Universal design
The term "universal design" became popular in Japan after the Good Design Award set up the Universal Design Award category in 1997. Although it seems to include such areas as normalization&sbquo and barrier-free design&sbquo which were considered to be minor design fields the concept of universal design in fact merely reiterates the essence of design. The term was advocated by the late Ronald Mace&sbquo who was a professor at North Carolina State University in the U.S Although the seven principles set forth by Mace are the foundation of universal design&sbquo they seem to apply mainly in the U.S. The term was first proposed in Japan&sbquo however&sbquo at the World Design Conference in 1989 by the late Michael Khalil&sbquo a designer at NASA at the time. While some say the term originally appeared in Mace's report titled "Towards Barrier-free Environments"(1970) for the WHO international Year of Disabled Persons (1980)&sbquo others say Khalil coined it as a criticism of the litigious type of consumeristic society that's unique to the advanced nations&sbquo and that that influenced Mace. Later&sbquo during the Clinton Administration&sbquo an NPO called Adaptive Environment put forth universal design as a concept for supervision&sbquo lawsuits&sbquo management and education upon examining the privatization of areas related to welfare politics&sbquo and from there it became a global design term. In Japan&sbquo it has been conveniently cherished commercially and politically as the most adequate term with which to face the aging of society. The content of its seven principle---Equitable Use&sbquo Flexibility in Use&sbquo Simple and Intuitive Use&sbquo Perceptible Information&sbquo Tolerance for Error&sbquo Low Physical Effort and Size and Space for Approach and Use---is in need of drastic alteration. In fact&sbquo there is no way that a "thing that anybody can use" exists&sbquo and a design for every elderly person&sbquo infant&sbquo and disabled person is not really "universal". There is an aspect of universal design&sbquo however&sbquo that stressed an idealistic core that ress at the very essence of design. That aspect is significant. The more important task is to redefine this poplar term as "human-centerd design" to further pursue its essence.