Inclusive Design in Practice, Rethinking How We Engage Stakeholders: Practical Methods for Successful, Accessible and Inclusive Co-design

Synopsis

Stakeholder engagement in architectural projects is often treated as a tick-box consultation exercise rather than a designed process. The result can be unrepresentative input, avoidable design risk, and missed opportunities to improve wellbeing outcomes. This session sets out a practical, repeatable approach for designers and project teams to plan and deliver engagement that is genuinely inclusive, including people with different processing, communication and comprehension needs. We will place particular emphasis on neurodiversity and non-visible disabilities within mental health and dementia environments.
Drawing on our inclusive design consultancy and neurodiversity advocacy across multiple typologies, our approach has been refined through dementia ward refurbishments, mental health urgent care and wider healthcare settings, and informed by methods tested in SEN education. We will share how to build engagement strategies that are proportionate, planned and responsive to project stage, including how to identify and involve the right people such as staff, carers, service users and those with lived experience. We will cover practical barriers and solutions, including accessible venues, predictable scheduling, and information shared in advance with format options such as large print, simplified summaries and alternative languages where appropriate.
We will demonstrate how to present design options in ways that reduce cognitive load and support meaningful decision-making, using multiple media types such as tactile material moodboards, photographs, and live-scale or in-situ samples and mock-ups. We will also discuss digital tools such as VR, and how to use them responsibly with equivalent alternatives for those with vestibular sensitivities or sensory processing differences.
Importantly, we move beyond standard feedback forms to show inclusive ways of capturing insight. Some people living with dementia or distress may struggle to verbalise preferences, yet can still participate through supported choice, interaction with materials, and observation-based techniques. We will share how we adapt formats, including facilitated discussion, written feedback, structured prompts, interactive workshops and simple quizzes, so engagement is not limited to those most confident in formal settings.
The session concludes with practical ways to evidence co-production and impact, including documenting how input shaped decisions, feeding back outcomes to stakeholders, and producing clear “you said, we did” summaries.