Rapid and unprecedented population ageing poses a serious social and economic challenge across the developed world. Shifts in dependency ratios point to escalating welfare and pensions costs which require radical and imaginative responses from Government and industry. Key to this is maintaining a healthy population that is able and willing to work longer before retirement and can remain independent for as long as possible afterwards. A further requirement is to bring disabled people into mainstream life and employment. This challenge is recognised increasingly, resulting in new legislation impacting on the major world economies. Addressing it requires: (1) understanding wellbeing and its relationship to independence; (2) the redesign of workplaces and jobs to suit the changed profile of the working population.There is a global market for products and services designed with older and less able people in mind, and industry is responding to this opportunity, both in the UK and internationally. A recent survey (commissioned by the UK Department of Trade and Industry and undertaken by CITD with Professors Clarkson and Coleman) of UK companies awareness and skills gap with regard to inclusive design concluded that the majority of companies are aware of inclusive design and its benefits. However, barriers remain to industry uptake in the form of: (1) the lack of a perceived justifiable business case to support inclusive design; (2) the lack of knowledge and tools to practice inclusive design; (3) a better understanding of the difficulties experienced by the majority of users of new technology products; and (4) access to appropriate user sets. Importantly, the end-user data derived from earlier Office of National Statistics surveys on disability needs to be updated with data describing users from a product/user perspective, enabling designers to estimate better reasons for, and levels of, user exclusion and to provide greater insight in the search for better design solutions.Inclusion is an important topic within Government, as witnessed by a number of recent reports from the House of Lords and offices of the lower house. All see the need for change in government and industry to reduce exclusion in society, but few solutions are put forward that will encourage such change. It is also clear that descriptions of 'end-users', i.e. those that we wish to include, are vague and lacking in the detail required to encourage positive action. However, despite these shortcomings there is a mood for change and the proposed research team have good links with many of the government offices responsible for these reports.This proposal responds to the above challenges by extending the focus of earlier i~design work and expanding the research team to reflect these new priorities. The philosophy underlying inclusive design specifically extends the definition of users to include people who are excluded by rapidly changing technology, especially the elderly and ageing, and prioritises the role and value of extreme users in innovation and new product/service development. It also prioritises the context of use, both physical and psychological, and the complexity of interactions between products, services and interfaces in contexts of use such as independent living. Key research requirements are:1. Better descriptions of product/service users linked to more accurate data and represented in designer-friendly formats2. Closer integration of anthropometric, capability and social data3. More effective application of users and user data to job and workplace design, and healthcare systems design4. Better understanding of the extent and nature of exclusion (across the whole population) resulting from and associated with the implementation of new technologies5. Definition and verification of the means to capture a national user data set: designing and piloting the research requirements for a major survey capable of intern

The UK is committed to a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% before 2050. With over 40% of fossil fuels used for low temperature heating and 16% of electricity used for cooling these are key areas that must be addressed. The vision of our interdisciplinary centre is to develop a portfolio of technologies that will deliver heat and cold cost-effectively and with such high efficiency as to enable the target to be met, and to create well planned and robust Business, Infrastructure and Technology Roadmaps to implementation. Features of our approach to meeting the challenge are: a) Integration of economic, behavioural, policy and capability/skills factors together with the science/technology research to produce solutions that are technically excellent, compatible with and appealing to business, end-users, manufacturers and installers. b) Managing our research efforts in Delivery Temperature Work Packages (DTWPs) (freezing/cooling, space heating, process heat) so that exemplar study solutions will be applicable in more than one sector (e.g. Commercial/Residential, Commercial/Industrial). c) The sub-tasks (projects) of the DTWPs will be assigned to distinct phases: 1st Wave technologies or products will become operational in a 5-10 year timescale, 2nd Wave ideas and concepts for application in the longer term and an important part of the 2050 energy landscape. 1st Wave projects will lead to a demonstration or field trial with an end user and 2nd Wave projects will lead to a proof-of-concept (PoC) assessment. d) Being market and emission-target driven, research will focus on needs and high volume markets that offer large emission reduction potential to maximise impact. Phase 1 (near term) activities must promise high impact in terms of CO2 emissions reduction and technologies that have short turnaround times/high rates of churn will be prioritised. e) A major dissemination network that engages with core industry stakeholders, end users, contractors and SMEs in regular workshops and also works towards a Skills Capability Development Programme to identify the new skills needed by the installers and operators of the future. The SIRACH (Sustainable Innovation in Refrigeration Air Conditioning and Heating) Network will operate at national and international levels to maximise impact and findings will be included in teaching material aimed at the development of tomorrow's engineering professionals. f) To allow the balance and timing of projects to evolve as results are delivered/analysed and to maximise overall value for money and impact of the centre only 50% of requested resources are earmarked in advance. g) Each DTWP will generally involve the complete multidisciplinary team in screening different solutions, then pursuing one or two chosen options to realisation and test. Our consortium brings together four partners: Warwick, Loughborough, Ulster and London South Bank Universities with proven track records in electric and gas heat pumps, refrigeration technology, heat storage as well as policy / regulation, end-user behaviour and business modelling. Industrial, commercial, NGO and regulatory resources and advice will come from major stakeholders such as DECC, Energy Technologies Institute, National Grid, British Gas, Asda, Co-operative Group, Hewlett Packard, Institute of Refrigeration, Northern Ireland Housing Executive. An Advisory Board with representatives from Industry, Government, Commerce, and Energy Providers as well as international representation from centres of excellence in Germany, Italy and Australia will provide guidance. Collaboration (staff/student exchange, sharing of results etc.) with government-funded thermal energy centres in Germany (at Fraunhofer ISE), Italy (PoliMi, Milan) and Australia (CSIRO) clearly demonstrate the international relevance and importance of the topic and will enhance the effectiveness of the international effort to combat climate change.

Mobility, wellbeing and the built environment: Wellbeing in later life is linked to the maintenance of independence, physical mobility itself and the sense of being able to get about. Mobility is vital for accessing services, resources and facilities, for social participation, and for avoiding loneliness. Thus mobility has been described more broadly as 'engagement with the world'. The design of the built environment has a key role to play in enabling - or frustrating - mobility. Thus appropriate design or redesign of the built environment can expand horizons and support wellbeing. However, this project focuses on complements or alternatives to physical design or redesign of the built environment. Design and adaptation are time and resource intensive. Many well-understood mobility barriers remain in place because of budget constraints. Design of the built environment is just one the determinants of mobility and wellbeing. Any one environment cannot meet all needs at once, and needs can vary even for an individual, as people pass through key physical and social transitions which may alter mobility and wellbeing. Based on participatory research, this project aims to create a suite of options and tools which may be able to meet contrasting needs, support mobility and wellbeing, and do so more quickly and affordably than adapting the built environment. The research aims to: 1) Explore mobility and wellbeing for older people going through critical but common life transitions; 2) Investigate and address variation and contradictions in needs of different groups of older people (and even for single individuals over time), and between different built environment agendas; and 3) To co-create practical tools which can act as complements or alternatives to redesign of the built environment. After a foundation stage the work will commence with interviews with national experts and stakeholders. We will select three contrasting local areas in which to base the rest of the research, and interview c15 local stakeholders in each area. We will then start a pioneering quarterly tracking study of mobility and wellbeing, working with c120 older people in the three sites who are experiencing critical but common life transitions such as losing a driving license, losing a partner, or becoming a carer. These transitions are often seen as key points for deterioration in mobility and wellbeing, and as key points for support and intervention. We will then work with a series of small groups of older people in workshops and co-design sessions, to explore the potential for interventions as alternatives and complements to promoting mobility and wellbeing via redesign. Each will involve a series of day-long meetings between researchers and older people, over about a year. One set of workshops will explore how well 'crowdsourcing' and Participatory Geographical Information Systems can add to and collate information about mobility wants and needs and barriers. Another will involve older people with varying interests in relation to the built environment, to explore conflicts and the potential for consensus on some issues. There will be co-design workshops with older people to explore mobile technologies based on SmartPhones, to help people avoid key blockages to mobility in particular areas. Other workshops will work with mobility scooter users, and manufacturers and those whose mobility may be threatened by scooters, to explore the feasibility of adapting scooters to reduce problems. The impact of participation itself will be tracked. Project outputs will include: a project website, accessible annual interim and summative reports to project stakeholders and others, a summative report, articles for academic journals across team member disciplines, trade press articles for relevant professionals, potentially video or new media, a local stakeholder and older person conference and national 'Roadshow', as well as other dissemination events.

Driven by the growing recognition of the importance of design in national innovation, design policy is an emerging subject of research interest. Design policies are 'sets of rules, activities, and processes to support design through the reinforcement of design capabilities at all levels of the policy cycle' by DeEP. Governments in countries where design and innovation are considered core competitive advantage actively seek to implement policies to create encouraging environments for the prosperity of design innovation. Research into design policy in this context will focus on the relevance and effectiveness of government intervention within the design industry. There is an imperative to advance thinking through collaboration and to share experience. Networking and research in this subject has attracted growing investment. However, collaboration with partners outside of the EU is underdeveloped. A fast changing technology base and novel innovation models allows 'underdeveloped' countries to leap-frog conventional development patterns, with significant impact on the global innovation landscape. Each region can no longer consider its innovation policies in isolation. Collaboration with these countries is as important as with EU partners. This is especially relevant in the case of China, one of the biggest trade partners with EU and the largest R&D investor after the US. China now aims to transform its economy away from a reliance on low-skill and resource-intensive manufacturing, and has recognised the necessity of design innovation in achieving structural transformation of industries. However, these policies and their execution remain unclear outside of China and research in this field is still scarce. In the UK, design is viewed as an important and integral dimension of innovation policy. As one of the largest innovation exporters, it is strategically important for the UK's policy makers to gain knowledge of China, thus enabling them to contextualise their relevance to the UK's design industry and economy, and capture opportunities afforded by transformation in China. Moreover, no consideration has been given to how the UK might best develop policies which capitalise on the opportunities. The study aims to develop a UK-China network in design policy to facilitate interactions between UK and China, and between researchers and policy makers. This network is aimed at professional, educational, and government organizations which might contribute to the development and management of initiatives to either grow business or design capability and capacity. Through a series of workshops and seminars, the project will develop partnerships to share good practices in design policy development and to stimulate discussions on this topic. This project will also help build capacity in design policy research, and will inform the future development of the research networking theme. The project will conclude by undertaking a mapping exercise to understand the focuses and principles of policy making in each country; and from this, identify differences and similarities in the approaches taken by each country in supporting design innovation. This will in turn provide the basis for a generic model of design policy which will be disseminated at a final event to be held in London, and will be used to inform national and regional policies supporting the design sector.

Design has a huge role to play in driving innovation that results in societal and economic benefit. In the UK this benefit is currently not being maximised as we do not have a consolidated action plan for design that that provides a compelling case for that assists decision-makers to employ design effectively. A growing number of European countries have developed action plans for design including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland and Latvia. The UK is not one of them. This innovative research project synthesises for the first time, multi-stakeholder and user-led perspectives to generate original insights that go beyond existing approaches in the UK through the development of an integrated action plan to increase and enhance the strategic use of design as a driver for innovation and provides a roadmap to how that could be achieved. Our research approach will: a) draw in multi-stakeholder views that hitherto have not been synthesised and combined together (synergising individual agendas into a compelling and coherent argument to maximise the impact of design), b) provide new insights that informs a high-level strategic understanding of the potential of design to drive societal and economic benefit in organisations (to foreground the capability of the strategic use design to drive innovation), and c) set out a series of integrated steps (the 'action plan') required to enable the operationalization of design through an actionable plan (with examples of potential application of design in the public and private sectors). The plan will include key action lines for implementation which aim: 1) to increase the awareness of how design creates high-level societal and economic benefit resulting in increased competitiveness of, and wellbeing in, the UK; 2) to extend the understanding of design as a strategic tool as a driver for innovation in the suppliers (design sector), users (design buyers, commissioners and managers), and beneficiaries (end users of products and services); 3) to achieve economic benefit through an enhancing the strategic understanding of the economic value of design as a driver for innovation in targeted private sector user groups (e.g. R&D managers, brand managers, design buyers, etc.); 4) to provide a strong impetus for the effective application of design in the public sector resulting in improved services, enhanced experiences and quality of life; and 5) to transform the ability of the users of design to translate a strategic understanding of the value of design into operationalized activities. As formal project partners, the Design Council provide opportunities for enhanced impact by supporting engagement with key stakeholders, policy makers and opinion-formers through: - Active participation in the research through membership of the project Steering Group - Promotion of the project and sharing of findings with policy audiences in particular, through Design for Europe platform and Design Council UK networks - Support for online engagement with target audiences drawing on our existing networks - Insights generated by the 2015 Design Economy research, which maps design businesses and their economic contribution at a local level across the UK - Co-authoring an introductory text for the final project publication - Hosting of a high-profile event at our offices in central London to launch the project research findings