Inclusive design is a design process in which a product, service, or environment is designed to be usable for as many people as possible, particularly groups who are traditionally excluded from being able to use an interface or navigate an environment. Wikipedia

The objective of inclusive design is to make artifacts accessible to and used by as many people as possible in a wide variety of situations. 

For our case, it is necessary to have a universal design that is inclusive to a variety of people that may have different handicaps:

1. Perceptual
   • Blind
   • Partially sighted
   • Deaf
2. Motor
   • Limited motion
   • No use of limbs
   • Use of mobility assistance
3. Cognitive
   • Dementia
   • Down's Syndrome
   • Autism

Participatory Design

Participatory design means involving users in design from the earliest stages. It can help researchers to interact with patients and develop functions that are neglected from the earlier stages.
Researchers would get a deep understanding of users and their needs so that they can empower users.

SCE and Inclusive Design

In the SCE process, inclusive design is also an important part. There is no generic "disabled user". Creating different personas and scenarios helped us to consider a more robust user.

1. Personas and scenarios
   Envision diverse users: We should envision as many as possible personas and scenarios to include as many different situations as possible. However, it is impossible to include all kinds of situations in the prototype as the inclusive design is a dynamic process. It should be used and evaluated throughout the whole development process.
2. Design patterns
   Address possible social, cognitive, affective, and physical differences: All people have differences, which makes design patterns extremely hard. We need to consider and address the potential differences between people.
3. Evaluation
   Involve diverse users: Evaluation would have more powerful insights if it involves more people. Unexpected situations may be presented during the evaluation process, thus we can fix the problem and make it more suitable for different people.

Our Design

Our design was already made for people with dementia. However, this lecture and the feedback from the presentation of the previous week helped us to consider two more general cases:

Deaf patient

Use of redundant information leveraging both audio and visual channels of communications between Pepper and the PwD. We can also adjust the volume of Pepper to the PwD's need.

Price

Need to do the maths, because it might be that Pepper's cost averages out. However, technically speaking, there may be a small portion of people who can afford the Pepper robot, since the cost of research, development, and material of Pepper are expensive. But Pepper could be used for a long time. Therefore, the cost can be averaged out in the long run.

Different needs

In our prototype, we have not considered too much about the different needs of PwDs. It is impossible to involve all needs since we only have three personas. We can only envision limited needs because of restricted resources and situations. 

We paid additional details to not make wrong assumptions about our users. By not stereotyping, not patronizing, or stigmatizing the patients.

Examples

1. Not all PwDs have the same routine. We designed the medication/activity reminder to customize to different users. HPCs and relatives can set reminders for the PwD.
2. Not all PwDs have the same activities.
3. PwDs have different degrees of dementia. In our case, we are focusing on people who are in the earlier stage of dementia.