The Equity and Inclusion in Housing Design (EIHD) project set out to address a persistent problem within housing: people living with disabilities have the most to gain from accessible housing, but have historically been the least involved in creating it. Over the course of this project, we built an equity-centred process for meaningfully involving people with disabilities in housing design to allow them to make decisions about their own lives. We integrated our learnings into a practical toolkit for industry professionals. This toolkit can be used to meaningfully involve people with disabilities in inclusive design. Here’s how we got there.

Phase 1: Understanding the Landscape

We began this project by developing our understanding of what other researchers have learned about inclusive design and accessible housing. Through a series of scholarly literature reviews, including a scoping review, we evaluated scholarly research that reported on the inclusive design of housing for people with disabilities, and mapped out the key learnings that could be used to ground our work. We identified important distinctions between barrier-free design (the minimum standards set by building codes) and paradigms such as inclusive design and universal design, which aim to create environments that are usable by the greatest number of people possible. Through this, we established co-design (sometimes called human-centered design, co-production or participatory design) as a unique process that brings people with lived experience and industry professionals together as equal partners, who both play an active role in decision-making. We began to understand equity as the organizing principle for this entire process. You can read our scoping review here.

Phase 2: Key Informant Interviews

After establishing a firm conceptual foundation, we moved into phase 2 of the project: key informant interviews. We conducted four one-on-one interviews and four group interviews with fifteen participants with lived experience of disability in Edmonton and Calgary. We also conducted two additional, separate interviews with housing industry professionals. In these interviews, we asked what ‘accessibility’ and ‘meaningful involvement’ meant to each participant. From these interviews, we learned that there are physical, sensory, and social barriers that limit an individual’s access to adequate housing. In the case of meaningful involvement, being included from the very beginning, having genuine flexibility in how and when one participates, being provided with adequate resources to participate, seeing one’s inputs reflected in actual decisions, and being treated with respect and dignity throughout were of utmost importance. From industry professionals, we learned that while their commitment to accessibility is genuine, user engagement practices tend to fall short of true inclusive design. This is because designs are often developed before any users are consulted. Meaning that accessibility is an afterthought in many housing projects, requiring that designs be altered at great cost after the fact. You read more about the insights we gathered here.

Using the knowledge we gained from these interviews, we moved on to the next phase of the project: testing inclusive design practices.

Phase 3: Involving People Living with Disabilities in Research Design

The next phase involved prototyping and testing equity-centered research design techniques with people living with disabilities.

Early on in our project we identified the pre-design and concept design phases of the architectural design process as prime opportunities for user involvement in the design process. It is during these phases that designers are developing their understanding of users’ needs and defining the project’s design goals and concepts. It is arguably one of the most important phases since changes to the design early on are much easier and inexpensive to make. Design research is a common practice used to develop these fundamental understandings.

We identified a number of techniques used in design research, including design charrettes, structured conversations, site visits, problem tree analyses, card storming, collage exercises, and dot exercises. Using the information gathered from the interviews, we began to modify these techniques in ways that would ensure that they would be truly accessible and foster meaningful involvement. This meant carefully thinking about the physical accessibility (lighting, acoustics, space), communication accessibility (plain language, visual supports, multiple modes of expression), and attitudinal accessibility (safe, inclusive, and respectful environment) of each of these respective design research strategies.

We tested two techniques with design research applications: User Journey Mapping and Bubble Diagrams. Using workshops and one-on-one sessions, we learned what it takes to foster a safe environment that allows each participant to engage deeply with the activity in a way that works for them. Doing so allows participants to feel comfortable to share sometimes vulnerable information, as they know their thoughts and concerns will be heard and taken into genuine consideration. We used the insights gained from these workshops to further understand how to accommodate diverse needs and place the user at the centre of the process. You can download instructions for user journey mapping and bubble diagram exercises here and here.

Phase 4: The Toolkit

The fourth and final phase of this project was to consolidate everything we built, tested, and learned into a synthesized and publicly available toolkit: A Toolkit for Equity-Centred Design Research Involving People with Disabilities.

The purpose of the toolkit is to draw together all of the work we have completed in this project, to equip design teams with the resources they need to meaningfully involve people with disabilities in design research activities. It is a culmination of all of our research findings, engagement techniques, and accessibility strategies we have previously identified. It was built so that not only industry professionals will use it, but also users, family members, and support staff. This is so that we can move beyond the “inclusion paradox” that pervades design work by actively involving people with lived experiences of disability in the design of accessible housing.

An early version of the toolkit can be downloaded here.

Conclusion

There remains much more work to be done with regard to equity and inclusion in housing. We are grateful to the Alberta Real Estate Foundation for their funding of this project. Our next steps include testing this toolkit with design teams and community organizations. Our goal is to develop additional resources that can be used to facilitate inclusive design throughout the entire architectural design process.