Kent House in 48-Hour Design Challenge

In November 2008, I was asked to take part in the 48-Hour Inclusive Design Challenge in Tokyo. The Challenge was collaboratively organised by the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre, Nikkei Design and Tokyo University, and its theme was disaster related. All participants were divided in 3 design team consisting of, among others, in-house designers from leading Japanese companies, engineering graduates from the University of Cambridge and the University of Tokyo, and a member of the Kent House family. Each team worked with one disabled person and one survivor of the Niigata or Kobe earthquakes and was led by an experienced designer from the UK. The aim of the Challenge was to develop innovative mainstream products, services or environments that would be assistance in disaster and would include the needs of disabled people. The results of the competition were then presented to Design Innovation Forum delegates from industry and academia on November 25 and published in “Nikkei Design” and in “Challenge” published by Helen Hamlyn Centre.

I was a member of the third team (Team C) and our main contribution to the Design Innovation Forum 2008 was the proposition of the ‘Know Your Way’ campaign, which stressed the importance of preparing and establishing a mental image of where the exits in a building are and how to get to them before a disaster strikes. My team created a logo for the campaign, which was represented in Japanese kanji characters and in direct translation it meant that ‘knowledge leads your way out’. We used international signage iconography as the basis of the logo’s design, with the additional depth of meaning in the character itself. Moreover, the fact that the kanji character looked like a person allowed the logo to work across languages. Since one of the crucial actions to take during the times of a disaster is to remain calm, our logo was represented in blue, which signifies calmness in Japanese.

The campaign developed by my team was warmly accepted by the panel of 3 disaster experts and over 300 delegates, and as a result awarded for the “Best Solution” project. So, yet another trophy has been added to the Kent House cabinet of fame.

The participation in the Inclusive Design Challenge was a truly insightful and mind-broadening experience as Kent House has always been in favour of the Inclusive Design philosophy and adopted the user centric approach to the creation of our products and services. It was also a very valuable experience to work directly with Japanese designers and engineers and observe their views, work ethics and decision-making processes.