Veera Fung, architectural designer and PhD candidate at the School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Sarah Mui, co-founder and design director at One Bite, discuss inclusive design—design that aims to understand and enable users of all backgrounds and abilities to participate
It was a lack of inclusivity for the elderly that opened Sarah Mui’s eyes to inclusive design. “I witnessed how when my grandparents had to move out of a familiar neighbourhood into a new community, they couldn’t get used to the new space and it caused a lot of problems, from mental to family to health issues,” she says. “So, when we started One Bite [in 2014], we were thinking about a friendly city. The government kept talking about building Hong Kong as a liveable city, and we started to question what a liveable city is if we cannot be inclusive—how liveable can it be?”
Mui started looking at examples of liveable cities and examining what could additionally make a city “loveable”. “The process [of inclusive design] is about how we empower and bring people together so that we are creating the loveable ingredients of a city together. [Considering aspects such as] age, gender and different capabilities, we try to find alternative solutions so that everyone can enjoy the city and we can have comparable experiences and eventually achieve spatial equality.”
Architectural designer Veera Fung adds: “Inclusive design is participatory—obviously, we have to actively include different voices. It is also about empowerment. [And] it should be balanced. There are so many voices to be heard, but we must also recognise the needs of the wider population. So, to have inclusive design is an act of constantly balancing different opinions and voices.”
Mui believes that many in Hong Kong don’t understand the need to cater to, for example, the elderly or wheelchair users. “In Hong Kong, we lack the type of advocacy in promoting or spreading the message of inclusivity.” It’s something that has spurred One Bite’s recent Urban Matters project, which highlights the 12 elements that really matter in a city and to its design, from well-being and waste management to gender and diversity.
“There are so many voices to be heard, but we must also recognise the needs of the wider population. So, to have inclusive design is an act of constantly balancing different opinions and voices”
Mui offers an example of how, when considering the design of some of Hong Kong’s waterfront walkways, she spoke to a group of wheelchair users. While there are often ramps to allow wheelchair users access to these spaces, the railings that prevent citizens from falling into the harbour are at just the wrong height and obscure the views for such users. So, Mui asks, while they are invited along, do they really get to enjoy themselves? She references a quote from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) expert Verna Myers: “Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.”
Fung stresses the importance of making the topic of inclusive design engaging and relatable to the public, so they understand it better. Last year, Fung’s architectural collaborative Atelier In, which she runs with creative partner Melody Yiu, curated interactive exhibition Curiosity Cabinet of Gendered Objects (Home Edition) at the deTour 2022 Design Festival, in which visitors were asked to consider whether household objects have a gender and to use differently coloured stickers to indicate what gender each object might be.
One transgender visitor’s reflections on the exhibition struck a chord. Fung reports that they felt it showed “a very binary understanding of our society and of gender”. She adds: “This comment is true, and it is sad in a way but also useful, as it means that our exhibition reflects a phenomenon in our society—that we do see things in a very binary way. We shouldn’t; and that’s why we need to do something and raise awareness that the environment should be more inclusive.”
Inclusivity is a buzzword today and its promotion is somewhat ubiquitous. So why isn’t design itself more inclusive?
“I think it comes down to our education,” says Fung. “When I was studying, there was no course that taught me to design inclusively. There is always one target group that we want to design for, but rarely do advisors or teachers [encourage] us to think more inclusively.”
Mui agrees, adding that for a lot of projects, schedules often don’t allow designers to engage enough to properly communicate with and understand the range of users. “If we want to build empathy and really understand what they need, it takes time. A lot of projects are changing now, which is optimistic, but we are walking too slowly.
“I always remind myself to work with other people, because there are a lot of things we simply don’t know about users and their pain points,” she adds. “Ensuring design projects are done with [input from] other backgrounds helps to build more inclusive proposals.”
This story is part of our Front & Female In Conversation column, which appears monthly in the Tatler print magazine and is a series of discussions between women who are making an impact in their respective regions and fields.