Roger Coleman is Professor Emeritus of the Royal College of Art. He is on the Helen Hamlyn Centre's Board of Advisers and on advisory boards for it's healthcare research programmes. Roger co-founded and co-directed the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre from 1999 to 2006 and was Professor of Inclusive Design at the Royal College of Art until July 2008.
The Helen Hamlyn Centre builds on the internationally respected DesignAge programme, which Roger directed from its launch in 1991. In 1994 he established a European network specialising in design and ageing, and in 1995 the RCA was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in recognition of his work. Roger was the recipient of a Ron Mace Universal Design Award in 2000, and a Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education in 2001. He became a Vice-President of the College of Occupational Therapists in 2005, and advises major companies on the implementation of inclusive design at a practical and strategic level.
Trained at Edinburgh University and College of Art, Roger was, until 2002, a director of R&D companies, London Innovation and Lynch Intellectual Property Ltd. He was a jury member and later Inclusive Worlds Panel Chair for the RSA Student Design Awards. He was also a founder member and executive director of the performance arts group, Welfare State International, and closely involved in the establishment of the Greater London Council’s Technology Networks in the 1980s.
Roger Coleman developed a longstanding interest in the implications for design of population ageing, and in the theory and practice of inclusive design, with a first publication on the subject, ‘The Case for Inclusive Design’ in 1994 at the International Ergonomics Association conference in Toronto entitled
He worked closely with the Professor John Clarkson, Director of the Engineering Design Centre at Cambridge University, as a Principal Investigator on the i~design series of EPSRC-funded research programmes which extend up to October 2010. The primary focus of this work is to developing inclusive design tools and guidance for industry.
In 2001 he established the Include conference series at the RCA, and authored a Design Council Policy Paper Living Longer: the new context for design, which makes recommendations to government and industry on design responses to population ageing. In 2003 he co-edited Inclusive Design: design for the whole population, a major textbook on the subject, and took a leading role in drafting BS7000-6 on inclusive design management, published in February 2005. He currently authors an inclusive design ‘knowledge cell’ on the Design Council website, and recently co-edited Design for Inclusivity, which explores the practice of inclusive design through case studies and contributions by leading practitioners and researchers.
A more recent interest was in the related subject of design for patient safety, which he has built up through collaborations with the NHS National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) and the Universities of Cambridge, Surrey, Loughborough and Imperial College London. In 2003 he co-led a team from the RCA Cambridge and Surrey in a study commissioned by the UK Department of Health into how the effective use of design could reduce medical accidents, which was honoured with the President’s Medal of the Ergonomics Society 2005.
This study underpinned a series of practical design projects undertaken by the Helen Hamlyn Centre, resulting in design exemplars and practical guidance on information design in medical packaging (with the NPSA), performance requirements for emergency ambulances (with the NPSA and Ambulance Service Association) and an intelligent resuscitation trolley (with St Mary’s Hospital Paddington and Imperial College).
2008
Hignett, S, Crumpton E, Coleman R, (2008) Designing emergency ambulances for the 21st century in Emergency Medicine Journal
Harrow D & Coleman R (2008), Design For Patient Safety: Future Ambulances, Improving Patient Safety Conference proceedings July 2008,Ergonomics Society, ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2
Harrow D, Coleman R, Matthews E & Thompson R (2008), 'Smart Pods': New Vehicle To Take Healthcare To The Community, Improving
Patient Safety Conference proceedings July 2008, Ergonomics Society, ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2
Coleman R (2008) Evidence based design for patient safety: challenges and methodologies /Improving Patient Safety Conference proceedings/ July 2008, Ergonomics Society, ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2
West J & Coleman R. (2008) Protection in medication: embedding safer pack design in pharmaceutical supply chain priorities, Improving Patient Safety Conference proceedings, July 2008, Ergonomics Society, ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2
Matthews E, West J, Halls S & Coleman R (2008) Closing the loop: taking evidence-based designs into manufacture Improving Patient Safety Conference proceedings, July 2008, Ergonomics Society, ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2
West J, Halls S, Coleman R & Lowe C (2008) Resus:station: breathing life back into resuscitation Improving Patient Safety Conference proceedings, July 2008, Ergonomics Society, ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2
Halls S, Cousins D, Coleman R & Matthews E (2008) Safer drug delivery: Improving the design of infusion devices, Improving Patient Safety Conference proceedings/ July 2008, Ergonomics Society ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2
Halls S, Cousins D & Coleman R (2008) Injectable medicines: From safe design to safe use, Improving Patient Safety Conference proceedings, July 2008, Ergonomics Society ISBN 978-0-9554225-2-2
