Research · 2024–
Beyond
access.
Toward dignity.
Urban accessibility research has long asked: can a person get from here to there? This research asks a harder question.
HCI · Urban Space · Inclusive Design
IUMB Framework
Central Research Question
In urban environments where physical accessibility standards are nominally met, what dignity barriers — conditions that allow passage but require people to become less than themselves to move through — do people with invisible or temporary disabilities, cognitive decline, and linguistic displacement encounter? And how can low-threshold interactive technologies extend not access, but the preservation of self?
Research Scope
People
MCI (mild cognitive impairment) · migrant caregivers · temporary disability · low-vision / amblyopia
Geography
Taiwan as initial fieldwork site · transferable to mid-to-high income cities (Netherlands, Japan, Singapore)
Boundary
Not infrastructure absence — the assumption is that standards are nominally met, yet people remain excluded
IUMBs describe
What obstructs movement
Dignity Barriers describe
What movement costs,
even when the path is technically open
A dignity barrier is a condition under which a designed space — without blocking physical passage — makes a person feel they were not expected, do not belong, or must become less than themselves to move through it.
Theoretical Framework
Human-Building Interaction
Alavi et al., 2019
A space is not passive. It makes claims about who is expected, what they can do, whether they belong. Interactive technologies can change what a space says.
Spatial Appropriation
Dourish
People do not simply occupy space. They shape it around needs designers did not anticipate. Appropriation is a record of what the designed environment consistently failed to offer.
Designing from the Edges
Norman & Rose
Design is never neutral. The average person, measured across multiple dimensions, does not exist. The problem is not that barriers exist — it is that the system was built from a wrong assumption.
Case Study Contexts
Mobility Hubs
Movement includes waiting. For older adults, people with reduced stamina, or those in areas where buses run infrequently, waiting is not an exception to the journey. Research in Rotterdam found that migrants and low-income users value social and service functions of mobility hubs as much as transport function.
Residential Areas
The relevant barriers are often the ones closest to home. Research in Amsterdam found that older residents of Moroccan and Turkish backgrounds are disproportionately housed in mid-rise buildings reachable only by stairs — a direct legacy of where these communities settled as labor migrants decades ago.
Green & Leisure Spaces
Access is inseparable from presence. A space can be technically accessible while making a person feel they were not meant to be there. Ray Oldenburg's concept of the third place: a space where different people can be present together without any of them feeling like a special case.
Medical Consultation
The consultation room is among the most asymmetric spaces in urban life. Ten minutes, a body under stress, a language that may not be your own, and the assumption that the person across the desk shares enough of your reality to understand what you are trying to say. This case produced the first tool in the series.
Before Five Minutes ↗