Disability and inclusivity are progressive topics that have evolved in response to societal experiences, as evidenced by the social model of disability, which has been endorsed as a replacement for the conventional individual model of disability. However, many still regard disability as an individual rather than an environmental problem, which fosters stigmatization of people with disabilities. Addressing this requires deeper knowledge to inform experience design that raises awareness of disability and the importance of social inclusion. The authors conducted a co-design experiment focusing on how to fill the communication gap between deaf and hearing people. Six teams, each comprising one deaf and two hearing participants, were observed to identify the salient characteristics of two contrastive approaches: LESS, a deaf-oriented audio environment with decreased audio stimuli, and MORE, a hearing-oriented audio environment with no decreased auditory stimuli. The results were cross-analyzing quantitative and qualitative data with interaction mapping. The analysis found that the LESS approach helps people feel no barriers, while the MORE approach enables them to challenge prior understandings of the issue. This study will contribute to designing an experience-based awareness-raising activity, suggesting where the gap exists and how it should be filled in the context of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Maximising creativity requires an enriched imagination that uses all five senses. This study explored the effects of a reduced visual–auditory multisensory stimuli environment on creativity. Nineteen participants took the Alternative Uses Test (AUT) under the nine decreased visual–auditory multisensory stimuli conditions. Fluency and originality were evaluated as a part of the creativity assessment. The number of ideas from the AUT determined the fluency level, and the three judges’ evaluations determined originality. A study on associative conceptual network analysis explored the word associations of selected nouns from the AUT under nine reduced visual–auditory multisensory stimuli experimental conditions, revealing outdegree centrality scores to evaluate creative potential. The results suggest that the decreasing visual stimuli inhibit fluency whereas auditory stimuli do not, and that originality is enhanced when stimuli are reduced, whether visual or auditory, unless there is a notable divergence between the visual and auditory conditions. These results highlight the importance of perceptual focus and cognitive load regulation in fostering creative potential.