Regine Gilbert Hello everyone, my name is Regine Gilbert. I'm a designer, author and educator. And today I'll be speaking to you about Inclusion and the Senses. We're going to talk a little bit about what are the senses that you use? How can we use those senses and how can we incorporate those into inclusion? Let's talk about the senses. Take a moment to notice your surroundings. Regine Gilbert What space are you in? Regine Gilbert What do you see? Regine Gilbert What do you hear? Regine Gilbert What do you smell? Regine Gilbert What do you taste right now? Regine Gilbert Is your body seated on a chair? Are you on a couch? Regine Gilbert Where's your body? Regine Gilbert What time of day is it? Regine Gilbert What are you feeling at the moment? Regine Gilbert What do you smell? Regine Gilbert Recently, I had Coronavirus and alongside some other symptoms, I lost my sense of smell. I've had all my senses up until recently and when I lost my sense of smell, it was such a strange feeling for me. I have essential oils in my home. My partner was putting alcohol to my face to see if I could smell that. Could not. And it was such a different feeling to be without that sense. Regine Gilbert There are people who lose senses over time. Who are born without them. And how are we making things and thinking about them? Or are we just making things in a visual way? I love the book Mismatch Design by Kat Holmes. In Mismatch Design Kat speaks about inclusion and how oftentimes inclusion is really hard to define. I mean, think about it, if you had to define inclusion, how would you define it? It's been hard for me to define at times, but we can define exclusion. We all know what it feels like to be left out of something. If we can begin to frame our work and design for multi sensory experiences, we might move toward creating more inclusive experiences. Regine Gilbert At the time of this recording, I'm still in quarantine. I don't know about anyone else. We in New York City have had a stay in place for over a month at this point. And I don't know how much longer we'll have once this talk airs. But I can tell you, my sense of time has been completely off. I don't know about you all but what I do know is that today ends in a Y. That's about all I do know. And in terms of time, and when we think of our senses, time isn't the one sense that we think about, yet it is a sense. And when designing, we can make things longer or we can make things shorter. Time isn't something that we necessarily think about. We think about well, can they get this thing done? Is it organized in the right way? But how much time is it taking somebody? How much time are we taking of someone's life with what we make? Ultimately, we want to try and make the most of everyone's time. Regine Gilbert Originally, the IA Conference was supposed to be in the wonderful city of New Orleans. New Orleans is a city that is near and dear to my heart because that's where my parents met. It is the place where my oldest brother was born, where my dad was born. And the state of Louisiana is a place that I love. It's where my family's from. And New Orleans is such a city that is so rich in its history and its culture. And when you think about the senses of being in New Orleans from the food. Now these photos that I have here are photos that I've taken over the years because I oftentimes go at least once a year I'll go to New Orleans these days. And there's these in June, there's a lovely Louisiana Creole tomato festival. Of course, we all know what the beads symbolize. IT's party time, being out there on the streets. And I got a oyster po' boy here, which makes my mouth water just thinking about it. And I you know, originally this talk was going to be very different. But when you think about New Orleans ehat does it represent to you? What does it mean? What do you feel when you think about New Orleans? For me I get all kinds of feelings. It's my home. It's where my family is I feel .I used to go there in the summers and I will pick up my little accent as soon as I get there. ehen I get to spend time with my family. The sights, the sounds, the taste, the smell. This you know everything that you get to experience being around people who are feeling free. New Orleans is just such a wonderful city. It is unfortunate we couldn't make it down there but I had to throw a little New Orleans in this presentation. Regine Gilbert But when we going back to to our senses What is your favorite place? What makes it your favorite place? What do you feel? Have you ever thought about the senses that your favorite place appeals to? It's something to think and consider for a moment. Regine Gilbert In the book, The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, Ellen Lipton and Andrea Lipps give some really good case studies of sensory design. They say why sensory design? Reaching beyond vision, this book is a manifesto for an inclusive, multi sensory design practice. Sensory design activates touch, sound, smell, taste, and the wisdom of the body. Sensory design supports everyone's opportunity to receive information, explore the world, and experience joy, wonder and social connections regardless of our sensory abilities. This book documents extraordinary work by some of the world's most creative thinkers, and it gathers together ideas and principles for extending the sensory richness of products, environments, and media. Regine Gilbert This book has inspired me in addition to the exhibit that was held at the Cooper Hewitt, which was part of part of this, the book. The experience was tactile. The experience was audio. It really went beyond vision. And as I've said throughout this presentation, I think it's time for us to look at things differently. Regine Gilbert In The Senses: Designing Beyond Vision, Ellen Lupton and Andrea Lipps reference a case study of aging in place, sensory environments. I think some of us who have been home for a while feel like we are aging in place in our homes. Oftentimes we don't think about what our homes will need in the future. And this particular study was very interesting. In 2016, the New York City Department for Aging collaborated with the American Institute of Architects New York Design for Aging Committee to publish guidelines that assist landlords and residents in upgrading multi unit residential buildings and apartments to support aging in place. Many of the recommendations are sensory using color, light, and texture. Specifically, they looked at tactility using resilient floor coverings such as cork, rubber, and linoleum to provide comfort for walking and to make falls less dangerous. For lighting they looked at avoiding glare and using indirect light. For colors, patterns, and lines, they were looking to make entrances standout with contrast in colors as well as clear illumination. And for smell using plants to add fragrance as well as movement and life to public spaces. I think this is something we can all relate to and as we think about our environments that we're currently in, if you look around yourself, I'm currently in a room with lighting above my head. There's a door that has a window that has natural lighting to the back. The senses all come into play here. And this is a wonderful case study that I wanted to share with you all to think about designing for ourselves in the present and in the future. Regine Gilbert One thing I like to tell my students is to, and remind myself as well, is to Be WOQUE and Stay WOQUE. Now, woke has many different meanings and I spell woke with the Q. And this means to Watch, Observe, Question and Explore. Regine Gilbert To watch you need to be awake in the first place. Are you paying attention to yourself in your environment? Observe. Observe yourself. Observe what's going on around you. Question. Question yourself. Question what's going on around you. And Explore. Explore ways of experiencing things using different senses, or maybe kind of taking things away. And thinking about the things that you make, the things that you build the things that you create. Are you, can you use multiple senses to do this? Or is it one way and only one way? Is it possible for you to start exploring yourself within your own work, different ways that things can be created and done? Regine Gilbert Take a moment and think of some of the things that you've been working on. Is there only one way of accessing it? Is that way of accessing it using certain senses? Or is it possible if I don't have those senses that are needed to access it, could that be changed? We need to start looking at different ways of doing things. Be WOQUE, stay WOQUE. Regine Gilbert Our bodies have five senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing. But not to be overlooked are the senses of our souls: intuition, peace, foresight, trust, empathy. The difference between people lie in their use of the senses. Most people don't know anything about the inner senses, while a few people rely on them just as they rely on their physical senses, and in fact probably even more. C. JoyBell C. Regine Gilbert I found this quote when I was looking for something around the five senses and a little bit more to think about beyond our five senses is the fact that intuition, peace, foresight, trust, and empathy are senses that we use as well. Especially in design, empathy is something that's all oftentimes talked about. Empathy has been called BS. Empathy has been called everything designers need to know. Regine Gilbert I have a question for you all. Who is it that you think about the most? So a few people might have come to mind. Maybe some animals. But what I found is that people actually think about themselves the most. And even when you're thinking about other people, or your animals, you're thinking of them within the context of yourself. And because we're oftentimes thinking of ourselves, it's really hard for us to think about other people, and how other people will experience things. How other people will feel. How are people using their different senses? How are people using things when they may not have all their senses? This is giving us a good opportunity to think beyond what we know. Designing for multi sensory experiences. We are the creators. We have the opportunity to make things a lot more exciting than we currently make them. Regine Gilbert Looking forward is the name of a class that I get to co-teach with Gus Chalkias. Gus is blind. And he created this class to teach students about assistive technologies for folks with blindness and low vision. And the class is really awesome in that it helps students understand the assistive technologies that blind people use. It also helps the students get an understanding of the environment in which folks have to operate in, which is our world. Here I have a photo of a hallway with, basically it's an elevator bank and there are eight elevators. And one of the challenges that Gus experienced when he first came to a building he had never been to before, was finding his way. And so we decided it would be great for the students to work on Wayfinding for blind and low vision folks for getting around not only the building but in particular, our floor. Regine Gilbert When you think about the senses, and potentially taking one sense away, and getting around Wayfinding navigating, it's something we all do. We all have to make our way in this world and figure out where things are. It's a lot of our jobs, actually, to help people find their way. Whether it be doing you know, making the information architecture and figuring out how things will be organize. How are people going to get from, you know, A to Z. It might be helping someone navigate their way through a website. It might be someone who is helping someone get through a building. But we tend to base this off of the senses that we have. And we tend not to think of them in other ways. And so looking forward, how might you and how might we create multi sensory experiences? If you had to let someone know, where are these elevators? How would they know where to go? How do they know which elevator is available? What is the signifier for them? We have to look beyond what we know in order to create these experiences. Regine Gilbert I want to thank you all for watching this talk. This is been honestly an awkward experience for me, but something that challenged me. I hope that you appreciate the time that I put into this presentation. I hope that you gain some knowledge from it. I hope that you have been able to think about things maybe that you haven't thought about before. I am the author of Inclusive Design for a Digital Age which is a book for beginners who are new to designing for accessibility. if you are so inclined, please check it out or recommend it to others. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really wish that I could have done this in person. However, I look forward to QA and answering any questions that you all may have. This has been a delight. I hope that you and yours are well. Take care of yourselves and I'll see you next time. Transcribed by https://otter.ai