Hi there 👋 Summer to me means spending time outdoors. Having a break now and then. Dwelling. But where? Some furniture is like open arms, waiting for you. Some is closed, leaving no openings.
As someone who has used a wheelchair for almost 40 years, I know these situations all too well. I’ve been there, felt them, lived them, and experienced them. However, while there certainly is no shortage of bad examples, it is more interesting to turn to the positive ones. The ones gesturing that you are anticipated and expected at the table.
Scouting for an Open Seat
Good examples are harder to notice than bad ones. When I recently assembled a collection of public seating photos for my website, I noticed a pattern: several of the examples that best met variation with variation had missing pieces. They were incomplete, so to speak, which meant scouting for what’s not there.
Figure 1. Left: a round bench with a table in the middle and two open sections. Right: a similar bench, closed the whole way round. The left table is by KPLN Design AB.
Compare the two seating arrangements above (Figure 1). To the left is a round bench in a park with two cutouts on the opposing sides and a table in the middle. To the right is a similar bench with a closed circle. Pleasing to the eye, but closed to diversity.
Figure 2. The same two benches seen from above. Pink marks the seating that is built. The dotted line marks the place left open.
Benches like these follow a pattern where open sections, missing pieces, and incomplete shapes create space for flexible use (Figure 2). Deliberate openings, waiting to be filled with a pram, or a walker, or you, or me.
Vary the Form, Not the User
In Universal Design, the aim is to meet the full range of human variation from the start, rather than with a standard solution plus adaptations. If you want to go deeper into how accessibility, usability, and Universal Design relate to each other, we sort this out in a recent paper [1]. Below are some more examples of how this can be done.
Figure 3. A long table in Kalmar. Benches with and without backrests, and two open places facing each other near the middle. Table by KPLN Design AB.
Figure 4. A picnic table where the tabletop runs on past the benches, leaving three open places.
Figure 5. A round table in a playground. The bench is in sections, with openings facing each other. Table by KPLN Design AB.
Figure 6. A curved bench in a shopping centre, its circle left open at the front.
Figure 7. Three chairs around a round table in a playground, one of them a baby chair, and a fourth place left open.
Something else becomes apparent with this many photos side by side: placement matters. An open place only works if you can reach it. Several of these tables stand in sand, grass, or bark mulch, and the ground around a bench decides who actually can arrive at the table. The furniture is one part of the situation. Where it stands is another.
The Gap Is a Quality
So, what would happen if we leave the circle open? Here’s what I think:
- It would contribute to a shift where people weren’t expected to ask for and wait for access. There is already an opening for you. This is a design quality in itself. The benches are unfinished, waiting for you to complete them.
- It would tacitly but concretely contribute to togetherness. My favourite situations are the ones where I do not have to negotiate with access features and can just go with the flow. Incomplete forms like these are better at meeting human variation with seating variation, which makes them easier to fit in different scenarios and lets people go on with their day.
- It would help us move past a very common pattern: first we solve things for the norm, and then we bolt on special solutions for the less expected ones at the end, what we call “adaptism” [2]. In the best case, that happens inside the design process. In the worst case, through retrofitting. An open circle skips the sequence. Nothing is solved for the norm first, so nothing needs to be added later. The variation is in the form from the start.
The tacit quality in these examples is not a side effect. The benches intentionally don’t categorise people or say who is expected to sit where. The shift from explicit to tacit is one of the shifts we describe in the paper where we introduced nonclusive design [2]. This is nonclusive design in its plainest form. Inclusion and exclusion both close the circle. Nonclusion leaves it open.
Universal Design is often this silent. No barriers to bark at. Just tacit recognition and anticipation. I am already potentially there. And so are you.
The bench shows it is expecting us at the table.
And What About You?
One more thing: I have launched my new website peohedvall.com. The public seating collection lives there, together with design guidelines, key ideas, other open photo collections, experiments and workshops to run, and all previous editions of this newsletter. This is where I got the images above from. Everything there is free to use, no need to ask.
I’m curious and want to learn: Does the open circle make sense to you? When did you last leave the circle open?
Let’s keep this discussion going 😊
Notes and References
This piece builds on findings from our research, where we investigate situation-based categorisation and nonclusive design through citizen science and field observations.
Do you want to use the photos or illustrations in a publication? Please go ahead. Or in a presentation or video? Please do, and tell me about how you use them and what you learn! I appreciate attribution in some form, i.e., that you tell where you got the material from (“Per-Olof Hedvall”), but it is not mandatory. 👍
References:
- Hedvall, P.-O., Ståhl, A., & Iwarsson, S. (2025). Accessibility, usability and universal design — still confusing? Harmonisation of key concepts. Disability and Rehabilitation, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2025.2491831
- Hedvall, P.-O., Price, M., Keller, J., & Ericsson, S. (2022). Towards 3rd generation universal design: Exploring nonclusive design. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 297, 85–92. https://doi.org/10.3233/SHTI220824