New perspectives for inclusive shopping
How can we contribute to a positive shopping experience for everyone? This was the design question of What if Lab: Unhundered Participation!, an initiative from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. As a partner of the Embassy of Inclusive Society, they investigated with designers and experience experts how we can remove the barriers for people with disabilities to have an optimal shopping experience.
About two million people in the Netherlands have a visible or invisible disability that negatively affects their (online and offline) shopping experience. Despite some good examples, there is still a world to gain to make shops truly accessible for everyone—high time for a thorough design study. Besides the ministry of HWS, Hema, Ieder(In), INretail, MKB-Nederland and VNO-NCW also joined What if Lab: Unlimited participation!
During this lab, five design studios developed concepts to remove barriers to shopping for people with disabilities, whereby the solution contributes to a positive shopping experience for everyone.
Studio Corvers and (ink). were eventually asked to develop their concepts, Drempelloos and Mensenkenners further. Curious about the reaction of former Minister of Medical care of HWS Tamara van Ark to these concepts? Watch the video!
Drempelloos
Studio Corvers developed the Drempelloos toolkit, a practical starting point for an inclusive shop arrangement. Drempelloos provides employees and shop owners with tools to test themselves and their shop on various criteria within this theme. The package of games and measuring tools is practical, playful, hands-on. It has ten different separate modules so that the content can be adapted to any type of shop. The aim is to increase empathy for people with a disability by being able to experience it for yourself. Together with MKB-Nederland, Studio Corvers is continuing to develop the concept. Would you like to see this project in real life? Then visit the Embassy of Inclusive Society at Dutch Design Week 2021!
Mensenkenners
Mayra Kapteijn and Anna Noyons of (ink). noticed that it often goes wrong with interactions and empathy. Not only a certain physical environment sometimes excludes people with a disability, but also certain reactions can lead to exclusion. Think of people who get scared or people who do not know how to adapt to specific needs. That is why they developed Mensenkenner, a platform that helps train your “inclusiveness muscle”, so that you, as a real people expert, eventually know how to deal with all types and sizes of people. (ink). is currently in discussion with various partners about the further development of this concept.
