Resources
On this page
On this page, you can discover, and explore the most recent outputs from The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design.
The Centre is actively engaged in Inclusive Design process and projects, and we are passionate about promoting and communicating our work as far as possible to a variety of audiences.
At its heart, Inclusive Design is about empathic involvement of people in the creative process. In our work, we have looked to enhance co-creation and facilitate respectful, creative interaction, thereby ensuring that our project outputs and process are people-centred, and that our ideas provide benefit for all the recipients of a product, service or system.
Design is at its most powerful and effective when it is inclusive, when it meets human need and addresses social concerns. We have constantly kept this philosophy in mind, and the work you see hopefully puts it into practice.
Research outputs
Publications
Design.Different 2022
This magazine describes the work of The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art that took place between October 2021 and September 2022, a period of opening up, new possibilities and intense activity following the past two years of the pandemic. It features articles from the HHCD team describing inclusive design – a process whereby designers include the widest number of people, especially those excluded by age, ability, gender or race. Articles feature future-facing reflections, insightful provocations, as well as reports on existing projects.
Design Different, The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Vol. 3, September 2022
Creative Leadership: Born from Design
The changing realities of our time – especially the unprecedented situation in 2020 – calls for leadership that moves beyond outdated models or frameworks that are driven by the tired rhetoric of management, business or patriarchal notions of commandment.
HHCD Director Rama Gheerawo examines whether designers can actually be leaders and, if so, whether they can be better leaders because of their creative capability. The book examines how the tools of design, particularly in its most human-centred and collaborative form, might actually hold the key for the next generation of leadership.
Creative Leadership: Born from Design
Designing a World for Everyone: 30 Years of Inclusive Design
The way we experience the world is through the design of the places, products, services and systems we encounter every day. Over the past 30 years, The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design has pioneered the concept of inclusive design leading to a more empathic approach for meeting different human needs.
This book by the Helen Hamlyn Centre’s co-founder and Director for 16 years, Professor Jeremy Myerson, shows the parameters of inclusive design through the lens of the centre’s innovative and internationally recognised projects. Mapping a movement and marking the 30th anniversary milestone of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design in 2021, 30 everyday artefacts and environments are explored, all reflecting the centre’s fundamental approach of designing with people, not just for them.
Designing a World for Everyone: 30 Years of Inclusive Design
Publicly Accessible Toilets after Covid-19: A 2021 Update to Inclusive Design Guidance
The pandemic has shed light on the importance of publicly accessible toilets to people in the UK. In this update to Publicly Accessible Toilets: An Inclusive Design Guide (HHCD, 2011), we show how future toilets can be designed to be more hygienic, and also more accessible and inclusive, as a critical part of public health infrastructure.
This guide is designed for those who own or manage publicly accessible toilets, designers and built environment professionals. Whilst we focus on publicly accessible toilets, some guidance also applies to other shared toilets, such as workplace and customer-only facilities.
Publicly Accessible Toilets after Covid-19: A 2021 Update to Inclusive Design Guidance
Microsites
Creative Leaders Circle
The Creative Leaders Circle is a coming together of people across all ages, abilities, genders, cultures, job titles and so forth, to envisage, enact and enable new models and pathways for global leadership. For those in leadership, aspiring leaders, and those who were never encouraged to be leaders.
TINKLE
The Toilets Innovation and New Knowledge Exchange (TINKLE) is here to connect you with design knowledge and expertise about public toilets, customer toilets, workplace toilets and other non-domestic toilet facilities. This website is for anyone involved in the design, management and operation of toilets, including design professionals and architects, as well as local government, private operators, charities, campaigners, community groups, researchers and students.
Promotional videos
Design.Tech
Design.Different is a brand of the Centre that highlights the value of inclusive design in improving life. Design makes every conversation better. We design with a difference, to make a difference, we design different.
Our short #CreativityShots videos give you signature examples of design at its most powerful - when it is inclusive, empathic and creative. Enjoy our first episode, Design.Tech, which celebrates the creative and unexpected nature of technological solutions, when you start with people first.
Events recordings
Symposium, Showcase and Award Ceremony
Hosted by HHCD Director, Rama Gheerawo the first event in The Helen Hamlyn Centre of Design's inclusive design week showcases new projects from the Centre, unveiling winning student work in our special Awards Ceremony and kickstarting conversations on inclusive design.
Watch: Symposium, Showcase and Award Ceremony
Design in a Pandemic: Work on the Front Line
What was it like on the front line when the pandemic hit? How did design help? What does this mean for the future of healthcare and what role does design play in this?
This session will draw on rapid response design work, in discussion with clinicians on the front line, exploring the challenges and future of design in healthcare.
Panellists
- Jonathan West, Senior Research Fellow, HHCD
- Dr Chris Subbe, Science Fellow, The Health Foundation
- Dr Lena Ciric, Senior Lecturer, UCL
- Juliette Poggi, Researcher, HHCD
Watch: Design in a Pandemic: Work on the Front Line
Age & Diversity: HHCD, New Work and the Design Age Institute
Join Dr Chris McGinley, leader of the Helen Hamlyn Centre of Design’s Age & Diversity Research Space and Colum Lowe, Director of the Design Age Institute, for a one hour session which includes short and sharp overviews of three projects from HHCD researchers, dealing with housing and community innovation for over 55s at Guinness Care; wearables for kids with ADHD with King’s College; and a project in partnership with Heart n Soul at The Wellcome Hub exploring inclusive futures led by a co-design team that brings first-hand experiences of learning disabilities and autism to the table.
Panellists
- Colum Lowe, Director, Design Age Institute
- Dr Chris McGinley, Senior Research Fellow, HHCD
- Imran Nazerali, Research Associate, HHCD
- Stephen Douch, Research Associate, HHCD
- Dr William Renel, Research Associate
Watch: Age & Diversity: HHCD, New Work and the Design Age Institute
HHCD Inclusive Design for Social Impact
Our panel discussion will reflect 2020 as a time of protest and racial awakening. We will ask … how can we ensure that diverse cultures are valued, enabled and represented? We will look at how to expand the definition of inclusivity and hear global examples of how this is being effected. This session will expand inclusive design beyond its current confines.
Panellists
- Sean Donahue, Visiting Scholar
- Rama Gheerawo, Director, HHCD
- Prof Jo-Anne Bichard, Professor , HHCD
- Dr Gail Ramster, Senior Research Associate, HHCD
- Angela Bains, Co-Founder and Strategic Director of TransformExp
- Priya Sahathevan, Head Counsel for the legal team at Sky
- Gabriella Gómez-Mont, Director and Founder of Laboratorio Para La Ciudad
Watch: HHCD Inclusive Design for Social Impact
Inclusive Design: Business Value and Pathways
This Design.Different session, chaired by HHCD Innovation Fellow, Dr Ninela Ivanova, brings together:
- Professor Jeremy Myerson, HHCD Founding Director and Helen Hamlyn Chair of Design
- G Subramanian (Subbu), Chief Technology Officer for UK & Ireland, TATA Consultancy Services; and
- Dr Melanie Flory, psychologist, neuroscientist and Founding Director of MindRheo.
A panel discussion to explore the role of design in evolving business models and processes post-pandemic recovery, and how to integrate inclusivity thinking and practice in the entire chain of solutions findings and realisation.
Watch: Inclusive Design: Business Value and Pathways
Creative Leaders Circle: a Call to Action
The Creative Leaders Circle (CLC) is a coming together of people across all ages, abilities, genders, cultures, job titles and so forth, to envisage, enact and enable new models and pathways for global leadership. Creative Leadership is not just a strategy, or an abstract concept. It’s a transformational and inclusive process for everyone to contribute, participate and apply in their life and work.
This session is filled with diverse voices and perspectives and a previously untold story from HHCD Director, Rama Gheerawo about bringing together the three values of empathy, clarity and creativity!
Panellists
- Rama Gheerawo, Director, HHCD
- Dr Melanie Flory, Founding Director, MindRheo
- Christopher Patnoe, Head of Accessibility, Google
- Irene Mbari-Kirika, Founder and Executive Director, inABLE
- Dr Ninela Ivanova, Innovation Fellow, HHCD
- Ivelina Gadzehva, Inclusive Design Researcher
