Inclusive spatial learning experience

Abstract

The design of the built environment strongly influences people’s needs, how they learn, behave, and build relationships. Education and learning are part of the nature of human beings, and allow them to develop skills, advance culture, and answer needs. In the current context, the incremental use of technological devices inside spaces has brought several positive outcomes, but also various challenges due to increased complexity. Limitations in considering the diversity of human needs confronted with architecture and technologies may raise stigmatization and exclusion. This article explores the links between the learning theories and the paradigms of user-centered design, providing theoretical affinities able to reduce the exclusion of people during interaction with spaces and objects. The process of the inclusive spatial learning experience aims to stimulate designers to deliver inclusive spaces that provide a progressive discovery of their characteristics and technologies, with the final goal to improve the experience for people with different abilities, age, gender, culture, and various roles within the specific architecture they use and live.