Breaking Barriers: Educating Design Students about Inclusive Design through an Authentic Learning Framework

Current studies in design education suggest that students and educators base their designs on what they already know about themselves peers, or stereotypical notions of others. This article presents a critical examination pedagogical approach employed several architecture interior studios to determine how best develop student understanding for real users with abilities different from themselves. authentic learning spatial teachers the School Design, Queensland University Technology, Australia people differing abilities, used qualitative quantitative questionnaires, journals studio projects create multimodal data set. While there are no simple conclusions, easy answers unravel complexity creating inclusive designs, our findings point towards enabling new engagements knowledge processes scaffolding these activities around learning, so can begin understand ways designing for/with disabilities. The significance this research is it opens up approaches teaching beyond fake personas, building codes anthropometric data, provides evidence need more holistic, scaffolded approach.