Note 01: MA for a day

In September, I’ll be heading back into education to start my MA at Arts University Bournemouth, and I’ll be honest, I’ve been itching to get started pretty much since the moment I accepted my place a few months ago.

So, when I was invited to join a webinar for current students a few weeks ago, I jumped at the chance. It was an opportunity to get a little flavour of what to expect from the course and experience how the guest-led webinars work before I officially start.

The session was led by Richmal Maybank, founder of Seats at the Table and a neuroinclusion consultant, and explored inclusive design across the commercial sector.

Before I even got to the actual webinar, though, I faced my first very serious academic dilemma: how was I going to take notes?I am a bit of a stationery freak. I like things to be just so, and apparently starting a Master’s requires deciding on the perfect note-taking system before I’ve even attended my first lecture… But I’m also trying to adopt a slightly less perfectionist approach to things. So rather than spending far too long deciding between notebooks, folders and my iPad, I grabbed my everyday notebook and scribbled things down as we went. I can always copy them up neatly later, with proper colour coding, annotations and the odd sticker thrown in!

Can you tell I care too much about stationery yet?

Designing from someone else’s perspective

The webinar itself was fascinating. I was diagnosed with ADHD halfway through my first degree, so hearing a professional talk about many of the struggles I’ve experienced in external environments was strangely affirming. But it was also really insightful to consider those experiences from the other side: what can we, as designers, actually do to make these places more accessible? And, perhaps more importantly, what knock-on effect can seemingly small design decisions have on the lives of people with different needs? There were some really thought-provoking statistics throughout the session, but one of the ideas that particularly stayed with me was actually incredibly simple:

Put yourself in the user’s shoes.

If you’re designing a consulting room, don’t only stand in the space and look at the couch. Lie on it. What can you see from there? What textures can you feel? What’s directly in your eyeline? What can you hear? How does the space feel from the position the person using it will actually experience? In other words, live the story. It sounds obvious when you write it down, but I think it’s such an important reminder. As designers, it’s very easy to look at a space from our own perspective, or even through a floor plan or computer screen, rather than physically imagining ourselves moving through it as somebody else.

Inclusive doesn’t always mean elaborate

My biggest takeaway, though, was that however much we might want to create a space that perfectly supports everybody, sometimes that simply isn’t possible.

People have different, and sometimes completely opposing, needs.

I can relate to that even within my own brain: I absolutely love routine, while simultaneously needing spontaneity. Make that make sense!

Rather than seeing those differences as a reason that truly inclusive spaces can’t exist, the conversation made me think more about the importance of flexibility. And flexibility doesn’t necessarily mean an enormous redesign or an elaborate intervention. Sometimes it could be something as simple as having a box of fidget toys available when somebody needs one. It could be a calming piece of artwork. It could be giving someone choice over where they sit or how they experience a space. 

Small accommodations can still make a meaningful difference.

That’s something I’m particularly interested in carrying into my own work: not treating inclusive design as a checklist or assuming that accessibility has to mean a dramatic design feature, but continually asking, “Who might experience this differently, and what could I do to make that experience better?”

Ready to be a student again

After the webinar finished, I took a moment to just drink up the feeling of moving forward. As much as I love working on Surface & Soul and developing my own projects, I’ve really missed being in an environment where I’m learning, questioning things and being introduced to perspectives I might not have encountered on my own.

It was also lovely seeing how actively the current students engaged with the webinar. They asked some brilliant questions, and for an hour I got a little glimpse into the environment I’ll be joining in September.

So I closed my very-not-neatly-written notebook afterwards feeling even more excited than I was before. There are still a few weeks to go before I officially become an MA student, but this felt like dipping my toe back into design education. And I think I’m more than ready to jump in.