The Footsteps of Inclusive Design

Arts columnist for the Japan Times from 1984 to 1999, from 2000 to 2014, Cassim initiated and ran the influential ‘Challenge Workshops’ programme at the ‘Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design’, Royal College of Art (RCA). A leading authority on inclusive design, she has organised and run many international context-specific workshops to share inclusive skills and knowledge, and in 2010 was named one of the ’50 most influential people in the world of design’ by the UK’s ‘Design Week’ From 2014 to 2019, KYOTO Design Lab at the Kyoto Institute of Technology – she was involved in a number of progressive projects as a specially-appointed professor in charge of establishing a cross-disciplinary design centre for design innovation. Her projects there have received numerous international awards, including the Red Dot Design Award and the Dutch Design Award.

(Photo by Tian Khee Siong)

Nataša Perković is a product designer from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She aims to develop products of high aesthetic value and to produce then in an innovative and sustainable way, in the hope that people will enjoy them for many years.

Nataša holds a graduate and a postgraduate degree from the Department of Product Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, where she currently holds an assistant professorship. Through her design practice, Studio Nataša Perković, she collaborates with local manufacturers.

(Portrait: Haris Adžem)

Lígia Lopes is a Portuguese designer. An industrial design graduate with a PhD in Design from the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon, she is currently assistant professor at the Department of Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, and Director of the Master Degree in Industrial and Product Design. Lígia is a member of The Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture [ID+] group, in the HEAD – Health + Design Lab unit and belongs to the ADU Ambassadors in Advanced Research Unit of Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Italy; since 2024 she’s also a member of Association Iberoamerica Diseña.

Dr. Hua Dong has been an active researcher in the inclusive design field since 2021. She first met Julia Cassim at Cambridge Engineering Design Centre through a project meeting, and since then, she has developed collaboration and friendship. Hua is now a professor, promoting inclusive design in the UK, China and beyond through publication, education, practice and talks. She convenes the Inclusive Design Special Interest Group of the Design Research Society (DRS), an originator of the Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access & Assistive Technology (CWUAAT). Hua is the Inaugural Dean of Brunel Design School and Vice Chair of the DRS.

Born in 1961. After graduating from Kyoto City University of Arts, he worked as a designer at KOKUYO Co., Ltd. From 1990 to 1992, he studied at the Royal College of Art (RCA), a prestigious design graduate school in the UK. Upon returning to Japan, he worked for four years at IDEO, a renowned American design consultancy known for design thinking. After serving as an Associate Professor at Kyushu Institute of Design (now Kyushu University), he assumed his current position. He teaches inclusive design and design thinking while engaging in consulting and collaborative projects with various companies. He served as the Chief Judge of the SDGs Design International Awards 2019 and has received numerous accolades, including the Red Dot Award and the Good Design Award. His publications include “Inclusive Design: Participatory Design for Solving Social Issues,” among others.

(Photo: Seiya Kawamoto)

The daughter of Julia Cassim, Laila connects the creative activities in the disability welfare sector with design, developing various products and projects through collaborative design . She is active in promoting the economic independence and social participation of people with disabilities as well as raising social awareness among designers and companies. She is the art director of the creative group SHIBUYA FONT, which has received numerous domestic and international awards, including the Good Design Award (2019), the Open Innovation Award from the Cabinet Office (2022) and the Best Design Award (2023) at the Golden Pin Design Awards in Taiwan. She is also a specially-appointed associate professor at Nara Women’s University, a specially-appointed researcher at the University of Tokyo and a part-time lecturer at the Kuwasawa Design Institute. From April 2023, she has been a Specially-appointed Associate Professor at Nara Women’s University’s Engineering Department. In 2022, she was appointed a member of the jury for the Good Design Award.

Working from an approach of “design by people,” Ito Shin’ichiro’s research and teaching centers on digital fabrication and other forms of digital creativity using 3D printers, and inclusive design, which employs participatory design means to achieve a more inclusive society. His time studying in Amsterdam inspired an interest in social inclusion. Ito has held iterations in Fukuoka and Kyoto of the international ideathon-hackathon Global Goals Jam, which aims to create solutions to the SDGs and was launched by Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences in 2016, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme. He studied at the Kyushu University School of Design’s Department of Acoustic Design, followed by graduate studies in design strategy at Kyushu University’s Graduate School of Design. Ito is also a graduate of the Fab Academy, and took up his current post after a stint at the Kyushu University School of Design Dean’s Strategy Division.

After graduating from Kyoto Prefectural University’s Department of Social Welfare and Sociology, he worked as a manager of neutron cafe and neutron tokyo art gallery, and as a planner at the now-closed Ikejiri Institute of Design before joining Loftwork in 2015. He participates in the unit MTRL, which supports co-creation and innovation with manufacturing companies with a focus on materials. He was also involved in the launch of FabCafe Kyoto, a community hub where creators, researchers, companies, and other diverse people gather around the concepts of technology and creation. Through workshop management, panel moderation, and exhibition planning and production, Kinoshita aims to “create a place where ‘chemical reactions’ occur” and “design a context that connects things from different fields.” In 2023, he became a part-time lecturer at Kyoto Seika University’s Faculty of Media Expression.