Abstract
Universal design is defined as the design process of products and environments usable by all people to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. The benefits of universal design have been promoted primarily through illustrative 'success stories' of public, residential and occupational environments and products. While case examples may be informative, they may unfortunately be limited in terms of generality to other designs or tasks. Therefore, design methods and criteria that can be applied systematically in a range of situations to encourage universal design are needed. In addition, the seven principles of universal design are intended to guide the design process. The principles provide a framework that allows a systematic evaluation of new or existing designs and assists in educating both designers and consumers about the characteristics of more usable products and environments. However, exactly how these principles are incorporated into the design process has beenleft up to the designer. Since the introduction of universal design, designers have become familiar with the principles of universal design, and they have developed many products based on universal design. However, the principles of universal design are qualitative, which means designers cannot quantitatively evaluate their designs. Some have worked to develop more systematic ways to evaluate products and environments by providing design guidelines for each of the principles. However, recommendations have not yet been made regarding how to integrate performance measures of universal design into the product design process before the product is mass produced. Furthermore, there are sets of requirements regarding each user group that has different age and ability. Consequently, there is an urgent need for design methods, based on a better understanding of age and ability related factors, which will lead to a universally designed product or environment. The authors have proposed the PSD (Preference Set-Based Design) method that can generate a ranged set of feasible solutions (i.e., robust and flexible solution set) instead of single point solution that satisfies changing sets of design targets. The objective of this paper is to develop a general method for systematically supporting the universal design process. This paper proposes the applicability of PSD method to universal design. Here, the proposed method is successfully illustrated with a universal design problem.
