Inclusive Design for a New Tribunal Building

Our brief was to help architects design a new and inclusive building for VCAT by working with those vulnerable to exclusion to uncover insights into their unmet needs. VCAT wanted to genuinely design with, not for, people with a range of different abilities and circumstances that make them vulnerable to exclusion. Privacy constraints meant we couldn’t simply contact people going through the process and ask them about it, or observe them in court. Add to this a tight timeframe, limited budget and competing stakeholder needs, we needed to get creative with our research approach.

Our two-phased approach started with contextual research, then used insights from that research to inform co-design workshops. PHASE 1: The contextual research was with public users who identified as living with physical, psychological or neurological disabilities, as well as CALD community. We used the existing court building—on non-hearing days—and role-played real life scenarios to simulate the VCAT experience. PHASE 2: The co-design workshops brought VCAT staff and architects together with public users to design the new spaces. Because many of our participants had experienced discrimination before, we took a trauma-informed approach, taking extra care to ensure wellbeing.

The work surfaced requirements that will make the new building more welcoming and accessible to all, and will change the design of VCAT spaces for future generations. In addition, we saw a significant mindset shift among staff through listening to the stories and voices of people not previously heard. This stimulated further action from staff to embed inclusive design and long-lasting cultural change in everyday work practices as well as in building design.

Several of the public participants from the initial contextual research stayed involved to help design the second phase, the co-design workshops. This elevated their involvement from participants to co-designers and facilitators; they worked with us to determine the agenda and activities for each workshop, taking a leading role where they were comfortable to do so. This was hugely impactful for them, for the Meld designers, for the architects and for VCAT staff.