I would call it, I guess.

Alex: Yeah. So I think let’s maybe start along the, the touch part, right? So in the room design we’ve tried to, you know, ensure that it’s kind of optimally set up for the, you know, for the baby, to bring the baby of incubator and to be able to, you know, then transfer that to the mother’s chest. So facilitating that whole process because it’s actually not easy. So a lot of babies, they have the, these kind of cords and things connected to them, life support system, ventilator, so that makes it harder.

So, you know, unfortunately we don’t have a solution for it, a wireless Ventilator that’s still rare. So we had, you know, that’s something that, you know, we had to basically design the room and the space itself to make it easier to that transition from incubator to the mother’s lap actually, or body. And to be able to track that time because that timing also, it’s reflected back in the dashboard. So at the end of the, you know, week or the month, they can say, “Hey, how much kangaroo care has been given to this baby?” And then, you know, in the long term, we’re trying to track that correlation. Right. So again, giving data to that, right? (Janet: Right).

The other things that we also, place in the room actually, is also sensors to measure the level of sound, level of light, even, volatile chemicals and compounds actually. So sensors for that.

Janet: I was going to say how you dealing with the sense of smell?

Alex: Yeah, exactly.

Janet: So, these are all sensors, these are all Philips sensors, is that correct?

Alex: Yeah. These are, this is what we call a, a kind of sensor bar that we place in the room. So we developed that using just off-the-shelf components. Right? (Janet: Right). And, but the idea is that just to bring that together in a unique way. So to yeah, basically measure all these things. And that’s again, a study we’re trying to do to just correlate right in the sense of “Hey, you know, the scent, the smell, you know, if they’re using, you know, these bleach and detergents, does it have an impact on the babies” …

Janet: It hurts everybody (laughs).

Alex: So you can maybe also correlate with the heart rate or, you know, things like this. So these kinds of things where you have all these data coming into one place, that’s where we’re trying to, yeah, look at.

Janet: So you’re doing long-term studies with this as well?

Alex: Yeah, we’re hoping to do, do that, actually. So there is not things, yeah, put in place to try and track those things.

Janet: Right. So we can prove to everybody that you were right. (Alex: Yes). Yeah, right. (laughs).

Alex: We’ll see. (laughs). Exactly.

Janet: I’m going with you were right. (Alex: Yeah), so let’s see, we talked about touch, smell. What about taste? What are you doing with taste? What is that?

Alex: Yeah. So taste is something that’s…

Janet: it might just be something minor…

Alex: yeah. It’s something minor. Yeah. I think, so actually what I learned is that the smell and taste sensory organs are very closely tied together. (Janet: Related). Related. (Janet: Right). And yeah, I wish, Leslie one of our nurses that was really, you know, she gave a whole lecture about this. It was very fascinating. And that is basically also something that’s tied to the smell, (Janet: Right), so, you know, we kind of combine them together. They don’t eat anything at that stage, so, you know, that’s not taste, (Janet: Right).

The position of the baby, actually, is also something very important that we’re tracking. So using the camera as well to look at, because the idea that, the baby, if they’re placed in a, let’s say, a position that’s not, you know, good for their development, they end up with really lifelong kind of issues, right? (Janet: Issues, right),

So the bone structure, like the hips, they might be, you know, splayed open if they are, so they need to be constrained actually to provide the muscle tone, because in the womb they’re kicking against the womb to kind of, you know, (Janet: Get their muscles going), basically push and exercise their muscles, yeah (Janet: Right, right). So if the position is not right, so if they lay, you know, let’s say on their back, you know, the arms open for too long, then you know that will contribute to that development of their bone structure differently. The head shape is very, you know, malleable.

Janet: Yeah, we know about the head, right? (Alex: “Yeah). If you’ve, if they’ve been lying too long on, like a mattress on their back, right? (Alex: Yeah). They get that flat head, right? (Alex: Yes, exactly). Yeah.

Alex: So all these kinds of things. So those are, again, tracking that kind of you know, positioning was, something that we also tracked. Trying to work our way around. Of course, the light we know, so not too much, you know, the light, appropriate levels of lights, you know, (Janet: Yeah). And then yeah, looking at circadian rhythm later on in the recovery, you know, so later on, when they’re old enough.

Of course, parental participation was a very important one. (Janet: Right). The parents, actually also, we are tracking, how much they are kind of at least keeping up on their education. Because the idea is that you want to prepare the parents to be able to discharge of the baby safely, right? So when they go home, they have to maybe do some of the changing of the tubes or, you know, change the diaper, or do the washing and there’s certain instructions. So we provide that set of education material that then we could track, “Hey, have the parents been watching it and you know, how, so how far along that kind of, discharge readiness they are” actually. So those are, those are some of the other things that we were tracking.

Janet: Well, but keeping in that same vein, so you just kind of moving on to the next project, which was behavioral, right, (Alex: Yeah), in the emergency room. I thought that this was kind of fascinating. It was also about, if I understood it correctly, it was mostly about juveniles, right, or is it pediatric…

Alex: Yeah, it’s a pediatric behavioral health. (Janet: Right). And this actually, this project, started actually also with just talking to one of the hospitals, actually that was one of our customers, they came to visit our innovation lab in Cambridge. And you know, they at that time were building a new facility or new emergency department and behavioral, I guess, you know, a behavioral health, mental health was one of the big issues with, you know, many hospitals at that time.

And this was pre-covid. Already, you know, there was a single ramping up of (Janet: It’s a problem). Yeah, problems. (Janet: Yeah). Children coming to emergency departments as a last resort, because there hasn’t been any, let’s say, investment in a lot of these, you know, interventions for behavioral health, mental health, you know, lack of investment and lack of infrastructure outside to support these folks. (Janet: Yup).

So what they end up is going to the emergency room and end up clogging up the emergency room. The emergency rooms are not ready to handle these kids, right? And some of them— what they call, psychiatric boarding— will spend days, even I’ve heard weeks in this single kind of room, usually without windows, they have to be really secure. And they’ll spend, you know, hours, days, weeks, depending on their severity in locked up in these rooms actually.

And, you know, at least the thinking is that “Hey, we need to keep these children safe, so they don’t harm themselves or they don’t harm others”. (Janet: Right). So they just basically strip everything from the room, you know, it’s basically a very bare empty room, actually.

Janet: Right. It’s like, it’s a, usually it’s a bed, usually not even like a blanket or what have you. (Alex: Yeah). No, the shoelaces, no belts, no, not nothing. (Alex: Exactly). And I mean, like you just, everything has to go and (Alex: Yeah), and no curtains. (Alex: Exactly). So, so, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but yes, it’s, it’s, and it’s also very, I mean, how triggering is that for young folks, you know? (Alex: Yeah). And all of your stuff is taken away and right.

Alex: Yeah. And I think it definitely exacerbates the problem, right? (Janet: Right). Being kind of coming into this when you lose control, right, you’re already not feeling well.

Janet: You’re already out of control. Right. And now, like everything is out of your control (Alex: Exactly), and everything is gone, right. (Alex: Yeah).

Alex: And, you know, one of the, the things is that, yeah, you know, if they stand coming there and they have an episode, like, you know, they start acting up, becoming aggressive, then what the hospitals might do is like, restrain them on the bed, right? (Janet: Right), and just sedate them. But then once they come off sedation, again, they’re back to where they are, so it becomes a cycle.

So, you know, this was a problem in the hospital. And they’re building this kind of pediatric wing of this emergency department. And they were looking at our experience lab and we actually have this, a NICU room there. And they saw this adaptive room and they thought, “Hey, look, this might be, you know, a solution that could be adapted to our emergency department space” right? Because at that point they were looking at these holding rooms and they were arguing amongst themselves, “Hey, what kind of mural should we paint on the ceiling, should be the underwater or the jungle scene”. (Janet: laughs)

And the chief experience officer of this department of this hospital was just like, “Hey, no, we should do away with these, kind of very more, kind of legacy way of thinking, right? (Janet: Right). Making a pediatric environment, you know, it means murals, whereas pediatric, a definition of it, it’s like from, you know, zero to 17. So you imagine a teenager, you know, 15, 16, they don’t want to these kinds of  more kind of, (Janet: No), infant, (Janet: Babyish, right?) Babyish. Exactly. Babyish, kind of, decoration. (Janet: Right).

So, basically in during the discussion we thought, “Hey, look, some sort of adaptive environment would be maybe suitable for this kind of space, right?” Of course, but we didn’t know anything about really, behavioral health, you know, this topic is something we never kind of create a solution for.

So I think, you know, the first thing we did is say, “Hey look,” you know, they invited us to their hospital down in Dallas. And we basically went there and, with the understanding that this is going to be a pilot exploration. We couldn’t guarantee we’re going to deliver any results at all actually.

And we just want, you know, we wanted to help right. You know, listening to their situation, the problems, and say, “all right, maybe we can do something, let’s explore this together.” (Janet: Right). So we ended up, you know, spending a few days, myself together with design team, to tour the emergency department and to basically understand the issues, right? So there’s the same kind of shadowing, talking to the staff members. And we were actually lucky enough that one of the ex-patients was willing to volunteer himself to speak with us.

And that gave us, provided us with lots of insights. Because usually that’s more kind of, you know, behavioral health is more of taboo subject. People don’t want to talk about this. (Janet: Right). But this particular young man was very, you know, brave (Janet: Right), and to be able to open up, and gave us his input and gave us, yeah, how he felt actually and what got him into that situation. So that provided us with lot of insights. (Janet: Right),

Janet: Was there any particular part of his interviews, what big takeaway was, did you come away with from those discussions?

Alex: Yeah, I think one of the big takeaways is that, you know, when he came to these kinds of rooms, was that he just felt the loss of control and the loss of, you know, the things that kind of comforted him, right. (Janet: Right). So immediately it was of course, you know, like the mobile devices and things like this, and it’s more than just more mobile device, right. So social media, but entertainment and things like this. So music was, you know, things like he missed (Janet: Music. Big, yeah). Yeah, and also, exercises. “Yeah, I’m locked in this room and I just, you know, couldn’t do anything. I wish that’s a way for me to be able to work out, or at least express myself, get my, you know, something to do, actually”.

Janet: Or even just get my frustrations out. Right? (Alex: Exactly.) We talk about, like, especially when you’re talking about like, even like trauma or whatever, or your brain is kind of screaming. We all do it, right? (Alex: Yeah), you know, people say, “Take a walk around the block” (Alex: Yeah), “or start punching something.” (Alex: laughs). Right? (Alex: Exactly), exactly.

Alex: So, yeah. So that was I think one of the insights to see, you know, that yeah, he wanted this, almost to be normal, right? But you know, of course he knew that he was in, (Janet: Even though he’s there), even when he’s there, right. So to continue to have access to these kind of things. (Janet: Right, yeah). So yeah, I think that was, you know, really interesting part to be able to talk to him. And he definitely had good suggestions of things that were kind of, you know, took into account in our design as well.

Janet: So with this young man, you said that there were a couple big takeaways, was music, and then there was also like the ability to exercise. What did you put in the design in terms of the space that you addressed some of those needs?

Alex: Yeah, so I think the main thing that I think we brought in was, let’s say that the technology element to this space, right? So it’s, you know, it’s pretty much a simple room, you know, standard kind of size that had to be safe for the children. And, you know, usually it’s just bare walls and fluorescent lighting, right? So we looked to change this whole design to bring in this adaptive environment. So using projections both on the ceiling and the walls and colored lighting to be able to just give, paint a different kind of a flavor to the room.

So, you know, biophilia, as you say, we have nature projections. We actually worked on kind of more calming projections versus something that’s a bit more energizing. Because also, in our research we looked at the cohorts of behavioral health. It’s not just one, one type, right? So there you have the kind of folks that are in more on the autistic spectrum and you know aggression and things like this (Janet: Right), was part of that, you know, behavior. (Janet: Even hyper), yeah.

You have folks that are more suicidal, so they’re very depressed and they’re, you know, in a kind of very down stage. And then you have, you know, a small percentage that were kind of, had psychosis, actually. So, you know, they’re basically seeing things, (Janet: They’re seeing things), or hearing sounds. So you wanted them, (Janet: Right), yeah, so you wanted to have a very low stimulus.

So, working together with the kind of, let’s say, the psychiatrists and in the hospitals and the kind of, behavioral health specialists, we kind of mapped up different archetypes of patients. And that helped us, you know, decide that “Hey, with this adaptive environment, how can we change and adapt the environment to basically, address the different age groups, the different kind types of conditions,” right. So that was definitely one thing that we looked at. (Janet: Right).

Actually, one big part of our solution that we didn’t have was basically a way of controlling this environment, right? So we had the technology of the projections, the making of the content, the lighting. And we actually managed to find a partner— this is a third-party company, that’s not Philips— that created this touchscreen that was basically bulletproof, literally.

And so it was, you know, this is a huge touchscreen. They have different sizes, you know, and they had games in there and they actually developed it for also a behavioral health space, you know, with a different kind of, thinking about it. So we actually managed to connect our systems with desks and use their touch screen as a way to control our system. So, that was one of the ways to then allow the children to have control of their space, right. (Janet: Right).

So now they have this, let’s say tool or, or a portal to be able to change the lighting to suit their needs. You know, with this touchscreen we could bring in, you know, television or radio, music. So that was a really a, a great thing. And we even brought in games actually, and funny enough, one of the games was ‘whack-a-mole’ (Janet: Oh, yeah), and you can basically punch this, the touchscreen to, you know, to play this game. (Janet: laughs, That’s perfect, yeah). And so, you know, this kind of was one of the, let’s say, elements that we partner with another company to create, to deliver this solution. So it’s not just one company doing it, but coming together.

Janet: Yeah, I want to just to make sure that everybody kind of hears what you’re saying here because it’s so important. These particular age groups essentially have their own autonomy, right? They have their own agency over their own environment, (Alex: Mm-hmm), which is just so huge, right? (Alex: Yeah). I mean, like, yeah…

Alex: Yeah. Indeed, actually. And you know, so we also work with the hospitals in the sense of looking at how can you provide, you know, give the children incentive, right? And say, “Hey, look, if you promise to take your medication or behave in a certain way, then we’ll slowly give you privileges in terms of, all right, now you can have television, you can have radio, you know.” So slowly kind of using that incentive to give them what they want, so a working partnership.

We also actually found that the touchscreen was actually really useful as a tool for connecting the nurses and clinicians with the child. So basically, by either playing games or a game of chess or whatever game, you know, puzzles, memory game that they do. (Janet: Right). This kind of having them both sit in front of the screen and participate in having a chat create this bond between the clinicians. (Janet: Right). So it became, you know, this technology piece suddenly it’s not replacing, but it’s actually bringing people in together. And that’s, I think that’s really also important, right? (Janet: Right).

Something that I strive to do is how technology, I mean, frequently, it just gets in the way, and you know, and people just, you know, gets focused on it. But how can it become a facilitator of really human relationships, actually. I think that’s also something really important.

Janet: Of human relationships, right, as opposed to, again, closing the door. (Alex: Yeah). I mean, it’s almost like they’re then forgotten, right? (Alex: Yeah), and they don’t know what’s happening. In this way, they can stay engaged (Alex: Yeah), and everything like that. That’s just terrific, Alex. (Alex: Yeah). I just want to ask you one more question about that particular room, (Alex: Mm-hmm), you had mentioned putting projections on the ceiling, not just on the wall. Was there a reason for the ceiling, (Alex: Yeah), projection as well?

Alex: So actually, it was more of a hypothesis that we started with this. So, you know, it was a pilot room. So we went in there trying to at least have the coverage of looking, “Hey, what are the possibilities”, right? And we did the projection, and we knew that with projectors you can kind of, you know, turn it off and then it’s not there at all. So we are not taking up the space. So we’re building, let’s say, the redundancies to be able to test out different hypothesis. And one of them was really to have the children when they’re lying in bed, to have some sort of visual cue of looking up the ceiling, right? So they’re not staring at this blank ceiling.

And one of the content that we developed for this projection was a starry night sky, actually, to help the children relax. (Janet: Right). And we worked with the psychologist to have this star that would gently pulsate to a certain rhythm so that if you don’t know it’s there, you won’t see it. But then the psychiatrist might tell a child, “Hey, look, see that star, that, focus on that, pace your breathing to it”, (Janet: Pace your breathing) and to help them calm. (Janet: Right, yeah). Yeah, so that was a way of, you know, to help kind of wind down an agitated state to help them calm themselves using the content of the projection. (Janet: Right).

And the other projection that we developed was more of a sunny forest. So it was really, you know, trees, you’re looking at the canopy of the trees. (Janet: The canopy of the trees, yeah), Yeah. The sunlight kind of filtering through. So again, something, you know, very nice that reminded you of outdoors. And in that scene, they were actually butterflies that flew across the screen. (Janet: Aww, oh that’s lovely). And the coaching that the, actually the psychiatrist want to do is that hey, you know, they’ll tell the child, “Imagine all your bad thoughts and terrible thoughts. Imagine these are the butterflies and they’re just flying away, floating away.” (Janet: Right). “So one at a time, just let go of it and let them fly away.”

So, we were basically developing these kinds of content to help, you know, with the therapy as well. So, I think for the first time, you know, we’re trying to now bring in therapy into this space where traditionally, you know, they really couldn’t do, they didn’t have the tools actually to really work with the children, right. They might have some usual coloring books and things like this, and you know, for the kids, but that was basically it, right? So we’re trying to bring in some of these technologies to help create this opportunity.

Janet: Yeah. And reduce their stress (Alex: Yeah), and everything, like you said, all the stuff that might be running through their minds (Alex: Yeah), and everything like that. I don’t think I need to see any papers after all of this, I know that what you’re doing is making a difference. (Alex: laughs).

Well as I tell our listeners all the time, as inclusive designers, we look at the biology, psychology, and sociology of spaces, and it really looks like you’ve really tackled all three quite well. So, just to remind our listeners, we will have all this information on our website, InclusiveDesigners.com (Alex: Yeah). Yeah, and is there anything else you wanted to add, was there any last, like takeaways, and what’s the follow up?

Alex: So maybe I think, I would like to end that, you know, at least for this behavioral health room, we’re piloting it and for now, it’s starting to show very good results actually. And I think some of the takeaways that, you know, we created this as a pilot, is that there is definitely some unintended users that, you know, we kind of discovered during our journey.

So there was one anecdote that actually the nurse told us about this child that came into this department. She was basically really aggressive, and out of control. She was basically like, you know, breaking equipment, tearing wallpaper off the walls. And they decided, “Hey, look, let’s try and put the child in this Philips room.” So they brought her over there with restraints and she went to the room, and immediately what she did was she turned on the red lights. You know, she just sat the room to this really intense, bright red. And the staff members were really concerned, like, “Wow, this red light going to aggravate her more.”

And really, you know, so everyone was like really concerned— “Should we just go and intervene?” But one of the head nurses said, “No, no, just leave her alone.” And within an hour, she had really calmed down and de-escalated. They could take off her restraints. And then I think within the, the next half day they could discharge her, and she was already, you know, there for a couple of days being really troublesome.

So it goes to show that, you know, because the red light I remember was one of the things that we said, should we just, you know, block that from happening because that’s really intense, right? But I’m glad we didn’t because I think, children, you know, or our kind of cohorts, find a way of expressing themselves, right? (Janet: Right). And this is something again, we’re still learning, discovering there’s so many different possibilities and who am I to say that red is not the right color, right? And that’s, I think, you know, one of the lessons for me as well, that yeah, there are, you know, different ways of expressing…

Janet: Yeah, but teenagers always have a different way of looking at things anyways, you know? (Alex: Yeah). I might have liked a red light too. (Alex: Yeah). Right? (Alex: Yeah). And again, I think it was in part that she was able to get that agency for herself, right? She was able to have that control. (Alex: Yeah). And be like, yeah, I’m going to have the red light and just not allow anybody to say otherwise, and with, just even with that was probably what helped her to kind of calm down. (Alex: Yeah).

All right. So it’s kind of switching gears a little bit, let’s talk about the innovation lab. (Alex: Yeah). I mean, all this work that you’re doing is just amazing. What do we got coming up? What should we know about as inclusive designers? What do we have?

Alex: All right. So yeah, we have the innovation lab, you know, here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So this is Philips’ headquarters here. And this is basically a lab where yeah, we, you know, bring together a lot of our different advanced research, right? And we’re trying to bring into this lab, and it’s kind of probing the future of what healthcare could be, right? So we’re thinking about that tomorrow. Thinking about what, you know, is the ICU of tomorrow, you know, what is the cath lab, you know, interventional lab of tomorrow.

So we’re trying to basically bring together these different thinking and groups of designers to build these possible or preferable futures, you know, and we share that with our, you know, customers, the clinicians, and get feedback. So it’s a kind of basically, yeah, I would say, experimentation lab where we bring in technology and we try to, you know, build it in a very tangible way, and invite folks to come and experience it and provide us feedback. And this is how we kind of learn and grow and develop these, these ideas actually. So, yeah…

Janet: Yeah. Well, I think you guys are doing some amazing work. And Alex you also do some amazing work as a sideline. (Alex: laughs). You want to tell our audience a little bit about it, and again, we’ll have all this information on our, on our website.

Alex: All right. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, so of course, you know, yeah, working in the healthcare, you know, it’s a very kind of serious field. You know, very life and death. And, you know, in my kind of, let’s say spare time, I, you know, do something, you know, other things are more lighthearted, but still in the design area. So, this is something I’ve done is actually a plush toy, nightlight actually. So it is a completely soft, plush toy that also doubles as a nightlight, actually.

So this is something actually I created when my son was born. So that was basically about 15 years ago. For my wife actually, and I for us to do the kind of nighttime nursing feeding. So it gives off a very gentle light so we could basically do our nighttime chores without waking up the other partner.

And then, when he kind of, you know, grew a bit older in the toddler, it became his kind of companion to comfort him at night so he could sleep by himself and have his own personal light that he could control actually. So if you, yeah, the character, that you click its bellybutton, and it glows and then it’s turns off by itself. 15 years later we decided to do a Kickstarter, kind of, you know, a campaign. And it was successful. So now we’ve produced it and I’ve got little side business, at least the selling is…

Janet: A little side business. (Alex: Yeah). I know, and it’s called, it’s called Lumi, right?

Alex: that’s right.

Janet: L_U_M_I

Alex: Yeah, Lumi. Yes.

Janet: What was behind the name? Is that like a children’s book name that I’m not aware of? Is it…?

Alex: I guess it’s because it glows, it’s, yeah, illumination, Lumi. And it does actually come with a storybook as well.

Janet: It comes with a storybook! I didn’t know that. Really!

Alex: Yeah. The life of how Lumi came to become Lumi. And why does he, Lumi, glow.

Janet: Oh, (Alex: Yeah), oh I love that. Well, I can see what I’m getting now, that’s what I’m going to go give a lot of my friends.

Is there, before, as we we’re kind of wrapping this up, our conversation today, (Alex: Mm-hmm), you know, Alex, it seems like you’ve kind of like, kind of conquered the inclusive environment quite, quite well. Is there anything you want our listeners to know, like is there any last parting words? You know, what do you see the future maybe? Or what would you say to yourself if you were a younger designer? (Alex: laughs). Like, kind of riff with me a little bit.

Alex: Alright. Yeah. I wouldn’t say, you know, I’ve conquered the inclusive design. I’m thinking I’m on a journey and there’s always a lot more to learn.

Janet: Well, I know a lot about this stuff, I’ll just let you know right now Alex, and you check a lot of boxes as far as I’m concerned. So, just so you know… (Alex: Thank you). And you’ve written a children’s book, so like, that’s pretty cool, right?

Alex: Yeah, I think, you know, it’s just, you know, having this kind of naivety, I guess, you know, to come into a space, you know, that you don’t know, to be able to open yourself to learn about it, right? And you know, I always say, you know, yeah, it’s not having that, the arrogance to say, I know everything, and this is the way it should be. You know, so really talking to the, to the folks that you are working with.

And I think also my, you know, definition of inclusiveness is also looking at they’re casting a wider net, right? So just like NICU, you know, the parents were not someone that people focused on, but they were actually equally as important, right?

So in any situation, any solution they’re designing, not just look at the immediate user, but who are the other supporting, (Janet: Supporting), stakeholders (Janet: Yeah). Yeah, even, you know, it could be the parents, it could be, you know, at least in the healthcare, know that some of the decision makers that might buy the equipment, all that. So all these people (Janet: Right), working together in this ecosystem, I think, is one of the things that I think we’re starting to look at more.

And also, I think, at least in my field, in the healthcare area, it’s so complex that not one company can own everything. So we’re starting to look at partnerships of different ecosystems where, one company like Philips might deliver one aspect of the solution, and partner with someone else, you know, maybe even a competitor to deliver something else, right? So, but together, at the end of the day, we’re delivering a great solution that works together for the benefit of all the end users. Right? (Janet: Right).

So I think that’s, that’s a key thing. And that’s where, I guess, you know, that’s the change from when I started my career, you know, many years ago, is that, you know, it’s more “alright, yeah, you know, you only have this nice company, we need to own all the space; we need to own everything.” And it’s that singular user, but now I think that’s a lot more actually, that we need to look at as a system.

Janet: Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s an interesting journey that you just referenced, that you’ve gone from this like singular look to like really, I mean, I dare say an inclusive approach to, you know, healthcare. (Alex: Yeah.) So yeah, I think that’s really quite lovely. (Alex: Yeah).

Alex: Yeah, and I think that also, maybe just another quick point. I think that also goes for the design team, actually. I think one thing that I’ve discovered is that there’s so many, you know, designs becoming so complex as well. So for instance, design the NICU room and all that. It’s not just, “Hey, look, I’m an industrial designer, I’m a user interface designer, or I’m  a video specialist.” We’re bringing all these folks together from architects, right, from all the different disciplines working together as well. And I think that’s also on that size, including all the different viewpoints in the creating of the solution. And it’s not just, look, you know, it’s the product marketing guy that’s making that, let’s say specification, but it’s everyone coming together and working more in collaboration.

Janet: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s really quite terrific. I mean, because this is the discussion of not doing these things in a vacuum, right? Like, and it’s about really kind of, the collaboration only brings great minds together, which only helps the better good.

Alex: Exactly, yeah. (Janet: Right). Indeed.

Janet: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s just perfect Alex, and I thank you so much for stopping by and we’re going to have all this information for our listeners on Inclusive Designers Podcast website, which is InclusiveDesigners.com. And Alex, thank you again so much for, for being here and sharing your wisdom with our listeners. And, if there’s anything else you want to, I know we just went over this, if there’s anything else you would like to express, please let our listeners know.

Alex: No, yeah, thank you for inviting me, to this show actually. It was a pleasure talking to both of you and sharing my experience, so I thank you very much.

(Music / Outro)

Janet: Alex is so impressive! He is one of those inclusive designers that is thinking of everything in these highly technical environments for some very vulnerable populations. These pilot adaptive environments are amazing in the way they seek to make the experience better for patients, families & clinicians. Using meaningful human-centered innovations, they are truly reimagining the ER experience for both the NICU rooms, and pediatric behavioral health.

Carolyn: In the NICU, I really like how they are using the software and screens to help the parents be more informed and involved in the baby’s care… and for those parents to be able to more easily navigate the information they need, is so important.

Janet:  Yeah, I also found it fascinating that they were then able to take that knowledge and tools from the pilot NICU space to create an alternate for the sterile rooms usually used for pediatric behavioral patients… This work with behavioral health should be inspiring for designers no matter what their area of interest.

They included interactive ambient elements— like the Tune-able lights, calming sounds, and immersive projections. These seem to calm agitated pediatric patients which we know will lessen the need for sedation, and potentially de-escalate patients who might be unregulated. Not only did it give the patient a sense of comfort and control, the projections could even be used by staff for additional therapeutic treatments.

It is interesting to note that this was already in the works before the pandemic. Making a room that allows for some agency, when they have no agency in their lives— in this case a juvenile, who is in crisis mode— can really help to relax and calm the mind.

Carolyn: I know, I think they should consider creating a home version— who wouldn’t like to use that pulsing star to regulate their breathing, or let a butterfly take the day’s stress away.

Janet: Mm-hmm, well you may want one at home, but there are so many other places that could use a calming zone like this too. When we think about Trauma-informed design, for example, these could be great tools to put in the workplace, or schools.

Carolyn:  …and that is why you are the professional (laughs).

Janet: Well, and speaking of professional, one last point that keeps coming up in all our discussions in our field is the importance of co-design. We need to look beyond ourselves and collaborate to reveal the best design decisions.

Carolyn: And stay tuned, we may even have more on this topic in our next episodes, which are already in the works. And we can’t go without giving a quick ‘glowing’ shoutout to Alex for creating his plush buddy Lumi…

Janet: Yeah, gotta love Lumi…

Carolyn: I admit, I’ve already given one to my niece, Alison, and her little one, Jordan.

Janet: And we will share the link for how to contact Alex, and of course, the links to the innovative work that he and his team at Philips are doing, and also for the many other things that were mentioned along the way during this discussion. All on our website at InclusiveDesigners.com

Carolyn: That’s: InclusiveDesigners.com…

Janet: A big thank you to Alex Tan. And thank you all, as well, for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts, you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it again, Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page. And now you can also find us on Feedspots’ List of Best Design Podcasts.

Janet: Yes you can! And as our motto says: ’Stay Well… and, Stay Well Informed’…  as always, thank you for stopping by. And we’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, see you next time.

Music up

Transcript:

Creating the Best IDEA:
Matteo Zallio’s Tools for ‘Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Accessibility’
Guest: Matteo Zallio

Music / Open

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

(Music up, then lower)

Music / Intro

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche…

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: Carolyn, we have such a wonderful show today! But first, I’ve got to tell you some big news, ‘Feedspot’ has put us on their list of “The 70 Best Design Podcasts on the Internet”—pretty cool, right?

Carolyn: Very cool. Woohoo us!

Janet: Woohoo us, exactly… and to keep us on that list, we must get to our next guest. Dr Matteo Zallio from Cambridge University. He has done a lot of research on how the built environment influences our perception of a space, our behavior, our interaction with other people and ultimately, our mood and happiness.

He and his team have created some wonderful tools to help designers and architects add Diversity, Equity & Inclusion—or as we call it DEI— in their designs. They named it the ‘IDEAs Toolkit’ which stands for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility.

Carolyn: Yes, and not only is Matteo Zallio one smart cookie, but he’s our first international guest!

Janet: Our podcast is being heard far and wide, and with that in mind, I think our next season may be even more globally focused.

Carolyn: So true, and a good hint at some interesting future shows we are working on… but first, let’s take a closer look at Matteo, his background and what makes him so impressive…

Dr. Matteo Zallio is a senior research associate at the University of Cambridge, and previously a Fulbright fellow at Stanford University. He is an award-winning designer and researcher with a unique background in helping businesses to develop futuristic technologies that are inclusive by considering human diversity. In his own words, he is on a mission to make everyday spaces and technologies accessible and inclusive for everybody.

Janet: Matteo will introduce us to ways to use the tools they created to help find the best design solutions. And we even take a little side trip into the future to discuss what’s coming in the Metaverse!

Carolyn: And unlike the Marvel heroes, we may already have some super-powers to make the technology more inclusive right from the start!

Janet: Actually Carolyn, the Marvel multiverse may be fictional, but the Metaverse is very real and coming sooner that we think. But we’ll let Matteo tell us about this and many other important insights in his own words.

Carolyn: And with that, here is our interview with Dr. Matteo Zallio… Designer, Scholar, Product Creator, and Inclusive Design Activist.

Music / Interview

Janet: Hi and welcome Matteo. How are you?

Matteo: I’m great Janet. I’m great. It’s great to be here with you.

Janet: And where are you right now? I know you travel all over Europe. Where are you stationed at the moment?

Matteo: Great question. Well, I’ve been traveling prior to COVID a lot. I was in America and around Europe, but now I’m based in Cambridge in England. So I’m currently here.

Janet: Very nice. It’s a beautiful area. So let’s kind of dive right on into it. Let’s start with the broader perspective. What exactly got you involved with inclusive designing and what brings your passion to the table?

Matteo: Well, it might be a long story, but I’ll try to keep it short. (J: laughs). Because you know, I learned about inclusive design, universal design, and accessible design shortly after my master’s degree in architecture, back in Italy. When I was working as an architect in different offices, and I was consulting for some companies. And I understood that, as an architect, I haven’t been clearly understand the concepts of inclusion and accessibility when I was studying.

And with the practice, I understood that there is much more than only just guidelines and regulations. And so, I got more interested into exploring a more people-centric perspective rather than a more technological or, or kind of self-centric perspective of making a beautiful architecture. But I wanted to make beautiful, accessible, and inclusive architectures and products.

So yeah, everything started at that moment. And then, I got a chance to get enrolled into a PhD where I actually started and I did research around that topic, and it’s where, brought me up to here today.

Janet: That’s great. Well, was there also like a particular thing in your life that maybe made you think to go in this particular way, was there like an impetus, was there an ‘aha’ moment? Was there something that you said, ‘this isn’t right, we’ve got to do things a little bit differently’?

Matteo: Well, for sure. I think, the moment when I started seeing my grandma, which, I was very attached to her, you know, getting older and getting more… I would say, with different impairments than the one she had when she was younger.

Well, this made me think that sometimes the house, the home, the place where we live, which is, you know, the nest where we build our family, sometimes can become a prison. And people have the right not to live in a prison, but to live in an environment, in a place, where they feel good, they feel included, and they feel can protect them without safety or security issues.

So, yeah, I think combining that event, those moments with what I was studying, and what I wanted to study in the near future, brought me to be more interested into this topic and to learn really a lot, especially from my trips around the world.

Janet: Right. Okay, my brain just started exploding with all these questions. So you know, I think it was even Judy Heumann said something to the effect of: ‘We’re only disabled by the environment around us’… so, and I thought to myself, that’s very true, right, to your point, that the environment is really the disabler. Right? The thing that becomes the problem. So I know that you’ve done a lot of research at Cambridge University. Can you tell me a little bit about some of your work?

Matteo: Oh, for sure. Janet. Well, we have done quite a lot of research at Cambridge around inclusive design. And especially if we talk about the built environment. We recently understood from a survey that we conducted across different areas of the board, that survey respondents reported that building owners are well-informed about the benefits of designing inclusively.

And unfortunately, we got only 10%, around 10% of the survey respondents, to be really well-informed about that. So what that means… 1-out-of-10 people know about the benefits of designing according to universal design and inclusive design principles. And this led us to think a lot about what we could do as a community, as architects, as designers, to promote inclusive design and to explain about the benefits to business owners, to clients, to facility managers, to everybody who has to be involved in the design process and in the commissioning process.

Janet: Right. It seems reasonable (laughs). But I thought it was interesting that it was only, I don’t know why it surprised me, 1-out-of-10, I thought it would be a little bit higher than that. And I think people do know, but I think that people don’t always then know what to do. I just took a survey about, as a designer, had I come across anything about designing gender neutral bathrooms.

And it was interesting to me because I really had to think about what the other designer who’s asking me for it, and then they had to go back and talk to their stakeholders, right, and discuss this as a concept. And I think that none of them, and maybe even myself included, really understood the, like what I could say, in order to help this as a practice.

And I think people want to do it, but they just don’t know what they’re looking for. Can you, can you give us some examples of maybe some of this as ideas to, to help designers to push the narrative?

Matteo: Totally, Yeah, well, this is very true, and it is correlated to the fact that as people don’t really know about the benefits and maybe even the value of designing more inclusively. There is a sort of a correlated scarcity in their request to the architects to design inclusively. So let me rephrase.

Basically, if people don’t really know about the value of having a building that is not just wheelchair accessible, but it’s actually helping people with sensory or cognitive impairments to live in a better way and to thrive. Then architects, designers and the engineering teams are not really pushed to design for standards that are going above and beyond what we currently know and what we currently envision in terms of design.

So an example that’s really clear, and I think it impacts the life of a lot of people is, you know, when you go to a restaurant. And maybe you are sitting at the table, the lights are pretty low, there is a lot of noise in the restaurant, and you have a group of people around you trying to have a conversation with you.

Well, I personally experienced a lot of times exclusion in that setting because I couldn’t hear clearly what people were telling me; I couldn’t see clearly what I was going to eat; and even more things. Sometimes you are squished into the side of the room with your chair (J: laughs) and you want to go to the toilet and you say, well, it’s better I don’t go now. But I go when I just stand up before paying the check. (J: laughs). Because if I need to move now, I need to move the table, I need to move the other eight friends around me. (J: laughs).

So this is not really about an inclusive experience, (J: No), but this is something that excludes people from having a pleasant evening. (J: right). And that’s an example I think is powerful to understand, not just the value, but the benefits of designing inclusively.

Janet: Right, I’ve experienced that both in separate nature, whether it’s just the poor lighting or the sound is too loud, or I can’t navigate the room, or like you said, all at once. And then when we talked to Yannick Benjamin of Contento, he was a restauranteur and he had really looked to try to design for inclusivity.

And I think what we’re kind of saying here, is that there’s a direct correlation ultimately at the end of the day from inclusivity, because guess what? I’m likely not to go back to that restaurant, right? I’m going to try to persuade my friends not have to go back to that restaurant because I couldn’t hear them, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t navigate getting to the bathroom, or whatever, you know, throw in a couple of glasses of wine, right? I mean, it’s just becomes a whole thing. That’s money out of your pocket.

Matteo: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think this is another example that tells a story for, you know, business owners for example when we talk about a restaurant. But simply, you know, when we go to the hospital, at school, at work, in a shopping center, everywhere— it’s really about trying to make these examples and trying to allow people to develop a narrative and a conversation that allows them to put themselves into the shoes, not of others, but of themselves.

So if you cannot put yourself into the shoes of a wheelchair user, put yourself into your own shoes when you were experiencing exclusion… when you couldn’t enter a door in a shopping center because you had so many bags around you, or you were carrying so much weight, or a kid, or just simply you couldn’t get into the car because you finished the 2-hour session at the gym when you were completely destroyed, right? (J: laughs).

When you, when you try to emphasize these emotions, these feelings, and these behavior for people to really understand ‘how could be the life if you have a physical sense or a cognitive impairment?’ Well, then at that moment people will demand for more inclusive design. People will demand for better designed buildings, and people will understand that at some point that they cannot live without that.

Janet: Right. Let me ask, I want to ask you a more of an opinion question. We’ve talked about this in other episodes as well, is the idea of whether or not, when looking at design to do sort of like the fake walk through, so like, being in a wheelchair, maybe having some sort of eyeglasses that make you have limited vision, or something like that to walk through those spaces. You know, it’s temporary, so that’s where people have an argument with, you know, this is just considered like a blip in time versus a chronic situation that goes on for perhaps the life of the occupant.

Again, there’s two trains of thought… I’ve seen it work both for myself and also for others students and even observers of students going through spaces that have to navigate while pretending to, having some sort of paraplegia, or pretending to have some sort of visual impairment, that type of thing. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Matteo: Absolutely. I have more than some thoughts on that (J: laughs) because, well, first, I could mention that when we developed a study about a year and a half ago, and we tested the ‘Cambridge Simulation Glasses’ which are glasses that exactly do what you were mentioning before. They simulate visual loss, and they simulate, for example, the inability to understand, to clearly see contrast between objects and colors. We did a study— it’s open access, it’s published— about how people can understand by wearing these glasses where points of exclusion are within a building.

And we tried it out in different settings. And we discovered that, for example, stairs. The stairs that have the nose without a color that highlights the end of the step are extremely dangerous. Not just for people who are totally blind, of course, but also for people who have very, very mild visual impairments (J: right), or simply where people are checking their phone, (J: laughs), their messages or their social media, and they are not looking at exactly where the stairs are.

And that’s not everything, because it’s great to develop this sort of empathy for, let’s say impairments that you don’t have. There is a problem here, as you mentioned, wearing those glasses, or trying a wheelchair for a couple of hours a day in a year, doesn’t allow you to have the full experience of a person that lives constantly in a wheelchair, with glasses, or hearing aids. for example. (J: Right).

This is a limitation of approaching the problem in this way, but it’s also a powerful message that allows people to first approach a problem, a need, a demand from the users in a different way. And if they are approaching that way that has not been a conventional way they normally do when they design, well, it helps them to create more empathy and compassion. So then, when they design, they have a better understanding of questions and answers that are out of the box.

Janet: Right. Yeah. I thought I would kind of just ask you about that, because it’s sort of a hot topic within inclusive design and how to navigate some of these spaces and such. So Matteo, are there any resources that you can point to that might be helpful for our listeners?

Matteo: Well, there is a lot of research in this area and there are a lot of studies. Now, if I would mention to you right now a list of studies, we might end up recording the podcast into tomorrow (J: laughs).

Janet: Well, you have kindly provided us with a few resources of your own and we’ll have that on our website, InclusiveDesigners.com.

Matteo: Absolutely. I think it’s worth to mention the variety of studies done from the 60’s when the human rights movement started to mushroom, in America especially, (J: Right), to also studies around the 90’s and 2000, even from Cambridge or also from other universities across Europe and America, where they test products and they test tools to increase this empathy, this experience of living in someone else’s shoes for a bit. (J: Right).

I can just mention, for example, the Age Explorer Suit, which is a sort of a suit that you can wear and you experience for a few minutes or about an hour, whatever time you want to wear it, the feeling of being an older person (J: yup), with, you know, temporary physical impairments.

So there are really a lot, a lot of tools out there. And, (J: Right), it’s just a matter of maybe Googling it and find them.

Janet: Right. I mean, there’s even tools right now that you can put on your phone for Pete’s sake to get some sort of idea of even what visual impairment might look like in a space. So keep that in mind designers, and we will have all that posted on our website, Inclusive Designers.

So going back to your work, so when we were designing spaces that are really inclusive, are we considering all aspects of human beings or sometimes we have to be very specific? I think it’s the ultimate goal is to be as sort of global as all-encompassing as we can be, but is that really attainable?

Matteo: Well, I cannot hide that it’s very challenging for several reasons. And one is that— even if we’re talking about a small architectural firm, a small design firm, or a huge, massive with thousand employees architectural design firm— there’s always a degree of misunderstanding or bias, or even just a lack of knowledge about, you know, designing inclusively for everybody.

But to me it’s important that from the very start, from when you study in college, in your PhD, in your master, even perhaps in your, you know, K-12 education, there has to be an understanding of, for example, the power of diversity. The importance that nobody is equal to another person. I mean, we are all different, but we all need equal rights, right?

So for example, coming back to the work of designers and architects, it’s important to understand the stories and the journeys of stakeholders for the building occupants. It’s important then to brainstorm when we know their stories and their journey, to brainstorm what their capabilities are— what are their physical, their sensory, their cognitive capabilities.

And when we understand about the journey and the capabilities, we can then define the needs, their desires, right? The really so-called ‘need finding’ stage in the design thinking process that is very famous and popular among designers, (J: right), but I’m not sure how popular it is among architects. So knowing about a journey, knowing about the capabilities, allows us to define the needs. (J: hmm).

And once we understand about the needs, we can create design requirements. (J: Right). There are not just a checklist taken from a few standards or regulations, but it’s really something that goes above and beyond our traditional thinking process.

Janet: Right? That is so true. I think when people hear that I’m an Inclusive Designer, those designers and architects come, they mean well, but they’re really trying to get, they’re looking to get around the checklist. They’re not even like trying to get the checklist done.

So I find that that’s in some respects, it’s a simple process, but I think you’re right. I think people just don’t always tend to want to go through it. I think that there’s a, a feeling of design in terms of beauty that that’s the focus and it’s not necessarily on inclusivity. And that ultimately, well, it could win you awards, but it’s probably not going to be like… I just saw something recently in one of the design magazines and they had, it was for some sort of spa. It was just bizarre. There was no biophilia in there which is known to create feelings of calmness and relaxation. And again, it looked like it was like a white cave. It was just, it was bizarre to me, but it made the magazine. Right?

But I thought to myself, well, how long is that going to last? I’m thinking, I just don’t see that as being some sort of like beautiful place in order to go to kind of relax. So, but anyways, so it was just to your point, I’m getting off track here, but I know you also talked a little bit about an ‘Inclusive Design Canvas’… can you talk a little bit about that?

Matteo: Yeah. Well, we did some research here in Cambridge. And other than understanding about ‘what are the challenges’, we try to envision ‘what are the opportunities out of these challenges.’ So other than understanding that there is demand, and with not enough answer to these demands to design inclusively. We try to work with architects and experts. And we are literally a co-design process to try to understand how we can help them in the design process. How can we make the design process an inclusive design process?

So we were able to create this ‘Inclusive Design Canvas’ which is sort of strategic design template that helps people, helps architects, designers to brainstorm and involve real users in the design process.

Janet: Can you tell us a little bit your ‘Inclusive Design Canvas’ and how can inclusive designers access it?

Matteo: For sure, Janet. So, an essential part of the design process is about understanding who we are designing for, what are their stories, their capabilities, their desires, and their journeys. So to help designers to embed inclusive design in their traditional design process, after years of research, we created a design template, this is called ‘Inclusive Design Canvas’ that helps designers, but also public authorities and organizations, to think inclusively and ask the right questions. So the ‘Inclusive Design Canvas’ is a strategic design template that offers an educational springboard for architectural design professionals to embed inclusive design into their design process.

I could say it actually helps to develop community engagement exercises with stakeholders. Or we can just simply use the canvas, which is an A3 paper, an A3 sheet—you can print it or use it on your computer— to brainstorm with, with post-its. For example, with your team, you can brainstorm the journey, the capabilities, the needs, and the design requirements you have to think of in order to go above and beyond accessibility, and really think about inclusion, diversity, and equity when you design.

Janet: Right. I love the idea that just even bringing in the community, I think, designers and architects just don’t even take that into consideration. (M: yeah).

Do you have any suggestions for designers out there that are maybe trying to get their firm to do that type of extra— it’s extra legwork, let’s just be honest, right, I mean, it should be part of the process, but it is extra legwork at the moment. So, do you have any suggestions for those designers that are maybe trying to push that narrative in their design firms and, and getting a little pushback? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Matteo: Well, I would say to your point, it’s not really extra work at the moment, because then you get paid back in terms of happiness, satisfaction and (J: productivity), totally, of the people who are going to live into your, into the building you’ve designed (J: right), after you finish your process. (J: right).

So I think it’s really about embedding in the design process the word ‘inclusive’. So what do you do? I do design— no, you do inclusive design. So inclusive design or universal design should become not just buzzwords, but literally objectives that clarify and make sure people understand how you design.

Let me give you an example, doing universal or inclusive design is not just an add-on, as I said before, it should be really in the mainstream design process. And when you do this, you should start from the very basics from, you know, from the ground up, to think about a blank paper— when you have to sketch a new house or a new office for your client— as an opportunity to use, for example, a structured method like with the ‘Inclusive Design Canvas’, which is an assessable open source tool you can download from on my website or the university of Cambridge, the Engineering Design Center, Inclusive Design Group website. You can use that.

Janet: And we’ll have that on our website.

Matteo: Yeah well, you can just download the canvas and use that as a tool for the very few moments when you start the process to literally think about something that is not just about form and aesthetics, but think about something on form, fit, and function. (J: right). Form, fit, and function are what makes a great architecture, beautiful architecture, to work for real people.

Janet: Right. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. And what is the website Matteo?

Matteo: Yeah. Janet. Well, you can find it on my website, MatteoZallio.com, or on the Engineering Design Center from the University of Cambridge website. So I think Google will help you a lot to find it.

Janet: (laughs) love Google. Alright, I got a couple, few more questions for you. You said something along the lines of designers have to ask for feedback and evaluate how they can do better. You know, we talk about sort of like post occupancy surveys and stuff like that. We have a, another designer that had thought maybe that they’re kind of becoming obsolete. Or maybe they were becoming obsolete because people just weren’t doing them. She argues a little bit further that maybe we can be doing a better process upfront so that the post-occupancy surveys don’t necessarily, they don’t have to be done. What are your thoughts on that?

Matteo: Post-occupancy surveys are tools or methods that are around since, I would say the 80’s and 90’s. More so in the 2000’s and in recent years, but they have been around and been tested for more than 30-years now.

Yes, there are some challenges, there are some problems with some of the post-occupancy evaluation tools out there but are also great opportunities. In fact, we understood about the opportunities with, with the research we have done, because there is a part of the design process that has to be done in a way that is inclusive. And as I mentioned before, you know, you can use the ‘Inclusive Design Canvas’, but you can also use other tools that I’m sure are out there.

When you talk about getting the data and getting an understanding of what people feel, what people experience in an environment, in a building. Well, to me, it’s important that you just not ask questions about ‘how do you feel in terms of thermal comfort’; how do you feel in terms of access; how you feel in terms of sensory, like auditory comfort? But it’s important really to embed in post-occupancy evaluation tools, or even more in surveys or other mixed method audits, the great variety of information that allow us to live in a space.

And I’m saying about, of course, the relationship between the person and the space, which it can pass as information around access, ergonomics, thermal comfort of course, or the comfort, but also for example, the perception we have about cleanliness and maintenance. And also you have to put together into post-occupancy evaluation, for example, data about how people feel and how people feel with others in a specific environment. So about people, teams’ dynamics, how people feel in their relationship with other people (J: within the environment). Exactly.

Janet: Right. Yeah. Which is so important to understand just even the more nuanced pieces of being in those spaces. It’s something that comes to mind and in just, even a household kind of situation, everything you want is open concept, open concept, open concept for households. And that was huge. And then here came the pandemic and there were no places for people to kind of go because you’re now living with them 24/7. And that’s the interpersonal dynamics, right, I mean of living. Do you think that psychology comes into play a lot more than designers have thought about in the past? Like, what do you think?

Matteo: Yeah, I think that’s not just psychology, but here we are really at, in a crossroad of several disciplines. Of course design, but also there is behavioral science, there is ergonomics and human factors. There is really a variety of disciplines that we actually used to create a tool—a post-occupancy evaluation tool— that really brings together what I mentioned before. The relationship that people have with the space and the relationship that people have with other people in a space, in an environment.

And together, this information can really give a company or a business, or just simply the facility manager, or the person that is in charge of redesigning and refurbishing the building, that environment, or just simply the company’s culture— to understand how the people live, what the people feel, what is their perception.

And with this data from our ‘IDEAs’ audit tool, you can basically get a snapshot of what is happening into your company, into your building and what the real people think about it.

So, yeah, I think it’s powerful to bring together not just the aspects of ergonomics and human factors, but really to bring together behavioral science with design, and allow an understanding of how people feel and how can we do better to make them feel better.

Janet: Right. And can you tell us a little bit more about the new toolkit ‘IDEAs’?

Matteo: Sure. So out of the research we have done… so the ‘IDEAs Audit’ tool is a tool that helps you to understand the perception people have about their working environment.

The ‘Ideas Audit’ tool has been developed out of years of research. And we understood that is really important for companies and architects and designers, to understand the real perception that people have about their working environment or the built environment where they live.

So we developed this tool that helps designers and business leaders and facility managers to understand the perception of inclusion, equity, diversity, and accessibility in a place, in an environment. And this data help really a lot in the design process and in framing new policies for the built environment where people live and work.

Janet: And it’s available now or …

Matteo: it’s already available. you’ll find it on The University of Cambridge website.

Janet: Right. It was always interesting when I started off at the Boston Architectural College for my master’s in Design for Human Health, the cornerstones were that we look at the biology, psychology, and sociology of spaces. And I remember just even my dad being like, why are you studying neuroscience? You’re a designer. Why are you studying, what was the other one… biomechanics. And he just could not wrap his head around some of these more, it seemed like, I think he thought I should be picking up just like a, some sort of protractor and a straight edge and, and kind of call it a day.

But I feel that even those three touchstones, and we’re coming up with more with trauma informed design and our evaluation tool with that, but we have these outside touchstones. So I appreciate you bringing up the, the idea of interpersonal working mindset and the perceptions and stuff like that.

I find it fascinating, but I think what you were touching on was, is that ultimately again, if you can have people just to be happier and healthier within their spaces, productivity goes up or people come back to your spaces or stay longer in your spaces to either eat more, shop more or whatever it is. So it’s really quite great.

So moving forward, what do you see in the future? Like, what do you think our challenges are going to be coming out of COVID? I see a real change that has happened over the last two years. And I think, again, going back to this being more inclusive, more diverse, more equitable. I think people are recognizing that this is something that needs to change. But do you see anything else, or is that the major piece that we’re coming out of as designers? Like that was something that was huge.

Matteo: Well, I have to say, we are at a time in history where there is a lot going on now across the world. And Covid was not even the last of the big challenges we are experiencing, (J: right). And we are just recording the podcast in the moment where we didn’t really expect a few weeks ago what was going to happen now. What the impact in the life of millions of people in the war. (J: right).

And, when I think when we talk about universal design, inclusive design, and when we think about making buildings, neighborhoods, cities, country areas, I mean, making the world better, we really understand that, you know, we are all connected. We are not just one country, another country. What happens in Asia influences America, and what happens in Europe influences Oceania, Australia. (J: Right).

So what I’m trying to say is that when we talk about, you know, understanding about diversity, about equity, and about inclusion, I think in the near future, and also mindful of COVID, we have to really think that if we are in a workplace, and for some moments before COVID, we were maybe able to cope with stress, or cope with a behavior of another person that wasn’t really great for us and this was making us feel more excluded (J: hmm) from the working environment, for example. (J: Right).

Well, now I think we got an understanding of the opposite. We got an understanding of maybe being isolated and not connecting with real people, or maybe being totally immersed in family life. And so we now know more, we were able to put ourselves in someone else’s’ shoes, but also put ourself in our shoes and really understand what are the challenges we can experience in different contexts. (J: hmm). And sometimes for us, different context means the daily context for other people. (J: uh-huh).

And so I would like to close with a message, which is, we have been thinking and working a lot to develop and design places that are wheelchair accessible. It took about 50-years, almost, between the first movements to then get to standards and regulations like the ADA in America, to literally make the voice of certain people heard.

Now we have more power. Now we can make the voice heard much faster, quickly, because we have other tools or instruments. Let’s not forget about continuing the narrative, but also about implementing this narrative in the practice. Because sometimes we listen to podcasts and say, ‘oh, that was great’ and then you forget about how to do things. (J: yeah).

And you know, we are approaching an era where it seems everything is going to be digital. (J: right). Everything’s going to be virtual, everything is going to be immersive.

Janet: Right. Can we just kind of stop you right there, Matteo? I think there’s actually a good segue. Cause you and I had talked a little bit about like the Meta world, right? Do you want to expand a little bit about that and, is it going to be accessible for everybody? I mean, if you’re in a virtual world and you have some sort of visual impairment, how do you see that working? I think also is there an opportunity for it to be more inclusive than what we’ve had in the past? Designers, kind of think about that. Or do you think it’s just going to separate people even further? I know that’s a lot of questions in one. (laughs).

Matteo: Let me say Janet, that there is really a lot to discover about that. And let me also say that I just finished research that is going to be released in a few days— actually think once the podcast will be released, the research is going to be already public— (J: oh), about designing the Metaverse, designing digital immersive worlds. And I can tell you that there are more questions than answers right now.

And there are more questions simply because we can imagine that these digital worlds will be more accessible and partially is correct, but partially is incorrect, because what can seem more accessible, for example. There is no force of gravity, so we don’t need to walk from a space to another. (J: Right).

However, there will be accessibility issues in terms of ‘how can we use the technology to access that space?’ And now equitable opportunities to allow people from under-represented communities or emerging markets can have to access that space. That’s a matter of accessibility.

And so I really think that, you know, the architects of the physical world, as they call them, (J: laughs), will have an opportunity to influence. While the architects know how to design and include in the physical world, will have an opportunity to understand how to inform the design of an inclusive digital immersive world. (J: uh-huh).

So, let me just finish with the fact that we have to be aware there are really endless opportunities there. (J: right). Endless in terms of design, in terms of equity and human rights, and also in terms of technological opportunities. So I’m really curious to see what’s going on in the next few years.

Janet: Yeah, me too. I find it fascinating and let me just ask you a quick follow-up question here, which is, having come from Italy, you know, sort of like the backbone of architecture, right, like that, it wasn’t America, as much as we’d like to think it is. It’s not, (laughs), it could be Greece too, but you know, there’s classical designs that still to this day resonate with both beauty and with presence.

It’s kind of incredible, right? And then at some point as designers and architects, we kind of lost feeling with that. Like, because there’s new materials so we can create new things all good and fine, but the basic beauty was the basic beauty and that was how it was kind of done.

And it doesn’t matter whether even if you were a Picasso. Picasso had gone and studied all the masters, right? And before he became, you know, known with the eyeball over here and the arm over here, and he really kind of thought outside the box.

So I’m wondering, do you think that in order to create this Metaverse, we have to be able to master then the physical environment in terms of inclusivity to go into a more inclusive Metaverse? Or do you think that this is, we can kind of say, okay, we’ve messed that up in the physical and maybe try to do it a little bit better in the virtual?

Matteo: Well, I would start by saying that yes, I’m Italian. (J: laugh). Yes, I studied architecture in Italy, but the concept of beauty is very subjective. So, I think that in terms of physical world, the architecture, everything we build in terms of buildings or cities, or neighborhoods is really context dependent.

So I don’t know exactly if a typical 15-or-1600 house built in Tuscany can fit really well the weather in Wisconsin, or the weather in San Francisco. (J: true). So it’s context dependent. (J: right).

And the beauty of the houses in San Francisco is something that is specifically related to San Francisco. And I can think of something similar in Italy, like ‘Cinque Terra’, where the colorful houses are there. (J: uh huh).

But as we know the technology that was used to build the houses is different than the technology used to build the houses in San Francisco. (J: right). Because in the bay area, there is a high risk of earthquake. In Italy, there is, but it’s a bit lower. So again, this is a big discussion, but in terms of the digital world, I think, as I said before, there are endless opportunities. But also we don’t have to commit the same mistakes we made when we created buildings before in terms of accessibility. (J: Right). And even more, we cannot afford to make the missteps we made when we created the internet. (J: right).

The internet, the web, was created for a purpose. And it wasn’t created with accessibility in mind. (J: uh uh). Nowadays, internet is quite accessible, but just after years and decades of standards developed to make the internet accessible.

So now with the Metaverse, we are at the same point in history as we were about 30, 40 years ago with the internet. (J: hmm). And we are the same point, but with a different knowledge, with different people, with different opportunities and with a different mindset. So what I’m hoping to see is that we start designing the Metaverse as an inclusive space.

Janet: Right. Well, I’m looking forward to all the work that you’re going to be doing with that. I’ve got a couple of just quick questions to kind of wrap this up.

Matteo: Sure.

Janet: When I was getting ready for this interview, I started thinking to myself, you use, it’s funny because I call myself an inclusive designer, right? But it’s not really a term. There’s end user designers, you know, UX. And I don’t know, do you think that that should be a thing? Should we start like branding that? Or should we think it of as a, like: ‘of course I’m a designer. I am an inclusive designer’.

Matteo: Well, that’s what I’m hoping to see already now, (J: me too), but unfortunately, it’s not happening. (J: laughs). So let me say what I would like to see in the near future, even if I’m conscious that it’s going to take several, several years, actually decades, (J: Right). I see people as designers and the word inclusive before designers is already embedded in the word ‘designers.’ (J: sure).

I’m hoping that, you know, inclusive design was born in the 90’s almost in the same time as universal design was born, (J: right). Before we were talking about barrier free design or accessible design, so the concept evolved in a way that is more inclusive. That is more, that is broader. (J: Right). So it’s about 30 or something years that we are talking about inclusive design and universal design and design for all.

However, in 30 years, we still listing who is an inclusive designer, and who is ‘just’, and please understand that just with brackets, designer. We’re all designers. (J: true). I’m hoping that maybe in 2050 we’ll be all designers, but all- brackets- inclusive- brackets- designers. Right? (J: Right). So the word ‘designers’ will be already including the work, the understanding, and the capacities to be inclusive from the ground up.

Janet: Right. Well, one last question. anything you want to throw out there, like as we wrap up here? Is there anything else you want to make sure that you mention? Again, we’ll have a lot of all of your references that you pointed to and talk about on our website, Inclusivedesigners.com. But is there anything you say to yourself, ‘I need the inclusive designer community to really kind of notice and be aware of ‘?

Matteo: Well, Janet, there are really a lot of things, (J: laughs), but one that really is important for me now is that the community of designers, and of course, architects and engineers, for the community of creative people, the people who make things, no matter if they are inclusive or not, they are inclusive because I know in the end they are, will start using the research and the tool we have made.

For what reason, why? Well, simply a reason… because the research we do is not for ourselves. The research we do is for the world, for the people out there. So take your hands, put them on a keyboard, search for our websites, download the tools, download the ‘Canvas’, download all the material that you want because this material is made for you.

And if you have a feedback, get back to us. If you want a training session, of course get back to us. But most importantly is to use whatever is ready out there to make your work simpler and more inclusive.

Janet: Yeah. Well, that’s great. I really appreciate you not only coming on today but taking the time and I hope to actually have you back at some point. I think a great conversation would be about talking about ADA and also European regulations and guidelines and, and such. So if you have some other time at some point, we’d love to have you back on.

But in the meanwhile though, we really do appreciate your time today and we’ll have all this information again on our website and Matteo, thank you so much for stopping by today and giving us your really well thought out ideas on inclusive designers.

Matteo: Thank you so much Janet and Carolyn for having me in the podcast. And I thank a lot all the listeners and I’m looking forward to see more designers-slash-inclusive designers out there.

Janet: Right, yeah. And again, we’ll have his information on ‘Inclusive Design Canvas’ on the website and how to get in touch with Matteo. And we wish you good luck with all the work that you’re doing. And we think what you’re doing is really kind of fantastic.

Matteo: Thank you so much.

Music / Outro

Janet: Ah, Matteo is doing some really important work… so great! As he said, when designing or assessing a built environment, it is important to understand the variety of human needs. We may be more aware of physical disabilities, which are more visible, but as designers, we need to consider the non-visible impairments such as sensory or cognitive as well.

Carolyn: And the tools he and his team created— the Inclusive Design Canvas and ‘IDEA Audit tool’ – are really great resources to increase clients’ awareness of the importance and value of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Janet: So he’s also mentioned that his tools can help highlight the points of exclusions and challenges that can be solved to make spaces more inclusive, diverse, equitable and accessible.

Carolyn: Both of these tools are readily available to download and put into use. As he said, you can google it, but we’ll make it even easier by putting the links on our website for you.

Janet: I want to emphasize to our listeners what he said: when designing, we need to look at who we are designing for, what are their stories and capabilities, their desires, and journeys. It is so important to think about that when designing inclusively.

Carolyn: And then there is the Metaverse. Your conversation with Matteo really made me think… it’s going to be very interesting for everyone and of course, for inclusive designers.

Janet: I think Matteo is right, designers need to take what we’ve learned from the internet into consideration as we move forward in this new Meta world. And we may have to consider a future episode on that and Inclusive technology.

Carolyn: I think you’re right, but maybe we should finish up this episode first. (laughs).

Janet: Right. Exactly. and we will also share the links for all his work, his IDEAs toolkit, Metaverse and of course, a bunch of other things that were mentioned along the way during this discussion. All on our website at InclusiveDesigners.com…

Carolyn: That’s InclusiveDesigners.com…

Janet: A big thank you to Matteo. And thank you all as well for listening.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts, you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it again, Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or the link to our GoFundMe Page. And now you can also find us on Feedspots’ List of Best Design Podcasts.

Janet: Yes, you can! And as our motto says: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed’. As always, thank you for stopping by. We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

Music up

Disability Rights and Design – Insights from Judy Heumann
Guest: Judy Heumann

Music / Open

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

Music / Intro

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins.

Janet: We have an incredible show for you today, right Carolyn?

Carolyn: Yes, we do! Maybe even more than usual!

Janet: I think so! We have the disability rights warrior herself, Judy Heumann, or as we have been referring to her around here as… THE Judy Heumann.

The Washington Post called her the “Godmother of the ADA; and one bad… I’m not quite sure can I say the last word, but it’s a 3-letter word beginning with an A and ending with a double-S, or another word for a donkey” (laughs).

Carolyn: Technically, you didn’t say it, The Washington Post did, but I know what you mean.

Janet: Well, getting back to our very special guest, Judy will tell us about her life as a disabilities’ activist, from the early days before the 504 and the ADA even existed, to where we are now, and to also look ahead to what should be happening on a more global basis.

Carolyn: As for her credentials… Judy is an is an internationally recognized disability rights advocate and a leader in the disabled community. She has been fighting against discrimination all her life.

She organized protests in college to gain access to classrooms. After graduation, she sued and won the lawsuit against the NYC school system that let her become the first teacher to use a wheelchair in that state.

Judy led the charge of disabled activists for rights that led to the creation of Section 504 and the ADA. Later on, she served in both the Clinton and Obama Administrations. She was also featured in the award-winning documentary “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution”.

More recently, she published her memoir: “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist,”. and a Young Adult version called “Rolling Warrior.”

And last, but certainly not least in our book, she is currently the host and producer of her own podcast, ‘The Heumann Perspective’. She really has done so much.

Janet: She sure has, I couldn’t agree more. And I’ll add that Judy strives to eliminate the discrimination and physical barriers disabled people of all ages, with all types of disabilities, are facing, both in the United States and around the world.

Carolyn: And you know, her busy office didn’t take a break while we interviewed her, you may even hear the sound of justice being made in the background…

Janet: So true, and you know, like me, Judy grew up in Brooklyn! shout out to Brooklyn. But this was at a time when there were no considerations for disability or inclusion. She helped put much of what you see in place today. But we’ll let her tell you all about that, and more, in her own words.

Carolyn: And with that, here is our interview with THE Judy Heumann, civil rights activist, and lifelong advocate for the rights of disabled people…

Music / Interview

Janet: Hi, and welcome to inclusive designers. I’m your host, Janet Roche. And today we have THE legend, Judy Heumann. (Judy: Hello). We’ve been calling you ‘THE’ Judy Heumann just to emphasize it to people that we’re talking to about that we were going to talk to you today. Judy, thank you so much.

Judy: Thank you for inviting me onto the program.

Janet: Let’s kind of dive right on in, because there’s a lot to talk about. And I just want to say inclusive designers would not be a thing if you hadn’t pushed that needle, right, made sure that everybody was paying attention. When you, before you started with the 504 and your sit-in and what were things like?

I know that you write a lot in your book about that you recognized it. Did you recognize it was discrimination right away? Or you just, did you think it was just unfair? And then did you see ways that people like, why didn’t they do things the way they’re trying to do things now? Like, can you talk a little bit about that?

Judy: Sure. Let me start by saying that there’s so many people who’ve been involved in our movement in the United States and around the world. And I am one of those people, but I never take credit for everything that’s happened.

And at the end of the day, you know, you, Janet and Carolyn, really are the ones who’ve been driving forward the work that you’ve been doing. And I think maybe myself and many other people have helped to open spaces that maybe weren’t as available in the past. But I think it’s still important to say that we, from my perspective, are not yet where we need to go.

Janet: Right. And we’ll dive into that. I see the gaps, I’m sure you not only see the gaps, you know the gaps by heart. So, I love the fact that you like your parents were, were such kind of a rebel rousers, especially your mom like, she was just not having anything that any of the school boards and everything like that was going to throw at you.

When did things start to really click in for you that you thought, I mean, you’re a smart woman. So obviously you probably thought this is unfair, but like what was sort of the impetus was, I mean, we also saw the movie ‘Crip Camp’. Was that sort of the beginning of your ‘aha’ moments, like this is going to have to change or, do you want to talk me through that?

Judy: Sure. So I had polio when I was 18 months old. And like other people who had their disabilities when they were younger, you know, you really don’t understand what’s going on, obviously. And that was something that I gradually, and I would say 6, 7, 8, 9 years old was becoming more aware of the fact that I, in my family and in the neighborhood that I grew up in, I was treated really as an equal to my brothers and neighbors. But when it came to school, as an example, I was not treated equally. (J: Right). Kids at 5, parents took them to school. They got enrolled in school and they went to school every day. But me, that’s not what happened.

Janet: Right. Yeah. You talk about a lot of this, and they called you a fire hazard. It was really, really horrible. Then they, they said, well, we can give you instruction it at home, right. and I couldn’t understand, was it two hours a week or something like that. And it, was cross stitching involved. Maybe you could tell a little bit about that story as well.

Judy: Yes. So when the principal and the school said that I couldn’t go there, told my mom not to worry because the Board of Ed in New York City would send a teacher to my house. Well, they did, but not in kindergarten. And they did for the first, second, third and half of the fourth grade. (J: wow). And they came twice a week, once for an hour, once for an hour and a half. And then at some point, I say it’s as, a, for good behavior, they threw in an OT who was teaching me sewing. (J: Right). So, that went on until the middle of the fourth grade.

When I finally got into a program that was only for disabled children in a regular school, but special classes. And getting involved in that program was the first time I was ever with any other disabled people. I didn’t know any other disabled people really until that point. And the first year, I believe that I went to school in these segregated classes, I also went to camp, not camp Jened but camp Oakhurst. So I went to camp Oakhurst in New Jersey for a couple of summers. And then as I was getting a little older, I started going to camp Jened.

So I was learning from my other friends also that we, in coming together, it also allowed us an opportunity to speak to each other and to realize that not only that we were being treated differently than our brothers, our cousins, our neighbors, but the discrimination that we were experiencing. (J: yeah). So I think the issue of discrimination is also something that we hadn’t talked about earlier as kids.

So I think, you know, what was important for me being with other disabled people is realizing that I wasn’t alone. And then I also was learning from other people that we all felt very similarly. That we were not being treated equally. And we were beginning to talk about why that was, and I think really at a pretty early age and like an age-appropriate way, we were not only talking about the barriers, but we were beginning to think about solutions. (J: hmmm).

And I think that definitely is something that we continue to discuss today. (J: right). That there are so many issues and different solutions. And obviously over the last, you know, 74 years of my life, there have been lots of different kinds of solutions for many different issues and in some areas solutions that haven’t been implemented. (J: right).

We look at things like how many community-based services (J: uh huh), or personal assistance services, this system is quite problematic and the number of people who need to be getting benefits from the government is way underserved and the risks that people are taking because they’re not getting sufficient personal assistant services and how that limits our ability to work and go to school and participate in society.

We, we know the solutions. (J: Right). The government has not put sufficient amounts of money. And then of course, some of the, um, criteria around how to get on things like Medicaid, all of those are still issues that (J: huge), we understand the solutions we just haven’t implemented them.

Janet: Right. And all that healthcare is all important to people’s health and wellbeing and which should be everybody’s right.

I just want to let listeners know that one of the reasons why we’re talking about this, as inclusive designers, I don’t think we can talk about the physical environment without talking about advocacy for the people that we serve. So that is why we want to talk to you today, Judy and get your perspective.

So then let’s jump forward to the, when the— I’m going to get this right— The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which by the way, I have decided I am coming in September of 2023, I’m going to, I’m going to find you and we’re going to go out and we’re going to have a good time just letting you know. (Judy: Okay).

So the, the 5-0-, um, so now I totally forgot, now that I’ve asked you out on a date, I forgot my question for the, for the 504. That’s actually coming up is the 50th anniversary. And one of the things you talk about in the book, which is “Being Heumann” and we’ll also have that on our website, links to, being able to get the book. It’s “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist” that’s by our guest today, Judy Heumann.

And I thought it was fascinating that, and I want to ask you a couple of questions about that time frame because there was this man that was brought in by Jimmy Carter, his name is Joseph Califano, is that right? (Judy: yes). Alright, just so we’re clear, we can’t swear on the show. So this is going to be where, like, I am going to try really hard not to do it. He was, um, difficult. Did you think that, like, did he, did he not read any of it? I think even when he cited it, I got the impression, he was just like, whatever, get out of my offices. Like, is that, did you get that impression, or…

Judy: So Joe Califano was the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. (J: right). And when the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities organized demonstrations around the country, I was one of the members on the board. And we were organizing to hold regional demonstrations.

When the demonstration started in San Francisco, the regional secretary was a man named Joe Maldonado. (J: right). And Maldonado did not know what the regulations were. (J: No). His staff didn’t know. Califano did. I wouldn’t say he was an expert on them, but he knew about them, and he knew what they were.

He had brought a team of people in to review. And the issue for us, wasn’t the fact that he was reviewing the draft regulations. Because it had been a Republican administration, was now a democratic administration. So wanting to do a quick review, that was like appropriate. But what we began to hear is that Califano had a number of concerns…

Janet: Excuse me, I’m sorry, wasn’t one of the concerns that they thought somehow the United States economy would tank with these new regulations… that was not it, you’re shaking your head. Okay, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Judy: No, I mean, I think, um, he had brought a team of knowledgeable people in to do a review. But at the same time, he was hearing from lobbyists, from hospital associations, higher education associations, and others, who were talking about how this was going to be so terrible, and how costly it was going to be. And, Gerald Ford, who was the president prior to Jimmy Carter. He could have signed the regulation, but he didn’t because he said it’d be too costly, and he wouldn’t do it.

So you’re not far off in what you’re saying, (J: Right). But I think the reality of course was that was not true. And especially because the way the regulations were written, uh, there was not an expectation for example, that any building that had received federal money, like a school or a hospital or university, that overnight they would make themselves accessible. That was never the expectation. (J: right).

And when people look at the regulations, you can see that there are many steps. I don’t mean literally steps but many, (J: laughs, right, yeah). Which I think really was done in such a way to make the intent of the law be carried out in a way that wouldn’t adversely affect our ability to keep the law.

So things like a new building would have to be built accessible. Major innovations would have to be accessible. Um, not every building would have to be made accessible overnight. (J: Right).

Janet: And were they also trying to exclude schools or universities at some point, wasn’t that part of the conversation. It was, they were trying to just maybe do federal buildings, but the universities were allowed to do their own thing for a while. It was that whole separate but equal part of it.

Judy: Yes. Well, one of the issues that we were concerned about is the way they were discussing potential changes to the draft regulations that would have, uh, enabled kids and college students not to have the same choices as others. (J: right).

So in the film ‘Crip Camp’, we talk about how we’re not going to accept separate but equal. (J: yeah). And I think the regulations really had a good balance of what needed to happen to ensure that students would not be segregated, at the same time that all schools were not going to have to make it accessible overnight.

Janet: Right, yeah. Now, do you just want to quickly explain to our listeners the difference between the 504 and, uh, the American with Disabilities Act, the ADA. Because one plays off of the other, can you talk to our listeners a little bit about that?

Judy: So section 504 says if you are an entity that is getting money from the federal government, you may not discriminate against one based on disability. There are similar provisions that exist in race and gender, disability came in in ’73. And it’s different than the ADA because the ADA covers the private sector. The ADA really covers everything that 504 didn’t cover. So it covers the business community. It covers um, shopping malls, movie theaters, all these entities that the general public uses, but wasn’t covered under 504 because they didn’t get money from the federal government. (J: Right).

So employment, Title One of the Americans with Disabilities Act was particularly important. Now, 504 covers employment, but it only covers employment if the entity is receiving money from the federal government. So, a university, a city government, a county government, a federal government, a state government, they’re all receiving money from the federal government.

So if someone had a disability and they were denied a job, and, um, or denied an interview and a job, whatever, they could file a complaint with the EEOC.

Like in 1970, when I was denied my teaching license, (J: uh huh), there was no 504 (J: right). So when they denied me my license, when the board of education of the city of New York denied me my license, because I wasn’t able to walk, if this would have happened after the spring of ‘73, then I could have filed a complaint. (J: Right). But it happened before 504 went into effect. (J: yeah).

So, if I applied for a job to work at a bank— banks didn’t get money from the federal government— so if I was denied a job based on the fact that I couldn’t walk, for example, then I wouldn’t have been able to file a complaint until 1990, (J: ‘90, right), under the ADA.

Janet: Right. And for those who want to know a little bit more about Judy’s decision to become a teacher— and I’d argue that you are a teacher like on a larger stage than you probably ever would have imagined— you can listen to her, her terrific Ted talk, which will be on our website.

Judy: The other thing, I would say that if you want to learn more about the ADA and 504 and other laws, if you go to ADA.gov.

Janet: Yeah. Well, for inclusive designers this is a really important piece. Let’s kind of switch gears a little bit and talk a little bit more about design. And maybe we can, um, talk a little bit about what it was like prior. I do remember a time, uh, before there were accessible buses and I do remember there was a ramp like on the subway in Brooklyn— by the way, a little shout out to Brooklyn. I grew up in Brooklyn, myself.

Judy: Yay, Brooklyn.

Janet: Yay Brooklyn, we’ll have a shout out to Brooklyn on the website as well. (laughs). So, but I remember there was at one point they use some sort of ramp, because it was a gap between the, the station platform and those, the subway. But I remember thinking there’s no way to get from the top down to the actual platform.

So anyways, I don’t know if you want to talk to our listeners a little bit about some of the things that were, a lot of the barriers in the built environment that you, you came across. Give our listeners sort of like an idea of where we were, sort of where we are now, and where we would like to be.

Judy: So as far as transportation is concerned, I would say… We’ve come pretty far, (J: right). Where we’re still dealing is in cities like New York, where they’re being sued, um, because, um, disabled people are saying that when they built some new stations, those stations were not accessible. So that’s one issue. But in New York city, for example, all of the buses are accessible. (J: right). And all around the United States, the buses are accessible. (J: right). And the Trailways and all these other bus companies that years ago said they couldn’t do it, they all have done it. And that really is because of laws like 504 and the ADA.

Janet: Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s come a long way and maybe we could talk a little bit about. I do teach. And one of the things that I teach is, it’s a day class, but it’s, um, we sort of do some simulations of different types of health conditions. So everything from visual imparity to paraplegia to mimicking different types of, like I said, human conditions.

And we do also have the, the wheelchair experience. And it’s, it’s fascinating to me. I think when my students get on there, they seem to think it’s going to be an easy ride. They’re just going to sit there, but it’s still, there’s a train station around the corner from the school. There is no access, and they can’t fathom that there’s no access until they’re trying to actually get down to the, down to the train station. Just even a coffee shop will be inaccessible.

I guess what I’m trying to ask is that, in that type of scenario for, for students, for teachers, I know that like in your Ted talk, you also talked about like, did you ever break your arms? So how did that feel? What did that make you feel? And those are temporary conditions, temporary inconveniences, but this is every day for, for millions of people.

Is that a decent idea to have that temporary setup for students to learn? Is that, I found like that’s a big eye-opener, but I make sure that I tell them, and I make sure that they recognize it’s a temporary thing and it’s not permanent. But I think that they’re always pretty wowed at how many things that they take for granted every day that they don’t realize are completely inaccessible.

Judy: So I am not sold on simulations unless they’re done in a really careful way. We had run a project when I lived in Berkeley, and I worked at the Center for Independent Living. We had a grant from the Department of Rehabilitation. And, uh, we brought small groups of rehab counselors to the CIL. And then they would be there for 5 days. And they would live with someone who had a disability. And the disability that they simulated was the same disability as the person they stayed with. Or similar. (J: hmm).

What I liked about that better was, first we had discussions about what they thought about disability, what they thought they would or wouldn’t be able to do. And then they, I think, simulated for like two days, and then they spent another day (J: talking about what they learned). Right. (J: right).

So now I certainly understand that for some people, you know, being in a chair or having their eyes covered, will give them some information, but frequently it may be, it may make them feel more hopeless. Like, ‘oh my God, if that happened to me, what would I do’ as opposed to ‘what changes should have been made/ are we going to fight for?’ So I think how they’re introduced is very important. (J: Right).

I think a lot of us are concerned about simulations with the intent of helping open people’s eyes may in fact not have that same effect, but I think there are appropriate ways that maybe some things can be done. Because that’s important for people to understand there is a step at the corner, but what could there be so it wouldn’t be a problem. And there’s, you know, whatever the issue may be.

So, cautiously, they need to learn more—what do the laws say? Are they being enforced? What changes may I start thinking about in my local community, new housing being built that’s not accessible. The law doesn’t require it to be accessible. Should I be arguing with others that we put a law in place then that in our jurisdiction ‘new construction must have an accessible entrance, then a bedroom and a bathroom on the first floor.’ I mean, different things, you know?

Janet: Right. Well, it breaks up, well, I can talk about this for a very long time with you, because I find that this is a pretty fascinating, but I want it to, then this is a great segue… So Judy, maybe you can talk to us a little bit about how you feel about the future, where we need to be as designers. Um, maybe not just as student designers, but then as designers for inclusivity.

Judy: Well I think universal design is what we should be looking at. We need to understand who our audience is and that we’re designing so that all potential people in the audience can benefit. (J: right). And I believe that just looking at design from a disability perspective isn’t the complete way we should be doing it.

Janet: Well that’s why I wanted you to come…Yeah, I’m sorry. That’s why I wanted you to come on the show because I firmly believe that advocacy and also supporting human rights is an important part of all this.

Judy: I think people need to understand that accessible, usable design benefits all people. (J: right). And at the end of the day, we absolutely know that it does not cost more money to design accessibly, whatever it is that we’re looking at designing. (J: right). So the built environment, technology, clothing, whatever it may be.

Janet: Well, that’s just it. So we talked about the restaurant business. In the interview that we did with the, the owner, Yannick Benjamin at ‘Contento’. I mentioned that I have gotten calls from designers and architects. If they’re doing a restaurant, in particular a restaurant, to try to figure out how to get around the, the ADA, because they have a certain amount of tables that they feel like they need to put into the space.

So I, I think it was one of those things. It really kind of angered me. Can you speak a little bit to other designers about that? I mean, but it, it goes really back to your point that… It’s profitable. It works. It does. It helps our society to become a better place by creating some accessibility to everybody.

Judy: So I think, the point that I’m making is: When you’re not designing for all, you’re excluding beyond the group you may intentionally be screwing. (J: laughs). You may be thinking that you’re screwing. (J: right).

I use a wheelchair. So there are certain things that I need, and standards support that. But if you look at buses and trains as examples, the fact that many of the train systems in the US and in other parts of the world now are accessible, also means that other people can use the buses and the trains. (J: right).

So I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but baby carriages from the 50s and ‘60s look pretty different today. (J: right). Baby carriages that were heavier, wider. Things that you wouldn’t have been able to just shlep up and down stairs, um, in many of our major cities with transportation. But now where they are accessible, you can use an elevator. (J: Right).

And likewise, um, accessibility of bathrooms, accessibility of tables, accessibility of counters. (J: yeah). You know, not everybody is tall, (J: no). and not everyone is a little person. So you have people who are five feet tall, and they’re going to be able to access a table and a chair and the ground differently than someone who’s six foot tall. (J: Right).

But if you’re designing for all, then it will benefit most people. (J: Right). And to me, that’s the ultimate thing that we’re trying to do is to have design be done in a, such a way that in such a way that we stop thinking about it as something which is special,

Janet: Right. Yeah. I think you even said something like, “if I have to be grateful for an accessible bathroom, I don’t want to be a part of that community” like it just should be, it should be a part of the community.

I completely agree with what you’re saying, and I find that it really does help. And I think that your example of the baby carriages is a great example. Because when, those elevators help women to get, or mostly women, to get their strollers down the, down to wherever. The coffee shop that I mentioned before that is not accessible at all.

And, they said, you know, even if it’s not somebody in a wheelchair, it could be somebody who has a baby carriage, somebody who doesn’t handle stairs well, somebody who might have some sort of other type of condition that doesn’t allow them. And it’s even just having vertigo for Pete’s sake. Like you might, might again be something sort of temporary.

And so it doesn’t even have to be something in a more permanent basis that, like you said, just allows us to be a better community and a better world and allow everybody to get access to coffee… because that’s what we all need, more access to coffee. (laughs). I have a couple more questions for you, Judy, if you can indulge me.

So two things… the design for the handicap with somebody in a wheelchair, the universal sign, good or bad, yes or no, right or wrong?

Judy: I mean, I think there’s a more modern design of a wheelchair, which I like better than the older one, but the concept of it, I think was important because the space was bigger. (J: right). Um, one of the reasons I always talk about the issue of importance of accessible design. There can be 50 spots, two spots that are designed for someone who’s got a disability. And inevitably those parking spots will be used because they’re closer and they’re bigger. (J: right).

So this reinforces that if they’re doing universal design, then we look at designing our parking spot so they’re appropriate for all, and then a certain number of them as is required are bigger (J: right), so that people using wheelchairs can get in and out of their car.

Janet: Oh, right on. I’ve actually met more like the placard, you know, the blue sign. Yeah. You’re, you’re, you’re good with that. You just want a different wheelchair on the, on the front of that. Because I felt like sometimes it doesn’t include everybody. To your point about the parking spots, I’ve had a lot of friends like who’ve had maybe heart attacks or have a kid who has, is non-verbal autistic.

Judy: Right, but they’re eligible.

Janet: I know, but people then look at them and say- ‘You’re not in a wheelchair. How dare you use this space?’ – which I argue is, that they mean well, unfortunately it’s, it’s very… (Judy: I mean I think that…), I think that they’re trying to punish, go ahead Judy…

Judy: I’d say, I think it’s a good point. And they may be people that are looking at a different sign. But I think the laws typically in states, whether someone is using a wheelchair or not but that they can show medical need, that they need certain things, then they can get it. (J: Right). So we live in an imperfect world.

And what I like about the more modern designs is that the older blue signs were quite non-representative of how people move. (J: right). But I think the point that you’re making, it’d be interesting from your listeners to know if any of them in any of the communities they live in are designing a different kind of sign.

Janet: That’s a good question. I’ll post it when we post all this stuff on social media. Great question, Judy.

So Judy, last question, globally. I know that you talked about the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Treaty… can you talk to us a little bit about that and what that means going forward and for the future of disabilities rights?

Judy: I think one of the important parts about the United Nations adopting the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, is that it was a process that brought disabled people together from around the world to work with delegations from every country that is a member of the UN to discuss what forms of discrimination and barriers disabled people of all ages were experiencing.

And then to agree that there was a need for a document called a treaty that would articulate the principle in about 42, 43 articles of what needed to be occurring. So, between 2006 and 2008, I believe the number was 30 countries that signed and ratified the treaty. Now the number is like more than 170. (J: great). Unfortunately, the United States is not one of the countries that’s ratified. There’s like a handful, 2 or 3 countries that haven’t.

But when President Obama was in office, he signed the treaty and then it needs to go to the Senate. The way it works in the United States is, in order for a President to ratify a treaty of any kind, there needs to be a vote from the US Senate, not the House, from the Senate. And it has to be two thirds of the senators voting to support the treaty.

I was working at the State Department at the time that the issue was moving forward, (J: right), and we were unsuccessful with the Republicans. So we could not get sufficient number of votes when the treaty was presented on the floor. And therefore, we haven’t ratified.

But let me say a couple things. One, so many, I mean, basically, as I said, there’s only a handful of countries that have not ratified. What that means is, if a government ratifies the treaty, they’re committing to such things: as all children getting an education. (J: hmm), early childhood, higher education, issues around employment, issues around transit, around health, around communications. On and on.

These particular articles are ones that governments are agreeing that they either have legislation and they review what it is they have to ensure compliance. Or that they will develop new legislation, and that they will take responsibility to help ensure that the treaty itself was being implemented with the ultimate objective of significantly reducing the discrimination and barriers that disabled people with all types of disabilities experience. (J: Yeah).

Now, that obviously is going to take decades. Given the fact that we’ve had lives like 504 for 50 years, (J: yeah), but we’ve made good progress. And in countries that have ratified the treaty and are taking it seriously, uh, you are beginning to see some important changes. And in some ways, some of the important changes are that disabled people’s organizations in their respective countries are getting much more involved with getting laws passed, getting policies developed and implemented. All of that is very important.

I would say the CRPD is slowly changing the way disabled people are seen around the world. And the benefit that we’ve seen in the US of laws like 504 and ADA, we’re seeing similar, slowly, but similar outcomes in many other countries.

Janet: That’s great. All right. Judy, thank you so much. This has been really wonderful. Again, the legend Judy Heumann,

Judy: it’s been great, thank you…

Janet: We couldn’t be happier that you stopped by today to talk to our Inclusive Designers listeners. Any time you want to come back, you can just give me a call and if not, I will see you in September of 2023. I will come find you in Washington and I’ll take you out for a celebratory drink.

Judy: Thank you guys very much.

Janet: Thank you

Judy: We’ll talk soon…

Janet: Thanks Judy.

Judy: Bye-bye.

Music / Outro:

Janet: Judy is SO inspiring and amazing. I think it’s important that we as inclusive designers understand what it was like before the ADA, and how we need to design beyond the regulations to find the best solutions.

As Judy pointed out, “you need to understand who your audience is, and that you’re designing so that all potential people in the audience can benefit. In other words, accessible and usable design benefits everyone.”

Carolyn: Actually Janet, here’s a quick story— after the movie CODA won the Oscar for best picture, Judy said on social media… how proud she was of the example they set about how to make an outstanding film that is truly inclusive. She also mentioned that their director ‘Sian Heder’ would be working on the movie adaptation of Judy’s memoir!

Janet: Oh, I love her story and what she continues to do in terms of disability rights. How great is that!

Carolyn: Well, I can’t wait to see that film get made, and for Judy and the rest of the ‘Section 504’ team to get the recognition they so obviously deserve.

Janet: I am so grateful to Judy Heumann for giving her valuable time to us here at IDP. I cannot thank her enough. And I cannot wait to go down to DC and visit her during the 50^th Anniversary of the ‘504 Rehabilitation Act’ in September of 2023.

Carolyn, I got to tell you, I cannot believe I asked her out, I did not plan that, it just came out! Anyways, that said, I do hope the timing works, and we can actually get together to celebrate the 50^th anniversary… because that would be awesome!

Carolyn: There will probably be so much more to talk to her about by then, maybe even whether the movie based on her book is up for a future Oscar. Time will tell. And speaking of time, I think it’s about time to wrap up this episode.

Janet: As always, we will share the links for Judy, the ADA, 504, and of course, a few other things that were mentioned along the way during this discussion… all that on our website at: InclusiveDesigners.com…

Carolyn: That’s InclusivDesigners.com…

Janet: Our thanks again to THE Judy Heumann, and to you, our listeners, for stopping by.

Carolyn: Along with all the regular places you get your podcasts, you can also find us on YouTube as, you guessed it, Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that ‘Patreon’ button, or the link to our ‘GoFundMe’ Page.

Janet: As we say around here “Stay Well, And Stay Well Informed” … We’ll see you next time.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

Music up & out

Designing for: Beauty and the Brain
Guests: Don Ruggles/ J. Davis Harte

(Music 1/ Show Intro)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: Carolyn, I am so excited for this show. I’m interviewing someone I am truly a fan of… Today’s guest is Don Ruggles— architect, designer, thinker, author, and now movie maker!

Carolyn: I’m looking forward to it too. I’m already up to speed, especially since you bought me his book!

Janet: I did. And?

Carolyn: Loved it, and the film too! And I can’t wait for him to share his thoughts on ‘Neuroscience and Design’ with all of our listeners.

Janet: Agreed! His book, “Beauty, Neuroscience and Architecture – Timeless Patterns & Their Impact on our Well-being” is a must have for any designer and architect’s library. It’s beautifully done, it’s smart… AND, it has big glossy pictures!

Carolyn: And now the book has inspired a documentary too. It’s called: “Built Beautiful, An Architecture and Neuroscience Love Story”

Carolyn: – and it’s narrated by none other than

Carolyn & Janet: Martha Stewart!

Janet: It just makes sense that Martha Stewart would be interested in a topic of beauty and architecture. And what a topic it is. if you’re interested in architecture, are an architect, a lover of architecture, thinking of becoming a designer, or are a designer— this is going to either open your mind to the future of architectural design, or will challenge you as a designer as to what you thought you already knew.

Carolyn: We should also mention that we asked Dr J. Davis Harte to join us today to co-host this episode.

Janet: And now, I think we should let folks hear from Don Ruggles himself.

Carolyn: I think we should,

Janet: and he can explain the impact of architecture on our brains, biology and well-being, so much better than I can…

Carolyn: So, if you ever wondered why we think something is beautiful and what role the brain has to do with it, stay tuned.…

Janet: Here is our interview with Don Ruggles,

Carolyn: and it’s co-hosted by Janet and Dr J. Davis Harte…

(Music 2 – Interview)

Janet: Hi, and welcome to Inclusive Designers podcast. I’m your host, Janet Roche and we’ve got an exciting show for you today. We’re going to be interviewing Don Ruggles of Ruggles Mabe Studio in Colorado. He is also on the board of Human Architecture and Planning Institute, otherwise known as HAPI in Boston; and Building Beautiful Institute in Italy.

And today I also have a great surprise guest. We’ve got Davis Hart back again. For those of you who listen to the show, she’s going to be my cohost for this particular episode. And I’m very excited to have both of them on.

And the reason why we are interviewing Don Ruggles is because he came up with a wonderful book, which I highly I recommend, and it is called ‘Beautiful Neuroscience and Architecture’. And for those of you who like picture books, this is a great, beautiful book. It’s got a lot of beautiful pictures in it.

And as a result of this beautiful book, which I highly recommend you go get it Amazon, or your local bookstore I suppose, it inspired a beautiful and well-done film for architects, and architect students, and people who love architecture. It’s called ‘Built Beautiful’ and I’ve seen it three times and each time I get a little something more out of it. I am so excited to welcome Don, Don Ruggles. Thank you so much for showing up today.

Don: Oh, thank you. I’m really honored to be with you all. Thanks so much.

Janet: Thank you. I mean, as you well know, I love the book, and I’ve become a big fan so much so that I also got your chapter in the book that Ann Sussman and Justin Hollander wrote called ‘Urban Experience and Design’, and your chapter in this was great. It was called ‘Bonding with Beauty’, and you wrote that also with John Boak, did I pronounce that correct?

Don: Yes, that is correct.

Janet: Alright, I just wanted to show you how excited I am and I have done my homework. I might mess up a lot of names, but at the end of the day, you can tell your family I’m a big fan. So, but anyways, let’s jump right on in…

Maybe we should start with the book and move our way into the movie. How did this all start? Like, what was your impetus for writing the book?

Don: Well, this is a rather long story. I’ll try to shorten it the very best I can. In 2009 here in Denver, I was asked to give a talk for a fundraising project at Children’s Hospital. And I was given the topic of ‘Timeless Design’ and I was frankly having a hard time kind of putting together a successful concept for the talk. And my wife recommended that I look into the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture as she had just heard an interview on National Public Radio with John Eberhart who was the head of what was then really a newly formed organization, the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture.

So I did go to their website and what I found there was really quite remarkable. Well, I gave the talk and it was very well-received and part of the talk dealt with the notion of ‘what is beauty’ and how does it tie into timeless design? Well, the questions that I had during the question-and-answer period at the end of the talk were mostly centered on this idea of beauty.

So, that led to another talk at the University of Colorado College of Architecture and Planning. And similarly, I’ve got more questions about beauty than any other part of the talk. I thought well I should do some more research on this. So I did, and it led to another talk and another and another and more research and more talks.

Well, fast forward to, let’s see 2016, and I was asked to give a talk at the University of Oklahoma and they have a great publishing arm called the ‘University of Oklahoma Press’. And I managed to get a meeting with them. And I discussed this whole idea about beauty and how it affects architecture and possibly our health and well-being.

Well, when I left that meeting, I had a commitment from OU Press to back my book. So then I thought, ‘Oh gosh, I’ve got to go write a book’. And my wife has written a number of books in special education. So I knew what that process was like. And basically, I locked myself in my home office for two years doing research and working on a book. And I had graphic designers and editors and proofreaders and, you know, a team of people that supported me. So it wasn’t just a singular effort. But, after a couple of years we had a book that was in print and we issued it for sale.

Well, as part of the book promotion, that led to my giving a talk in Denver. And at the end of that talk somebody from Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting came up to me and said, ‘we love this idea. We think that you should make a movie of this, and if you do, we’ll put it on Rocky Mountain PBS’. And that led to a long-extended effort to create a movie which I guess we’ll talk more about today. So that, in as short as I can make this story, there it is— a small idea that turned into a rather large concept now that is starting to have an impact internationally.

Janet: Right. And we were just talking about how it’s really been embraced overseas, and maybe not so much here, which we, maybe we could at some point address, but I think overall, this concept of beauty really resonated with a lot of people. I know it obviously did with me, it did with Davis and it did even my co-producer Carolyn. So it really struck me. And, and what’s interesting to me is I’m now looking at buildings differently, which I think is a real testament to the hard work that you have done.

So when you went into this process, you looked into the neuroscience and I thought it was interesting. You talk a lot about the fact that we’re sort of innately looking at faces and that’s that somehow shaped your narrative. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Don: Well, most, most definitely the facial pattern is one of a series of patterns that humans are born with, it’s literally part of our genetic programming, that there are certain patterns that we seek throughout our life. And when we talk about beauty, there’s really two kinds of beauty. There’s the innate, genetically programmed patterns that I just referenced. And then also there’s the sense of beauty that you acquire as you experience the world, as you tune your brain to modify how you see the world around you to fit with your own personal preferences. So you may have, you know, preference for your grandmother’s knitted blanket and it’s beautiful to you, but not to anybody else. That’s acquired beauty. But innate beauty would be more something like recognizing the importance of facial patterns or fractals, which are patterns in nature, or what Anjan Chatterjee refers to as natural kinds, which are patterns that come from the natural environment, or geometry from the human body.

And all those patterns— facial pattern, natural kinds, fractals and human body geometry— we evolved with over millions of years. So, you know, it’s literally, we’re born and it’s imbued in our DNA. And that’s really significant because what you can start to realize from that is that these patterns are constant throughout mankind or humankind rather. And the old phrase that… “beauty is in the eye of beholder”.  And I think what neuroscience has found is in fact, “beauty is in the brain of the beholder” and our brains are more similar than they are different. Thus, beauty becomes a common reaction that all human beings share.

And that’s Anjan Chatterjee, who is a famous neuroscientist here in the United States. That’s a quote from Anjan. So, it’s fascinating to realize that we all hold these common values about what beauty might be. And when you realize that, then there are other results from that, that you realize that it’s a common, physical reaction that we have, and it’s pretty amazing. The philosopher and neuro psychologist, Pierro Ferruchi, who’s from Italy obviously by the name, he’s quoted as saying, “Beauty is free. Why wouldn’t we use it?” And that’s an important statement because there are many, many benefits from a beauty reaction and maybe today we’ll have time to get into some of those as it’s really, really fascinating.

Janet: Yeah. I, I do want to ask you and it was one of my questions was, how important do you think fractals are? I teach biophilia and we kind of touch on them. Should I be maybe a little more focused on them in terms of biophilia and design and the built environment?

Don: Well, a fractal is a repeating pattern at basically every scale. So you look at a pattern in a plant, and if you have a microscope and you look at, you know, a certain portion of the plant up close, and then you blow that up at successively larger scales and you’ll find repeating patterns. And that’s really the essence of a fractal and it can continue to grow, irregardless of what the scale is.

So what Ari Goldberger has theorized and he’s a research scientist and professor at Harvard is that fractals allow the human brain to zoom in on something very small and then zoom back out at a larger scale. So that in and out of changing of scales, it’s actually good for our brain. It’s exercising your brain and creating new neurological pathways that are really important for the health and well-being of your brain. And so, Dr. Goldberger has theorized that this is actually a really important neurological benefit. And fractals are happening in trees and in grasses and in flowers and rocks. I know that sounds strange, but…

Janet: It’s true… and isn’t it like the arguably the most complex fractal is the brain itself, but there’s something to that. Am I correct, or am I completely off base?

Don: Well, the billions of connections in our brains probably could not have happened without a fractalized arrangement. It’s in the small space that we have within our cranium, it’s theorized that all of the billions of connections that are there just simply could not have happened without a fractalized concept or how our brains evolved. (Janet: Right) So it’s actually quite important.

Janet: Yeah.  Well…

Davis: Oh…

Janet: Go ahead, I was just going to say, we’re going to let Davis see if she wants to jump in here…

Davis: Thanks, Janet. Yeah, I, there’s just, I just adore just sitting and listening to Don speak about it because it is something you’ve been speaking and thinking deeply about for, you know, 11 years now. So that’s gives you some amount of, you know, it’s always the expert who’s asking the questions, you don’t necessarily have to have the answers. But, as the Director of the Design for Human Health program at the Boston Architectural College, I’m always very interested in how we can demonstrate the importance of connecting health and well-being to architecture. And then further from that, how this understanding of our shared neuroscience of our brains and bodies. How does that relate?

Don: …that question is to me?

Davis: Yes Don. (laughs)

Don: How is health and well-being connected with neuroscience? That’s a deep subject. I would say, human beings seek pleasure or survival. And those are really the two categories that as our nervous system collects information at 11-million bits of information per second, it’s far more than we can consciously process. So the first thing that has to happen is that as those bits of information are coming in, they’re filtered and it’s, they’re put into two different buckets, if you will, ‘survival’ and ‘pleasure’.

Now, the survival bucket is quite a bit larger than the pleasure bucket. They’re both important, but because the brain’s looking out for your survival. Ann Sussman describes our brains as the greatest alarm system ever invented by man. So anyway, survival is the strongest input. So survival and pleasure are linked with two really important feelings that we have and that’s ‘approach’ and ‘avoid’.

So you are willing to approach a pleasurable situation and you want to avoid a survival situation. Well that applies to architecture. So if you’re perceiving a pattern that creates an avoid reaction, then you’re not likely to embrace it and, or approach it. And if you’re perceiving a pattern that generates a pleasure pattern, then you’ll feel free to approach it. Now, we’re talking about our autonomic nervous system here, which is dealing with basically below consciousness level, subliminal, if you will.

And most of this separation that I talk about, the inputs going to survival or pleasure buckets, that autonomic nervous system is splitting a very important chain of neurological inputs. And it’s known as parasympathetic, which is pleasurable; and sympathetic, which is not so pleasurable, more on the survival side.

And there’s some really important health qualities attached to sympathetic inputs and parasympathetic inputs. So, if on the sympathetic side, it’s stress inducing, it’s protecting you and it’s raising your heart rate and putting cortisol and adrenaline into your system. And that’s part of the survival reactions known as ‘fight or flight’, no doubt you’d heard of that. Parasympathetic is about rest and relaxation. So that lowers your heart rate and has a number of really positive health benefits to us, including lowering your stress component.

So, parasympathetic is really about feeling well, and sympathetic is about survival and essentially a stress reaction. Well stress, as you know, is not good for us. And what we’re starting to understand is that some architectural forms create a sympathetic reaction and some architectural forms create a parasympathetic reaction. And there’s growing, growing body of research that is looking into this. And this is a game changer for architecture.

Davis: Absolutely. In the book you have, this is a quote you’ve written… “a sense of awe, beauty and wonderment can be achieved appealing to the sympathetic. The sympathetic event has an important place in health and psyche yet it needs to be supported by the parasympathetic as well. In fact, homeostatic balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic responses is important to our well-being and healthy nervous system.”

And I just want to applaud you for having that in your book, because if one did not have a little bit of a sense of stress and cortisol in the morning, we would choose to not rise out of bed. So that’s an important consideration. I think you have some thoughts to share with us about that.

Don: Thanks for bringing that up. So, stress in short bursts are actually good for us. It makes us stronger.  And it prepares us for battle when, if and when we need that to be, you know, our reaction that should be close at hand, so that that’s important, but it has to be in short burst, and then parasympathetic is more extended.

And the homeostatic balance is the short burst of stress versus the elongated, rest and relaxation. So short burst of, of survival and longer burst of just rest and relaxation. And, you know, that’s important for interior designers to be cognizant of, because if you’re designing a room that’s all about just rest and relaxation, calm colors, and calm furniture, then it’s likely to be boring.

And please, you know, note, I don’t want any designers to take offense to that, (Janet: you don’t want any emails) but if you were to add a red painting in or a colorful vase, anything that, you know, that sparks curiosity and a little bit of uniqueness and interest, that is starting to create the balance.

And scientists think that the balance needs to be about one-seventh. So one-seventh, you know, stress, excitement, interest, uniqueness versus six-sevenths of calmness and serenity and understandable patterns. And that’s, interestingly enough, why you often see like fashion shows and famous old buildings, and then really colorful, unique fashions because the two create a really great homeostatic balance. Uniqueness and colorful versus really calm restful, kind of understandable geometry as a background. That’s a good recipe for interior designers, by the way.

Janet: Right, I think people get a little surprised with the 14-patterns of biophilia from Terrapin, I believe it is. They talk about having areas to explore and areas to, to have refuge, but also areas for excitement and wonder. And it’s something that you wouldn’t expect because you think to yourself, like a nice garden, for example, you know, just has some flowers and it looks pretty right. But at the end of the day, It’s more so than that.

I just want to remind everybody that a lot of the information will be on our website, InclusiveDesigners.com, and also, it is all in the movie and I, again, I want everybody to kind of watch it. But that whole idea of parasympathetic and sympathetic is an interesting juxtaposition. And I like the idea of homeostasis, but you’ve also talked a lot about the three-by-three. Maybe you can talk a little bit about what that is and what that means. And again, it’s also in the movie and on our website.

Don: So, one of the patterns that humankind is born looking for and Sigmund Freud you know theorized that when a baby is born, it has to find a face to survive. Literally the child without the care of another human being is not going to survive. And scientists have found that there’s a pattern that’s made up of three dark spots, two eyes and a mouth surrounded by a dark area, which would be the hairline and the outline of a chin.

And so a child is, has a very rudimentary sense of vision when firstborn, very fuzzy, if you will. And so they’re looking for this pattern of two eyes on top and a darker spot on bottom. And scientists have shown that babies will lock in on that pattern as soon as they see it. But they’ve tried and they’ve taken note cards with the three dots and turned it upside down and the child will not even engage with it.

So there’s a genetic basis for this understanding that children are looking for this pattern. Well, if you take that pattern and you overlay a grid on it, it’s actually a three-by-three grid. And one of the important development things that happens with a child, not only is they’re looking for that facial pattern, but they’re also trying to engage in empathy. So all of the kicking and smiling and you know, the general back and forth that happens between mother and child is a really important part of the child’s development. And the child has to have that. And so this too is part of the genetic code.

So the empathy that happens between child and mother, and it goes on for day after day, week after week, for years, is setting up a response in the child that is positive. When they see the mother and they end up being fed and they’re laughing, and it’s just a general uplifting sense of life, that sensibility stays with us for the rest of our lives.

And when we see the pattern, which is a three-by-three pattern, when we see that in building facades and elevations, then we empathically transfer the sense of feeling good into the building elevation. And that’s why we call it beautiful, because it’s triggering the mesolimbic reward pathway in our midbrain that releases the feel-good hormones. And so we automatically feel good, same as when the child was engaged with the mother or the father, but automatically releases these hormones. It’s a feel-good hormone. Then that can result in the statement, ‘It’s beautiful’. So ‘it’s beautiful’ is actually often a physical response to seeing a pattern in a building elevation.

And if you look at some of our most acclaimed and honored buildings worldwide— so the ‘Forbidden City’ in China, famous temples in Japan, pyramids in Central America, the Pantheon, the Parthenon, St Peter’s, St John’s, I mean, over and over, the US Capitol, the White House— I mean all of these are revered and protected buildings, and the reason they are is because they’re made up of the same pattern.

Andrea Palladio was famous for using this pattern and his buildings are some of the most revered ever built. So the point here is, is that this three-by-three pattern is actually a fundamental reaction that all human beings have, and it results from being raised by your parents and the reactions that we learn when we’re being nurtured.

Janet: Right. Well, I don’t know if Davis has any questions for you, but this is a good segue into the movie, but Davis, do you have any questions you want to piggyback on some of that?

Davis: Yes. I have always many enthusiastic thoughts around this topic. It’s so, so fun to speak about, but I do want to understand and learn how the process of taking your thoughts and ideas, putting them in a book and transforming it into a movie. And how this, how this is a message that you’re optimistic that the general public will be able to pick up and understand. Maybe we can just start it there from a more broad points for the movie.

Don: When I first found the Academy of Neuroscience and I started reading the scientific papers, I thought, well this is amazing information, but it’s probably too dense for an architect to, you know, spend hours trying to sort through it. So I tried to write the book in a manner that was readable. In fact, the book is laid out with pictures so that an architect can just look at the pictures and the graphics and pretty much understand the message. And the famous saying is ‘architects look at books, they don’t read them’. And I’m an architect, so I can verify that that’s true. (Janet: laughs).

Anyway, so we tried to bring the same sensibility to the movie, that there are important aspects here in the movie that we’re trying to convey to the general public. And it’s not just a movie for architects. Really it’s for everybody. Because the simple matter is, the way you arrange pictures on a wall around a fireplace can make a difference in how you feel, whether you feel a sense of, ‘I don’t really understand this’ to ‘this feels really good and I understand it’. And so, if we thought, if we could bring some of that to the general public, it actually, you know, might help some people out. And particularly with COVID now, and everybody’s spending so much time in their homes, if we could give them the vehicle to, you know, rearrange their furniture that might feel more comfortable.

And I’ll tell you a story, I took some people through a house we had designed and I gave them a copy of my book. They went back to their condo and rearranged all their furniture and they said “this place has never felt so good. And thank you so much for letting us understand why we needed to do this and, and why it feels so good.” So this is not, you know, too difficult to understand once you embrace the general concepts. So we tried to make the movie so it would appeal to a broad audience and actually maybe give them some clues as to what they could do with their home interior or even their home exterior.

Janet: Right. But even if, how they looked in their built environment and also their office spaces, Right? And then also, their towns and their cities, or, you know, their neighborhoods, and they can also realize why they’re attracted to certain buildings. I think that’s a very kind of simple and almost fundamental concept. So you’re starting to understand the world around you. I actually wrote down at some point that this is a movie, not for just architects and architects’ students, but it’s for everybody to understand a little bit more.

And to your point, we were already spending 90% of our time indoors anyways. And then now like with COVID, if we can make our own home environment a little bit more beautiful, it just does us well. Which kind of brings into some of the questions that you had asked us to think about as well. And so, right off the top is what are the importance for connecting health and well-being to architecture. So, what, do you want to jump into that?

Don: Well, I, this is about health and well-being. And you know, I didn’t set out to write about health and well-being. But what I did realize was that- I was president of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, Rocky Mountain chapter for nine years. I’ve also been on the board of advisors for the University of Colorado, College of Architecture and Planning for about that same period. And Colorado is primarily a modernist school, and ICA is very much a traditionalist-based organization.

And I would listen to the arguments at one board meeting from the traditionalist, and I would listen to the counter arguments from the modernist at the university. And I thought, well, this is really just a war of words. And what could the possible common ground be here. And I realized that it was health and well-being, that both groups definitely were concerned with the health and well-being of their clients. And so that comes down to a fundamental of, if you use certain patterns, you can create a health and well-being reaction. And if you don’t, you’re likely to create a stress reaction, which is not helpful.

And it doesn’t matter whether it’s contemporary or traditional. If you use the right patterns in the right way, you’re going to generate that reaction. And I think that’s the fundamental message here. It’s not about style. It’s about using the patterns that generate these reactions. And that’s a game changer. And I didn’t invent all this, so it’s not all attributed to me. There are many groups around the country and in Europe that are looking into this,

Janet: I have to jump in there. You did coin a phrase though. Did you not? Neuro archi…

Don: -chitectology,

Janet: -ology, yes.

Don: Yes. That’s trying to weave together of course, architecture and biology and psychology and neuroscience into, you know, one kind of fundamental umbrella idea that we can use concepts from all of those disciplines to help inform the decisions that we’re going to make as architects and designers that hopefully support our client’s health and well-being,

Davis: Well, you’re a very effective messenger because you are able to demonstrate the nuance. It’s simple. It’s something that anybody can sort of pick up these ideas and say, ‘Oh, sure, this makes sense, you know, I’m going towards pleasure and I’m avoiding things that threaten my survival’. Yet, there’s this other, how you define beauty as having a bit of the acquired, the cultural and the experience.

So each set of patterns is something that any designer or architect could learn about and understand and recognize and say, ‘we already know this, we’re already doing this’, but what maybe isn’t happening is the reverting to a code and sticking to the let’s just follow the bare minimum here. Well, in reality, we need to have that ability to understand and read and know our clientele and the future users of the space to make sure that we’re prioritizing the patterns or prioritizing the layers in that sort of a way. So, is that something that prompts any thoughts in you that you want to expand on Don?

Don: Well, so what we’ve found in our practice, and we primarily do residential work, so we get a lot of feedback from our clients, is that we have strong moments of centering and symmetry, and then we’ll let it relax some. And so you might see the centered idea and then you go around a corner and, as you’re going around the corner, it’s not centered, an asymmetric design, and then you come upon another centered moment and then, you know, the same sequence happens again, and again, and again. So it’s, present the centered idea and then relax, and then represent it and relax.

So, we found that that creates the curiosity that is such an important component. Davis, you mentioned that a minute ago, curiosity and awe. So curiosity is a very important component to our lives. So you don’t want everything to be the same. Not every wall should be centered and a three-by-three pattern. But if you can have a strong three by three pattern on every wall in every room, then I think you’d go a long way towards creating a sense of relaxation and comprehension by your clients.

Because again, as a baby, we’re desperate to find that pattern when we’re born. And if we don’t, it’s panic, because we’re not going to survive. Well that emotion stays with us forever. And that’s where the stress reaction starts to come in. We’re looking for this three-by-three pattern every day, all day long, it’s facial pattern. And it’s not just acquiring a facial pattern from a person walking down the sidewalk. But when we look at buildings too, the portion of your brain that processes facial patterns is also the same portion of the brain that processes facades. And that’s an incredible realization. And Dr. Kendalls at Colombia, Nobel prize winning neuroscientist, has talked a lot about Pareidolia, which is, if we don’t find the pattern, then we might fill it in, because we’re so desperate to try to acquire the pattern. So, anyway, that’s… I don’t remember what the question is now, but…

Janet: (laughs)

Davis: I tend to ask open-ended questions. So, I’ll turn it over to Janet for something…

Janet: it’s all good – So, and now I know I have shared this story with you. Your wonderful producer/director Mariel, she did a lot of filming with your film in my old stomping ground which was Brooklyn Heights. And one of the buildings that she actually said was beautiful is right near where one of the buildings as a kid we would avoid. And I don’t know why that was. You know, I never understood why. And we would cross the street because there was the lovely building that she actually showed. And so, it kind of goes back to your point that these things are just innate within us. And it’s not something that you can maybe even put your finger on. But I think that this film will really kind of help to explain that to people, which I think will be a game changer.

Don: Great. Fantastic. So what would be uncomfortable is an architectural pattern, a building an elevation, that is so unusual that it was causing an avoidance reaction. And you know, in the movie I say something like, everybody probably has buildings that they like to go out of their way not to encounter. Conversely, I think everybody has buildings that they in fact go out of their way to encounter. And that has to do with this subliminal approach and avoidance reaction. And it’s just so, you know, subtle that… there’s a building here in Denver that my wife and I used to go to and we finally had just said, ‘you know, I don’t feel like going there anymore’. Well, that’s the avoidance reaction. There’s something in that building that is making us feel uncomfortable. And everybody has that. You just acknowledge it, that that’s probably a sympathetic reaction that you’re having to a pattern that you don’t understand, or you’re looking for a pattern that you can’t find.

Janet: Right, so, we’ve talked a little bit about who should be watching this movie and why, but can we do a little more of a deeper dig into that because I think that that’s important. One of the things the take-away pieces is how important neuroscience is and this movie explains all that. But how do we as designers learn from that, but not get distracted by that? I know there was a lot of discussion about that towards the end of the movie but is there a way to be able to be innovative, creative, and deal with neuroscience. Can you expand a little bit on that?

Don: Well, yes, I will. Neuroscience is a new tool for us to help still make creative inventive decisions. And the important thing here is to realize that some architectural spaces may create stress. It’s an evolving topic and neuroscience is a tool it’s not the end all be all. And I think Dr. Chatterjee and the movie states that very clearly. It’s still a decision to be made by the architect or the designer.

Davis: Thanks for mentioning that Don about neuroscience being a new or evolving tool that can be tapped into and used as a means to generate and remodel spaces and places for people to have a way to facilitate their health and well-being. I mean, that’s, this is one of the big takeaways from the movie ‘Built Beautiful’, and from the work you’ve been doing.

You know, if a person isn’t using all of their available attention, attentional focus to search out and make meaning of the space that they’re in, then they can attend more to their own internal state, how they’re feeling, the person that they’re with, how they’re doing and find a more of a harmonious experience in that space. However, conversely, if they’re in a space that’s demanding a lot of interpretation and their senses are very busy trying to make sense of ‘up and down’ and ‘left and right’ and ‘where to go’ and what have you, then it will immediately trigger that ‘fight or flight’ mode that many are chronically stuck in anyway. And so the window of tolerance can be expanded by the space that we have.

So I don’t necessarily have a question from what I’m saying. I’m just kind of countering what you said with more, you know, approval and evidence, and meaning of why this needs to get into peoples, into everybody’s understanding. So, fantastic.

Janet: We’re just such a big believer of this movie. Again, I’ve seen it three times. I’ve read your book. I’ve read, you know, the, the other chapters that you’ve had like I said, in Ann Sussman’s book as well. And I liked what you said at the end of the movie was the idea of that neuroscience of architecture, right? Not neuroscience and architecture. And I thought that that was a really important and powerful moment because it’s part of the game changer that you’re a part of this emerging field and it is also, it’s things that we’re still learning, but it’s such an important part. I mean, again, you know, just looking at building facades and how people react to them. it’s really amazing.

Don: Well, I, I must say, it is just an emerging field of interest here and recently I, in just the past two weeks, I’ve been in touch with groups from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Canada, Johns Hopkins University, ANFA, Kansas State University, Oklahoma University and Colorado University. I mean, and everybody is talking about this. So this is a course correction. I’m not the head of this, there are many, many people that are working very hard on it.

Janet: I have to interrupt, the movie though breaks it down in bite size pieces that is so, again, it’s not just for architects, it’s not, not for the architects that have been out in the field for 20, 40 years. It’s not just for the students. I mean, this is also for people to understand. I would argue that this is a groundbreaking movie within our field.

Don: Well, I’ve had comments to that effect that,

Janet: oh, so I’m not original on my thoughts, okay, thank you, Don. (laughs).

Don: I’ve had comments that have said, they think, you know, and I’m being modest about this, but people have said that it was really important, so we’re glad to be part of the movement.

Janet: Yeah. We think it’s really important and we really appreciate you stopping by today and giving us your time. And I implore all of my Inclusive Designer Podcast listeners and architects and architect students, and people who love architecture, and if you just want to walk around in your neighborhood and understand it a little bit better to really think about looking out for the movie, an incredible movie. The actual title for the movie is ‘Built Beautiful: An Architecture and Neuroscience Love Story’, that is the full name of the movie. I think that that kind of sums it up right there.

Also again, the book is ‘Beauty, Neuroscience and Architecture, Timeless Patterns and Their Impact on Our Well-Being’. And again, all of this information and a lot of it, we put it on our website, InclusiveDesigners.com and we’ll have links to Don. So you can get in touch with Don or Davis and, and even how to buy the book. Don, thank you so much for being here.

We wish you continued success with the movie. We really, all of us here and, I’m maybe speak a little bit for Davis, we really appreciate the work that you’ve done. Again, I think that this as groundbreaking work. And I’m so excited that you agreed to be here today and to share your information and share your knowledge with, I would argue, the rest of the world.

Don: Thank you. It’s been an honor.

Janet: Oh, thank you. Davis, you want to throw a, throw a goodbye?

Davis: Sure thing. Well, thank you so much for, you know, we’re all picking up this message from wherever it came from and we’re finding each other and we’re creating a really strong interdisciplinary team of people who are out to have more heartfelt spaces, spaces that feel better, you know, for people who can understand themselves more and more. So it’s a real honor and a privilege to be here and to speak about the film ‘Built Beautiful’. We’re big fans. Thank you so much. Thanks Don.

Don: Thank you.

Music / Show Outro:

Janet: I suspect that Don Ruggles will be one of those architects that will make a name for himself, not only for his beautiful architectural work, but for his role in bringing this really important research to light.

Carolyn: And we just learned that the old saying that ‘beauty is in the EYE of the beholder’ should really be… that ‘beauty is in the BRAIN of the beholder’.

Janet: Right? Especially as we unlock more and more mysteries about our brains and how we see beauty. And although we think that it’s subjective, it really isn’t, as there are some basic innate patterns that we all seek. I dare you not to try to find faces in almost every building you encounter. As a designer, I knew this to be a concept, but I’m now seeing faces everywhere, and it’s pretty exciting.

Carolyn: I agree, I’m doing it too, and it’s pretty incredible. Don pointed out that “There are probably buildings that you go out of your way to avoid, and others you go out of your way to see.”

Janet: He also said, “architecture has ramifications on our health, and we need to understand- what are the forms, ideas, repetitive patterns that support proper health and well-being.”

You know this is an important topic for anyone even remotely touching this profession. It highlights the emerging relationship between the built environment and human psychology. If you have a passion for design and how and why we think some things are beautiful, keep an eye out for the documentary. And for more immediate gratification, check out his book.

Carolyn: The movie also touched upon some other new concepts like using Virtual and Augmented Reality to provide new insights, methods, and information to enrich the design process.

Janet: And also, how neuroscience is being used in designing for people with eating disorders or dementia… it’s fascinating. The movie really captures it and helps us to understand the importance of this kind of work.

Carolyn: We should really think about doing episodes on these two new areas of research.

Janet: That’s a great idea, and… I might have been thinking the same thing. Meanwhile, I‘m telling everyone who is listening, you’ve got to go find this movie and check out his book.

Carolyn: We will of course have links to Don, the book, the movie, Davis, and a few other things that were mentioned along the way during this discussion… they’ll all be on our website at: inclusivedesigners.com…

Janet: That’s: inclusivedesigners.com…

Carolyn: We also want to thank you, our podcast listeners, for listening. And now, in case you didn’t know, along with all the regular places you get your podcasts, you can also find us on YouTube. Just go to YouTube and look up Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go to our website and hit that Patreon Button, or to the link for our new GoFundMe Page.

Janet: And don’t forget our motto, as we like to say here on Inclusive Designers Podcast: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed’. See you next time. And thank you as always for stopping by.

Carolyn: Yes, thanks again.

(Music up)

Designing for: The Changing Reality of Disability in America
Guests: Valerie Fletcher

(Music 1/ Show Intro)

Janet: In this series we will be discussing specific examples of design techniques that make a positive difference for people living with certain human conditions.

Carolyn: The more a designer understands the client and or the community the more effective and respectful the design will be.

Janet: Welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast, I am your host, Janet Roche

Carolyn: and I am your moderator, Carolyn Robbins…

Janet: In this episode we will be talking to the amazing Valerie Fletcher, who is, among other things, the Executive Director of the ‘Institute for Human Centered Design’ in Boston, Massachusetts.

Carolyn: Valerie Fletcher has built her career advocating for the disabled. Her research focuses on integrated social and environmentally sustainable solutions for multifamily housing, healthcare, culture, workplaces, and the public realm.

Janet: We originally wanted to invite Valerie to talk about the 30th anniversary of the ADA, which is the American Disabilities Act, about its past, present and future, and we did… but Valerie being Valerie, there was a lot more to discuss than that.

Carolyn: Recently, Valerie and the IHCD released a new documentary video, and paper, called The Changing Reality of Disability in America: 2020. It highlights the correlation between poverty and disabilities.

Janet: We discuss everything from neo-diversity, poverty in America, functional limitations, the definition of handicapped, our toxic environments, and finally how COVID is changing the face of Inclusive Design.

Carolyn: We also explore how design is a civil right, and look at the role the infamous ISO, or International Standards Organization, plays in refining the standards to keep up with our ever-changing world.

Janet Here is our interview with Valerie Fletcher…

(Music 2 – Interview)

Janet: Hi and welcome to Inclusive Designers Podcast. I’m your host, Janet Roche. I’m here today, along with my moderator, Carolyn Robbins, and otherwise known as my producer, aficionado, expert, and what have you. And today we have somebody really special on the show. Somebody who I deeply admire, and someone who is such a champion for people who are very underserved in our built environment. Valerie Fletcher. Welcome, Valerie.

Valerie: Thank you Janet, thrilled to be here.

Janet: Thank you for so much for coming. Now, I want to talk about the paper you just did as well as the video, “Changing Reality of Disability in America, 2020” but first I want to tell you, how you told me about this. This was last year. This is a true story, and it was that, we were at a cocktail party for Mahesh Dass, who was just being, had his in vesture that morning and you had your audience around you. And so I waited patiently behind everybody to, like get in to see you. I kept trying to like create eye contact, like don’t leave, don’t leave.

And so finally, you know, everybody had had their piece of you and then they left, and you were gracious enough to hang out and talk to me. And I said, you know, “Hey, I’m going to be doing a podcast, you want to come on?” And you’re like, “I’m really busy. I’ve got this thing. We’ve just got a grant. We have this incredible grant to talk about, poverty and how it affects disability. And it’s incredible. And it’s going to be just like this incredible thing.” And I’m like, ‘oh my God’, you know, just when I think I’ve caught up to you, like you’re already in some other stratosphere of thinking and forward thinking and advocacy work. So that’s where I first heard about this project that you’ve now just finished. Do you want to talk a little bit about it?

Valerie: Sure. You know, one of the hard things about anybody who runs a design firm, and I’m fortunate enough to run a nonprofit design and educational, a global nonprofit. So we’re very fortunate on so many fronts, but we look a lot like a firm because we do consulting and design services as our bread and butter, mission driven.

And one of the hardest things to do—and I know you understand this because you’re a designer making your living doing what you know how to do—there is no time to do something that you don’t have any money for. You are so client driven that things that are eating away at you that need attention and time never get to life.

So I was very, very lucky that, the widow and two sons of a colleague who died very suddenly, in Vermont actually, 20 years ago, Alan Myers, who was a professor of public health and very much an early pioneer in looking at the role of the built environment in public health.

Janet: I hadn’t heard about him before I read this program that you wrote. And I was like, ‘dang’. I was like, ‘where was he, you know, going through school’, like he was amazing. Right?

Valerie: Yeah.

Janet: He was an amazing, you know, fore thinker of some of these issues.

Valerie: Absolutely. Absolutely. And he was, you know, he was really on a quest, but he died. He died very suddenly. And so there was a fund set up, a Memorial fund. And his wife and sons asked, what would I do if I had some resources from the fund? And it was, it was such an extraordinary opportunity, you know, going and begging federal government or a big foundation, you know, to pursue something like this would not be likely. And there was a real public health angle to it. So extra good fortune that we were able to pursue this with private funding. And it was really out born out of faith that we would align with Alan’s values and that’s how it was born. Of course, it was born before COVID so…

Janet: Right,

Valerie: before the world changed …

Janet: or in some of these social justice issues had come about…

Valerie: totally.

Janet: So, I mean, again, you got to remember when we, you and I were talking about this a year ago…

Valerie: It was December…

Janet: Right, it was, to me, I was, it was mind-blowing. I mean, I knew it, but it was mind blowing and, but now I watch all this stuff going down and I think like, bam, like Valerie was on it again.

Valerie: (laugh) so I was able to put a team together and that team included; a documentary filmmaker, who is our producer for our video on and webcast kind of work. PJ Moynihan from Digital Eyes Film. And he was all over it right away, which was very lucky, and was a core member of the team. It wasn’t like the video was, you know, the documentary was over here and the everything else was over here.

And then two other core players and one of them is a woman with a Doctorate from the Harvard School of Public Health, the Chan School, and that is Dr. Erica Walker. And we knew Erica because many years ago she was an intern of ours and got bitten by notions of the role of the environment, how significant the role the environment is. And she went on to earn a doctorate in public health, and this was an opportunity to bring her in. She actually has done most of her research work, her Doctorate, was in issues of noise. Noise that you cannot control as something that is a risk to mental and physical health. So really interesting work.

So Erica was part of the team. PJ was part of the team and the other key member of the team was a man named Matthew Brault. So Matt is a former point man on disability at US Census. So really deep experience and knowledge. And there just aren’t that many people. And I had already had the experience of working with Matt over a number of years. He’s been a consultant to us in really helping us to tell the story about— ‘what are the demographics? What is the fact of the experience of a functional limitation in America today?’— because I knew it was fundamentally different than people presumed.

You know as a designer, what do you know? You know you’re primarily oriented towards the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the codes of the state you’re working in. And what do those codes and standards look at primarily? They look at wheelchair users. Because the challenge on the built environment is so obvious that people have come to think that disability and wheelchair use are very nearly synonymous.

Janet: And that is the only disability that people have, right? I mean, I mean, it’s something like, it’s crazy, like what, 10-percent of all Americans have some sort of, or use some sort of wheelchair or was it…

Valerie: oh no, it’s, so 26-percent of the adult population have a disability, only 1.4-percent. use wheeled mobility, ten times that number have difficulty walking. And we had known all of that because Matt has been working with us on demographics for New England. It’s been extremely valuable. We run the new England ADA center and it’s been extremely helpful for us to be able to disseminate, this is who we’re really talking about.

And, and more often than not, designers are looking at the standards, but they aren’t looking at the regulations. You know, the regulations are narrative, but the regulations are central to understanding the intent of the ADA. So the regulations define who has rights and who has responsibilities. And architect, licensed professionals in particular, have a very special type of responsibility and the client has a responsibility.

So that’s where that’s captured. And over the years, the standards have changed some and you know, there was new new requirements in 2010. It was modified and made coherent, at least to a large extent, with four other sets of standards so that they could talk to each other, which hadn’t been possible before.
But what had also changed is the definition overall had changed.

So there’d been a period of time at the very beginning when the ADA was passed in 1990. And at that point there was a number of 43-million adult Americans have a disability. Nobody can really back into that number now, but that was what was used in 1990. It was literally in the legislation. And then the courts began to hear cases relative to rights under the ADA and shrank the definition, quite aggressively shrank the definition of who has protections under the law.

And then in 2008 Congress passed something called the ADA Amendments Act. And that actually restored the original intent of who is covered. And it looked at the original concern for Activities of Daily Living, you know, ADLs, which you’re probably familiar with, but it also looked at bodily functions. So we were for the first time understanding that our systems, whether that is, you know, the GI tract or, you know, any number of systems, the cardiac system and the reproductive system, all of that is actually a system that if it is impaired, makes you eligible to be covered under the ADA.

So it had expanded quite substantially, back to the original intent and by 2020, we’re looking at 61-million American adults are people with disabilities. Overwhelmingly that number of people have conditions that you cannot see, that the majority of them acquired those conditions over time, that congenital limitations are still happening, still real, but they are a small percentage of the total.

Janet: I know we’ve had a side conversation about this, but the use of the universal wheelchair, and people tend to think that that is what disability is. And people have a hard time when they see people maybe with a placard, having a disability and using one of the, like those parking spaces. Somebody told me that they had had some sort of bypass surgery and they were able to get like a placard just to help them with the ADLs. They couldn’t walk very far. And some woman came over and yelled at him because he wasn’t in a wheelchair. And, he was angry as all get up. And I said, look, I said, here’s the good news is, is that at least she was trying to care. She was misinformed, but she was trying to care for the people who she believed really needed it. I think people are starting to understand it a little bit better, but I think something like the universal sign for a wheelchair is a little misleading for people with disabilities

Valerie: it’s one of those things where, shorthand language is hard to create and it’s hard to sustain. So I don’t know that that’s going to go anywhere. And it’s been reinforced a number of times. It’s been around for, we’re probably closing in on 70 years now. It’s not new. So I think that that’s part of the issue. and I think it’s that people are still unfamiliar with it.

So when, when we’re looking at these things, we’ve really tried to break it out. So people understand, what are the reasons for disability today? So that was the big question, we wanted to do that. And we also knew that there was a pattern in which inequity in America was a big driver of disability, but there was nothing really telling that story.

Janet: and this paper and this video completely covers that I think is pretty groundbreaking. So I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt…

Valerie: no, so part of it, part of it is that- it’s telling the story about the truth of what constitutes disability. Which doesn’t mean, that you have to self-identify as a person with a disability. You know, you’re being counted, whether you would ever adopt an identity of that. And I think for people who acquire a functional limitation over time, it’s really hard to say, now I’m a person with a disability, you know, you’re somewhere on the continuum. And some day you wake up and say, Oh, I’ve now arrived, I’m a person with a disability. And that, that is unusual. It does not happen. And for many people it’s why would I do that? What is the advantage for me?

Janet: Right.

Valerie: And when people think about disability, it’s very hard to sort of grapple with what does that mean when you’re talking in many cases about, degenerative conditions or conditions, chronic health conditions talking about the enormous issue of the brain and all of the conditions there.

Janet: Right. And that the whole brain part is just beginning to get explored.

Valerie: Yeah. So. Let me take a second to talk about this issue of ‘where does the brain fit’. So those of us who swim in this water every day know that for children in youth, say age 3 to 22, the norm for many, many years has been the dominant reason for a disability is brain-based. That is the norm among children and youth.

If you look at higher ed, and of course, we in Boston look at higher ed and, you know, understand, disability services is something that some people knock on the door because they need an accommodation. They have to now self-identify. It’s not the school’s responsibility, it’s your responsibility to ask. So we know overarchingly, we are looking at people who are served by disability services are overwhelmingly people with brain-based conditions. And you’re very different from one another. so, it might be mental health. It might be learning disabilities, which is the largest single category.

Janet: …count me into that one.

Valerie: You’re not special Janet…

Janet: no, I’m not…

Valerie: It could be developmental, intellectual limitations and different kinds of developmental delays. I think everybody is hyper aware of conditions like neuro diversity, which includes, but isn’t limited to autism. I mean, that’s become such a big topic. And then, the other issues that we don’t think about as often, brain injury.

Janet: Yeah.

Valerie: Really big deal. If you’ve ever known anybody with brain injury, it’s powerfully, imposing on essentially your entire self, your sense of self, your ability to function at every level. And then the rising tide of neurological conditions, which are, you know, growing very rapidly.

So at this point in time, we’re looking at mobility limitations remain the number one reason for disability among adults, but it’s mostly difficulty walking. So it’s walking distance and climbing stairs. And what is that about? That’s partly about the fact that we’ve got an aging population. We’re a lot older than we were – (Janet: We’re a lot older…) – 30 years ago as a nation…

Janet: …was it 2030 more people in the history of the world will be over the age of 65 than ever…

Valerie: Yes. And, in that case, it’s a lot of people who have conditions that they have acquired over time that get a lot worse after 65. But the brain, that whole spectrum, whether we call it cognition, it’s very difficult. There’s no standard terminology, is number two and rapidly rising, it’s not only the child and youth story, it’s the adult story. So really important that we recognize that this is now something that is impossible for us to ignore and to recognize it as legitimate. in the first days of the ADA, when the legislation was in progress, there was a big, a big challenge of getting parody between mental and physical reasons for disability.

It worked, it worked, but that was groundbreaking work. It was then reinforced years later at the international level by two things. One was The World Health Organization and the international classification of function, disability, and health. It took ten years to do it, to get global buy-in because you can’t, you can’t issue a policy without the member nations agreeing to it.
And this was radical. This was no longer the world health organization saying if you have this, then you are a person with a disability. Instead, it was this notion that it was contextual. This is where the big opportunity for designers comes in.

So the World Health Organization established this new measure of how do we think about these things? So they said, looking at global aging, they said ‘now functional limitation is a universal human phenomenon’. We are all going to get there unless we’re unlucky enough to die young. So functional limitation will be part of our life experience.

The second thing they talked about, again, was parody between mental and physical reasons for a functional limitation. But for those of us who design, the really big idea was that, so those things are now universal for all of us, we will all experience it at some point. It’s not about them over there in a fixed condition, it’s about the human condition.

But this notion of context was about a person with a functional limitation, interacts with the environment and they understood the context. You know, context and environment are kind of equal and the environment is the physical. And in 2001, when we were not quite so technology addicted, they still knew it was communication, information, policy and the all-important attitude.

So that holistic idea of the environment really was what they were talking about when it was contextual. What’s the deal here. So it means the intersection of a person and the environment, which means that those of us that create environments create the human context, you know, the social art of design, have an opportunity to minimize the negative and amplify the strengths of people with functional limitations. So that they construed disability as a negative that occurs at that intersection of the person and the environment.

Janet: Right. In terms of talking to designers, this is something that really sometimes irks me. Because I am a designer for human health and this is what I do and I have other designers, other architects that call me up and go— “Hey, I’m doing X, Y, and Z of a project, and I’m basically calling you to figure out how to get around the codes and how to try to figure out like, how can I pass my test without putting it in any of the work?” – and I thought it would be great if you could talk a little to designers out there that look at that as, they look at it as they try to tick the boxes. You know what I mean? Like, they’re just trying to tick the boxes. They’re not trying to come up with some real clever design ideas.

Valerie: I think it’s legitimate to acknowledge that one of the things about the challenge for designers is that they have requirements at the state level. You know, you’ve got to hit those, and at the federal level and on certain kinds of environments, it’s, it’s a nightmare. It’s very difficult in Massachusetts in particular and especially around housing. So that is, I want to legitimize the frustration. It’s fair to complain that it’s very, very complex.

We’re currently doing a little brochure on inclusive multi-family housing, but we’re doing it with illustrations that, excruciating detail in terms of this meets fair housing, this meets ADA, this meets MAAB, and this is what Inclusive Design looks like. So part of the problem is that sometimes when it gets too complex, you have essentially gutted any potential that somebody is going to be interested in doing more, in having this sense of what I can do for people.

Janet: Right. I think that’s where designers do have frustrations, the complexity of everything.

Valerie: yeah.

Janet: I mean, I don’t think there’s any dubious kind of thought process going through this, or they’re trying to kind of get away with things. I think it is, they’re just trying to figure it out. What do you say to those critics? I, we kind of touched on it a little bit, but what do you say to those critics that say, well, you know, it’s too difficult. We’re being kind of like a nanny state. Do you have any, I’m sure you have some choice words. (laughs)

Valerie: Private homes can be built any way you want, and people do generally do that though it’s often wise to think about the people with the most money who can pay the most to designers to invest in their homes, tend not to be young. And it’s often wise to give them features that will serve them well over time.

Janet: Right.

Valerie: No one wants to retrofit a fabulous home because it doesn’t actually work for them for very long. So just, just a thought. I think part of it is the way we teach people. Janet, I have a big problem with the way we teach people, that too often, issues of accessibility are taught with the plumbing and the electrical code. So if you are trained to think, just tell me what I have to do, that is where you go. You don’t think of it as part of the design process. You don’t think about, I’m designing for people. You know, I’m, this is really about the extraordinary role of designers in having a big influence on our lives.

I’d have to say, not to, not to impugn the electrical code and the plumbing code, but I never look at those without having to look them up. You know, I don’t ever incorporate those. But I think this notion of design for people, and I think part of what we’re frequently talking about is that this is, it’s not code, you know, at its core, the Americans with Disabilities Act is not code. It’s civil rights and civil rights in America, how to extend to design if you were going to make it work for people with disabilities, because design was such a factor. If functional limitation is the, you know, is really the definition. Then if you didn’t design things differently, you were excluding people. So inaction is a civil rights exclusion. So this was the first place in the world that actually incorporated design as a civil and a human right. And that has made an enormous difference across the world.

Janet: yeah, it’s so true. And, for myself. So, full disclosure, Valerie Fletcher and myself, we know each other from the Boston Architectural College in Boston and she’s on the board of trustees. And, she knows though, that I went through a particular program, which was one of the first of its kind in the United States, called Design for Human Health. And we look at designing in a more empathetic approach, and you talk about this in your paper, we look at the psychological, the sociological and the biological parts of the built environment and it’s, it’s an important piece.

And, and it’s funny, because it kind of goes back to the whole wheelchair conversation, is that when I would tell people that ‘this is what I was doing, and I’m very excited about it, I can’t wait to start helping teach other people about this’, and people were like, what do you need to know about people in wheelchairs? Like, try to explain to them that we’re looking at the environment as a whole on how it affects not only the person, but even how they looked at it in terms of society. And that goes back to the whole economics justice piece of what you’re talking about. Right?

Valerie: And, and I think even if you, you unpack the requirements relative to people who use wheelchairs and, you know, we’ve created all kinds of changes in the society because of, you know, the ability to use wheeled mobility to get around. I mean, when I was a kid, we didn’t have wheeled suitcases, you know, that had wheels, you lifted them up…

Janet: I may have dragged one through Europe. Yeah.

Valerie: Right, right. I mean, think of the fabulous array of wheeled mobility for babies and toddlers, you know, all of that is facilitated by level everything. You know that you can get around, you can make your way down on the street without thinking about it. And that’s been great. I mean, even if you get to bikes and scooters, you know, it’s made life much easier for bikes and scooters.

And there’s been many benefits for the very large population of people with difficulty walking. Also, it’s not literal wheeled mobility usage, but the standards are even limited there because they’re really focused on people with good upper body strength, which is not the story for everybody. If you know anybody with quadriplegia or MS or ALS, they are, they are using a chair with a far more restricted level of function than somebody with a paraplegic condition where they have good upper body strength. So the reach ranges are all presumed to be paraplegia.

So it’s important for us to, and to think about the polio epidemic was very significant in the development of early standards because it was so, such a devastating impact on the world population. And certainly, in the United States, many of the people who were leaders in the original movement were people who grew up with, as polio survivors. And so, you know, their needs were paramount and very obvious.

Janet: Right. They definitely were. And I have some friends whose parents, were really affected by the polio. So that brings up a good question: How do you see COVID changing the landscape in terms of design, in terms of people with disabilities. You know, because I think we’re going to have, I think it’s something that doesn’t get talked about about much and I might be wrong, but just as— I’m not a doctor, I just play one on my little podcast— it seems to be, there’s not a lot of discussion around the idea that there’s a lot of people that have had a lot of long-term effects with Covid and I know that it’s starting to come out. I did see a couple of articles actually just recently, but can you speak a little bit to, what do you see how that’s going to change things…

Valerie: I totally agree Janet, that, that it’s going to make a big difference. And I think that your work in Design for Human Health notions of fit well, wellbeing, the WELL building standards, all of that is more relevant than ever. And you may know people who, are suddenly very clearly people who aren’t going back to the workplace at all, because they have a condition they’ve never talked about before, because they didn’t have to, they didn’t need an accommodation. And we talk about that in the paper. So one of the conditions that is grown exponentially are people with auto-immune disease.

Janet: Right, because I mean, then there’s those invisible diseases and invisible conditions, I have a lot of friends who have all sorts of these invisible conditions.

Valerie: And we don’t know what causes them. But we do know that there’s a vulnerability related to the environment. We just don’t know exactly what it is, but certainly in a time of pandemic, they are not going back to the office or back to school. And I think part of the COVID response is that we need to think differently about how we are designing homes for one thing.

And there’s not much question that we have not got solutions in hand, and it’s much easier for people who have, you know, a private home where they can, ideally a private home where they can also spend some money, but this is not an easy situation for the thousands and thousands of Bostonians for example who are living in our 8-to-10 story rather new apartment buildings where there’s an emphasis on shared space, tiny living spaces. And if you’ve got roommates in that tiny living space, you are severely hampered in your ability to work remotely at home anyway.

And I think when we look at, we look at learning at home and kids— kids in public housing, kids in large families, kids in poor neighborhoods— are disadvantaged in a, in an obvious way. You know, it’s difficult for them to have any private space. They might share a bedroom with two or three other people. Parking yourself at the kitchen table is probably going to be noisy and disruptive. And your parent is going to hear everything you say. My brother’s a college professor who said, you know, the saddest thing for him was the first generation to college kids who, when they were in your classroom could for the first time in their lives, say things they’d never said before. Well, those aren’t going to be said at the kitchen table, if your mother’s behind you, (Janet: Interesting). You know, that transformation isn’t going to happen.

Janet: Wow.

Valerie: And I think just to, just to add to the complexity of ‘how do we do this remote work, remote learning and remote medicine’. if you are not a privileged person with a lot of private space. I mean, who wants to visit their doctor in a shared room or in a communal living room,

Janet: And then that also gets, you know, gets into the whole HIPAA conversation. (Valerie: Yeah.) It’s, it’s a, it’s kind of incredible. I mean, yeah, I think we kind of understand at least for people with poverty, what they’re going through, but do you have any future…

Valerie: We actually think that there’s an opportunity because of Covid. So the pandemic…

Janet: right.

Valerie: … is an opportunity that we haven’t seen in multiple generations to really look hard at, what’s not working anyway. And what do we need to change in order to have a future where I think the whole issue of equity becomes a much bigger story. And I think the Black Lives Matter movement coming on the heels of COVID and the killings, you know, brought a level of a coherent sense of shared understanding that hasn’t really been there. We’re all living the same experience of a global pandemic and in America, and actually shared around the world, this notion of outrage at racism. And I think inequity in America is something that can be demonstrated, can be documented. We got the data to prove that we are in worse shape than we were 60 years ago in terms of equity, in terms of equality of opportunity. And it has alarming ramifications for us, if nothing changes.

Janet: Right.

Valerie: And I think what, what we have now, however frightening our current situation, given a lack of resources, you know, just at— at the individual level, at the community level, at the city and the state level— you know, resources are a source of tremendous anxiety because we don’t know how things are going to be managed. But I think we have to recognize that this is our best chance at taking a hard look at how we do things and that we have to figure it out.

Janet: It’s an incredible opportunity. despite the pandemonium that seems to be part of this. It’s kind of like an, an incredible moment in time where we have to, and we have to as designers, we have to start stepping up and, and doing our part.

Valerie: Well, and I think, I think part of what we’ve allowed to happen without talking about it, is we don’t acknowledge what it’s costing us. We don’t acknowledge that at all. So at this point, now we spend more than anybody in the world on healthcare, 3.5-trillion dollars, and 90-percent of that is going to chronic health conditions and mental health conditions, 90-percent.

Janet: So we’re basically putting a bandaid on things. Right? I mean, and, but meanwhile though, there’s like a gusher, right?

Valerie: Well, and we’re doing it at the cost of systemic population health. So the reason we live longer now is because systemic population health was a priority. We invested in public health, which allows us to get past polio, get past smallpox, get past diphtheria, you know the kinds of things that were so dangerous to life in its early years, that for generations, people didn’t even name babies until they survived for 6-months or a year, because it was so risky. So, we’ve lost, we’ve lost the memory of that. And we’ve tied personal care is really where it all goes.

So the amount of money spent in the last couple of years of life for very long lives, you know, enormous investments of money, but we aren’t doing very well on preventive care. We aren’t really looking at some of the systemic issues that are costing everyone a fortune. On the ‘Center for Disease Control’ website, there’s a breakdown for every state and territory of how many people with a disability and what are you spending.

And part of what is so frustrating is that by doing nothing, by not allowing people to be independent, to work, to contribute, to participate, it’s costing money. It’s costing everybody money badly spent, because nobody actually wants to be in that dependent situation. And that’s part of what we’re trying to argue needs to be reversed. And if we’re going to have people contribute, then we’ve got to invest differently in housing and school and work at minimum.

Janet: Right.

Valerie: And certainly healthcare.

Janet: Yeah. again, your, your, your paper and your, your video is called ‘Changing Reality of Disability in America, 2020”. I’ll have it on, my website. And obviously you can go to…

Valerie: you can get the report and access to the documentary film from our website, right in the middle of the homepage. It’s www.humancentereddesign.org … two Ds, centered, and design.

Janet: One of the things when, when you and I met up last year, you did say that, the problems with poverty. And again, as we have an opportunity for change. So as, as designers, we can use some of this information that’s in this report and in the documentary to help support designer’s decisions to make some of these changes. So they can say to their clients or whomever, they could point to that information.

Valerie: We draw out one of the realities that I think is an important integration with notions of social and environmental sustainability marriage. And we use in the documentary, the story of Flint, Michigan, because it’s so well known. So, bad water, triple the rates of learning disabilities among those children. It turns out that the day that we aired the preliminary version of the documentary, there was a giant lawsuit that was won to give 600-million dollars to the children of Flint, Michigan to try to give them the supports that they need, now in at a desperate level, because of the harm caused by bad water.

But the interesting thing, and the heartbreaking thing is that there’s 2600 American cities whose water safety is worse than Flint, Michigan. And those are mostly places with high rates of poverty. People who aren’t poor won’t tolerate that. And it is not a neutral phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that will result in lifelong issues. In most cases, it’s the learning disabilities and the whole variety of where it intersects with the brain. It also tends to cause problems with pregnant women and the children they bear. So life term problems. Bad water, bad air. We didn’t do a specific segment on bad air, but poor neighborhoods in America are besieged by bad quality air.

Janet: Well they are usually places that are closer to like the airports, the ones that are closer to the highways. They’re the ones that are closer to…

Valerie: manufacturing.

Janet: right, right, right…

Valerie: Indian reservations, Native Americans have the highest rates of disability in America, they’re a very small population, just 1-percent now of all Americans. 40-percent of Native Americans have disabilities. And those are environments that are often, there, at least the reservation environment are built over mining sites. So toxic environments and high rates of all kinds of things related to those environmental risks that they live with. So the highest rates are among people, 65 and over and native Americans. And then the highest is among black Americans.

Janet: Right. Yeah, no, I read that in your report. So it was, for me, that was an eye opener. I mean, I think I know a lot of what’s in your report, or to a certain degree, but that was kind of shocking.

Valerie: And in the documentary, we wanted to tell stories because people remember stories much more than they remember data. And we wanted to tell a story around homelessness as another category. So we had the kids in Flint. Homelessness is a phenomenon that, you know, I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in and work on over the years, never adequately. I had a career in public mental health and the intersection of mental health and substance use is a very strong corollary for homelessness.

And the numbers are heartbreaking in terms of the number of people. Once upon a time, people thought that it was related to, we closed state hospitals, the community wasn’t adequate. Most people who are out there now never saw the inside of an inpatient unit. You know, these are people who just have the thinnest connection to support and care. And so the whole behavior health spectrum of substance use and mental health is huge in that community.

We also looked at prisons and jails where, kind of sickening reality of people with disabilities in prisons and jails is a big national story, but not one that is much talked about. So there’s a good project in the state of Washington that’s really looking at this. There’s occasional projects, research projects with individual cities or states, but we still have very poor data. We do know that more than 50-percent of people who have been killed by police are people with disabilities. We do know that extraordinarily high rates in many states, over 50-percent of people in solitary confinement are people with disabilities. And these are people for the most part with the brain-based spectrum. And in some cases, those are things that are misdiagnosed or never diagnosed until they were in prison.

Janet: It was too late, or thought to be too late, because we have an opportunity to still take people who maybe have done something, and we can still rehabilitate and help them. It’s funny that you should say that. We’re going to be doing the next BAC talk is going to be on, ‘Transforming Correctional Design for Justice’. And so we’re going to talk, we’re going to open up that subject because it’s an important subject.
And to your point, it doesn’t really always get talked about, but we can also talk about trauma informed design and trauma informed concepts.

That’s another topic I feel like that people don’t always look at and people could be kind of flip about it, just like they are with the, the wheelchair, right? That’s the disability, people who are in jail while they shouldn’t have done something wrong, I think it’s just kind of flip, you know. Like it’s just, it’s not taking into consideration, all the other aspects and all the other things that seem to kind of go on. And to your point, I mean, it can even be something as like, it’s got the bad of the water, and then you’ve had some sort of trauma in your life and you’re living in poverty and you can’t get a job. And…

Valerie: Well, and, and then there’s things that we don’t diagnose very often, or at least the, the likelihood of a wrong diagnosis is high. Many people of color, including Black Americans, have a generalized behavioral health diagnosis as young people. And I think it is some regularity that that is actually a condition that would more likely be diagnosed as a neuro-diverse condition, perhaps autism, if they were in a more privileged setting. There’s an assumption that it’s a behavioral health issue. So that’s one of the issues.

One of the other issues that we never talk about is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. which only recently in a federally funded studies, basically saying, ‘gosh, we’re missing a lot of this and misdiagnosing it as something else’. And this is a lifelong condition that happens in utero, you know, it happens, the mother is drinking. And those children have an extraordinarily high likelihood of violence, and we’ve got to start looking at it because if those studies are accurate from the last couple of years, the phenomenon of fetal alcohol syndrome is higher in the population than the phenomenon of autism, which gets so much attention.

Janet: Interesting.

Valerie: There are things you can do, but you need to know what you’re dealing with, and you need to start early. Just like you would with autism, but you, you better know what you’re dealing with. Those are the kinds of things. I mean, not just to, to call out a place that does very good work—and I think you might’ve worked with them at one point Janet early in your career— is the Department of Youth Services here in Massachusetts.

Janet: I did.

Valerie: They’re doing a terrific job with kids with disabilities who are overwhelmingly kids with brain-based conditions. And they’re really trying to figure out how do we address the near universal trauma experience of those kids, and then all the diagnostic issues that will help them to avoid being part of the jail and prison population. You know, how do we give them what they need? So we’re working on a primer for retrofitting some of the DYS facilities. They need some issues to just be compliant, but they really need whatever tools they can come up with to create environments in which those kids restore themselves and get on with their lives instead of just going on a slick track into the adult system and that, you know, they were remarkably committed group of people.

Janet: That’s good to know. for the listeners out there that don’t know, I worked at, as a social worker in Roslindale for juvenile delinquents, and in an incarcerated facility for young boys. And I always, one of the reasons why I think I burned out so quickly was, I felt like we were just holding them until we would put them back into their society, and that majority of them came back. So you knew that we were just prepping them at that point to go to the real prisons and some of them would end up there already when they were 17… 17! Like, if not even 16, because they would get out and they would do something even more horrendous, and people would be like, well, well, you know, we’ll try him as an adult.

Just so we’re clear, I mean, I appreciate the system and it actually, this was early, well, mid to late 80s. So it’s been, a few years, but even at the time we were considered one of the world class leaders in taking care of them. So I’m glad to see that things are starting to change. And again, I think with the pandemic and Black Lives Matter and starting to realize a lot of the social justices out there, we’ve just been sweeping them under the rug for way too long. And so now we have an opportunity to start fixing some of these things.

Valerie: and I think if nothing else, COVID suspended us from some of our habits. It suspended us from being so distracted that you really couldn’t think about much of anything. You know, that every day was just utterly clogged with, you know, one minute to another. And I think, you know, a level of, of segmentation of what people connected to and paid attention to, you know, that notion of constantly tailoring experience and information to what you care about really broke our ability to relate to one another if people aren’t like one another.

You know, that I am not in your small subset of people who, you know, like A, B, C, and D, and that had gotten very extreme very quickly. This is partly the internet. It’s partly, you know, it’s partly Facebook. It’s partly all the social media, and all of the distraction that so characterizes modern life. And I think the pandemic broke that, at least for a while. and I think allowed people to see things in a fresh way, you know, to connect to things that people could recognize, at least some people could recognize, as fact, not as, you know, this truth versus that truth.

Janet: You’re making me really think this is why I love you. So like, how many times would you like look at social media and you know, and it’s like, ”Oh, everybody’s partying, everybody’s having a good time. I’m living this, my fabulous life type of lifestyle” and you kind of forget that there are people out there that are not.

Valerie: And that, you know, there’s only so much bandwidth, there’s so many, so many hours in the day, (Janet: literally) there’s only so much attention. And I think, part of what we have to work with is that some of that’s broken.

And maybe, you know, more things are sort of evolving now to pick that up. But I think, I think it was a chance for people to feel a level of interdependence, at least some people to feel a level of interdependence. I mean, as a nation, the whole idea that we are interdependent upon one another is pretty central to our ability to be what we intend to be, what we claim to be, what we aspire to be. That that interdependence is really this tension between individualism and community, that goes out of balance on a daily basis, maybe, certainly over the course of time.

And this in some ways, because we are in a pandemic, we are vulnerable in a shared way. And it’s an opportunity for us to recognize that. I realize that a lot of people are struggling with that, and they, they see themselves as outside of that. But it’s kind of undeniable that we are interdependent on each other’s behavior. But I think an interdependence that we’re, that we have a stake here that is a shared stake.
And that’s, that’s part of what we’re looking at, is to, so much of what is so inequitable about what we’ve been looking at has high costs and that high cost of tying it to issues of disability is basically saying, we’ve created pretty intractable situations for a lot of the population.

And how do we now insert a corrective that basically says stop dismissing those people as no longer part of the scene, no longer part of the story, but that notion that we can create a context that anticipates those truths, those realities, and to design a world that, that makes it possible for people to be fully part of the society. You know, that’s, that’s an opportunity that doesn’t come around a lot.

Janet: Right.

Valerie: I think that I don’t actually long to change the ADA. And part of what we’re really looking at now is the International Standards Organization, the ISO, that Americans unique in the world pay no attention to. We never talk about the ISO. And the ISO is the international organization with representatives from across the world who participate. And here’s, what’s so interesting is that they actually reassess every standard every 5 years. So they are actually taking things out, refining it, adding to it, changing it every 5 years. So there’s a quality of being more timely.

You know and I think we’ve got to be building it through guidelines. I mean, the standards are a floor, but to move towards a much more vibrant and responsive set of guidelines that we can, you know, put out there, we could perpetuate, but that we can assume that we’re constantly evolving. That’s why we’ve changed to Inclusive Design from Universal Design because Universal Design, first of all, doesn’t mean much to people. A lot of people think it’s froth on accessibility and it’s not.

But it’s also, like your podcast, it’s really about a constant process of— “how do we include, who’s left out? How do we think differently now? What do we need to pay attention to?”— It is a dynamic process and that’s what I’m investing in. Believe me, I deal way too much with the federal, extremely slow process, of the federal government in United States. And they’re not paying attention to these things. So, I don’t want them to add more elements that are for too small a slice. When the work we have to do is for the people about whom there are no requirements, there’s no requirements in the ADA or the MAAB, those populations that are the largest populations now are forgotten.

Janet: right?

Valerie: Yeah,

Janet: No, it’s true.

Valerie: But just in thinking about this, there is, part of why we are invested in the constant global conversation is to learn from what others have done. We should not be reinventing the wheel. It, when we look towards the future, part of what we’re looking at is, who’s doing what around the world. We’re really facing very similar issues in trying to make a world in which we’ve really anticipated human diversity appropriately and designed for it.

Janet: Right.

Valerie: One of our efforts is always to know who’s doing current guidelines that are really worth looking at, what’s the ‘International Standards Organization’ doing in terms of a global entity that is, is not letting standards sit in perpetuity, but investigating every set of standards religiously every 5 years and changing them to respond to new information. And that’s what we need to aspire to. Reinventing the wheel is such a waste of time and energy. We’ve got to be looking at the problems we need to understand so we can meet them.

Janet: Right.

Valerie: You know, what we’ve been trying to do is to seize the moment and recognize that there’s an openness to hearing things that are hard to hear. That we can conveniently fail to notice. and all we can do is, begin the conversation. I mean, there’s an enormous amount of work that we need to inform, we want to inform. but we, we kind of opened this effort with a quote from James Baldwin which I think says it all— “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”— he just captured in short phrases, things that matter. And it’s just, you know, that kind of thing. “we can’t fix it, if we don’t know it”. So we’re trying to just talk about shared responsibility here to make life better for everybody. So designers, key roll the plan.

Janet: Valerie Fletcher, thank you so much. I just want to say, I always try to aspire to be just a little bit like you ever day, so…

Valerie: Janet, thank you very much. I really appreciate, your passion for this work, that you call, your, your podcast, Inclusive Designers, we are going to keep in this dialogue for a good long time.

Janet: No, it’s, it’s true. And, I hope to grow up to be just like you at some point…

Valerie: (laughs)

Janet: I got a lot, I still got a lot to learn. Thank you so much.

Valerie: Thank you. Thank you for your time and interest, alright, be well.

Music / Show Outro:

Janet: You know, that James Baldwin quote Valerie uses always gets me.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”…

Carolyn: Yes, and Valerie had a few good quotes herself. I liked when she said, ‘we have to have an openness to hearing things that are hard to hear’… she also said, ‘We can’t fix it if we don’t know it’ … that’s very timely advice that says a lot.

Janet: And how great is she? I think we can classify me as a total fan girl!
when she says my name, I think to myself, ‘Oh my God, Valerie knows my name’!

Carolyn: She’s very inspiring… I’m a big fan of hers now too.

Janet: You know Carolyn, this is an episode I will want to listen to again because she’s so remarkable. To Valerie’s point… as designers, we have to take these opportunities that COVID has ironically afforded us. And Covid has definitely changed our world. It’s forced us to look at everything from working remote to problems of social inequity. It’s also brought many of the so-called ‘invisible disabilities’ to light.

Carolyn: We definitely covered a lot of ground in this episode… with a focus on what changes may be needed moving forward.

Janet: Overall, as Valerie said, ‘it’s all about how a person with functional limitations interacts with the physical environment, and how we as designers can minimize the negative and amplify the strengths of the people with functional limitations.

Carolyn: To quote Valerie one more time, “Designers— key role the plan”

Janet: So, I’m thinking of making an ‘Inclusive Designers Award’ and I’m going to call it ‘The Valerie Fletcher Award’…

Carolyn: That’s a great idea…

Janet: And I am going give it to myself!

Carolyn: Only if you earn it.

Janet: Fair enough.

Carolyn: But for right now, you can practice your ‘Thank You’ speech.

Janet: Okay! so I’d like to thank my producer, Carolyn Robbins, and my mom and my dad, and, and…

But seriously, Carolyn and I would like to thank Valerie Fletcher for her time, her words of wisdom, knowledge, empathy, compassion, and passion, which we think comes across in this incredible show and we hope you agree.

Carolyn: We do also want to thank you, our podcast listeners, for listening. And now, in case you didn’t know, along with all the regular places you get your podcasts, you can also find us on YouTube. Just go to YouTube and look up Inclusive Designers Podcast. And of course, if you like what you hear, feel free to go and hit that Patreon Button.

Janet: And don’t forget our motto, as we say: ’Stay Well…and Stay Well Informed’. See you next time.

(Music up & out)