Ian McGinn

For twenty years, before I knew what UX was called, I was designing for people who are often designed out. Through open:creative – my long-running creative technology and community arts practice – I built immersive sensory environments for students with complex SEND needs, led participatory workshops for young adults with learning disabilities, and worked with young people not in education or employment. The OpenDome was a surround-sound, multi-projection space built specifically for SEND provision – getting it right meant observing, adapting, and rebuilding, with real users in front of me. Alongside this, eleven years as Senior Technician at Huish Episcopi Academy kept me in direct daily contact with students and staff, designing interactive materials and facilitating digital workshops across age ranges and ability levels.

That body of work shaped how I approach every research session now. I arrive without a fixed conclusion, follow unexpected threads, and stay curious about the gap between what someone says and what they actually do. Accessibility isn't a feature I add at the end – it's the lens I start from. The people who are hardest to design for tend to reveal the most important design problems. I'd learned that a long time before I learned the words "inclusive design."

The MA in UX Design at Falmouth University gave the practice a language. Two years of intensive, research-led project work – designing AI-powered discovery systems for archive collections, building a mobile tool for NHS-adjacent social prescribing teams, researching speech synthesis interfaces – taught me to make my instincts legible to others. The theory made the practice defensible. The practice made the theory immediately testable. Both are better for it.