Inclusive Design: Key Principles and How to make a Product More Inclusive

Inclusive Design refers to designing a product that can serve or be accessed by as many people as possible regardless of age, gender, and disability. It enables people with varying characteristics to use a product in diverse environments. The framework is also referred to as “Designing for Diversity” or D4D.

Alternatively, inclusive design is about optimizing a product for a specific user with specific needs. Usually, they are extreme users, meaning they have specific needs that are sometimes overseen with other design processes. Focusing on the extreme users in the inclusive design will enable them as well to use the product besides covering the needs of the other users.

An inclusive design comprises three main steps-

1. Recognize exclusion

2. Solve for one, extend to many

3. Learn from diversity

In comparison to Universal Design

Both inclusive design and universal design have one primary objective, i.e., making a product, service, or environment more inclusive, meaning that a wider diversity of people can easily use it. But there’s a slight difference between these two. Universal design is generally more focused on a single solution that can be used by as many people as possible, whereas inclusive design involves designing for a specific individual or use case and extending it to others.

Key Principles for Inclusive Design

To add an inclusive touch to your product design, follow the below-mentioned inclusive design principles which are based on our research and discussion with design experts.

1. Find points of exclusion

Look for points of exclusion proactively, and utilize them to create new ideas and highlight opportunities to form new solutions. It’s important to precisely understand why and how people are excluded can assist in setting up concrete steps towards being more inclusive. Take one example.

Upon receiving feedback about an educational video experience, a team behind that product discovered that it had excluded users who are deaf or hard of hearing (HoH). Further research revealed that exclusion occurs across both ability and context- deaf users couldn’t access the audio-heavy experience and ADA requirements prevented the video content from being used in public educational settings.

2. Determine situational challenges

Exclusion can happen on the basis of a situation. Try considering a scenario where your user is interacting with the product, and design the experience to be accessible in these daily moments of exclusion.

For the educational video case that we discussed above, user research revealed that situational and ability-based impairments produced overlapping pain points and user needs. This meant that solutions aimed towards users who are deaf or HOH can also benefit those who are consuming video content in a loud airport or cafe.

3. Identify personal biases

Make sure to include people from diverse communities throughout the design process. Not only will users exhibit what they need, but they will also help you look beyond your own abilities and biases during product development.

By involving the user community across research and testing, the team was able to systematically identify and test any assumptions and biases.

4. Provide various engagement modes

Offer people different ways to participate in an experience. With different options, users can pick a way that best serves them in their unique circumstances.

To enable deaf or HOH users to access video content, the team had decided to present each video’s machine-generated transcript in a couple of different ways, such as a full transcript that allows for quick skimming and closed captioning that offers real-time translation of the audio content.

5. Offer equivalent experiences

When designing various ways for people’s engagement, make sure that experiences are comparable. Meeting accessibility standards does not necessarily guarantee usability or comparable experience.

Ensuring an equivalent experience for users who are deaf or HOH means offering different playback speeds to accommodate language ability, and offering different transcript and captioning formats to accommodate task efficiency.

6. Extend the solution to everyone

Designing a solution for a particular group can benefit a much broader audience. In the case that we have been discussing as an example, though the closed captioning & transcription features were designed with deaf or HOH users in mind, the team discovered that everyone can benefit from this solution. Video captions can be used in a loud airport or sports bar and can be used to promote literacy and language learning.

Making a product more Inclusive

Here’s how you can leverage the Designing for Diversity or D4D methodology and implement this framework in your workflows.

1. Locate a starting point

Just like any other design, inclusive design, too, has a definite structure. It’s not amorphous. There too exists a beginning point when it comes to designing for diversity. Focus on the low-hanging fruit, for example, starting a DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) committee. Surely, it won’t address the problems completely but will at least introduce some improvements. It will help you recognize that you have agency over equity and inclusion initiatives. This paves the way for building momentum and shifts the focus from an unclear or imprecise goal to a more defined journey compiled with small targets. One also needs to understand that the path that lies ahead won’t be as focused as the previous one. Just because designing for diversity is possible doesn’t indicate it’s easy. There would be conflicts but you can work through them.

2. State your defaults

Everyone has their own cultural defaults but some are more harmful compared to others. Knowing and naming your biases can make clear what is not being represented in a conversation or product and can provide the next steps on what voices should be consulted. To create an equitable product, there must be some diverse perspectives and design decisions. It’s not because it’s the good or right thing to do. It’s challenging and doesn’t always feel nice. But it’s really about how to create the best product possible.

3. Think of the future

Although you can’t tell what will happen in the future, keeping the potential future possibilities on top of your mind will allow you to think differently. Ask yourself: What’s the worst-case scenario that can occur and what effects can it have? It would probably change your entire thinking around why you’re building something or what approach you should take.

4. Form a feedback loop

A serious issue in current DEI conversations is that it’s generally a one-time event. Teams will hold a focus group at the very beginning of a project but forget to circle back to participants. Or they will wait until the end and do a retrospective about something that went awry.

It is therefore important to create a feedback loop. See what else you need to know or what you are/were missing. This would keep you informed and updated on the next projects you work upon.

Inclusive design sets a win-win situation for customers as well as businesses. It boosts your product’s reach, brings an innovative touch, and helps your brand take on a position of social responsibility.