Designing for All: Building Inclusive and Equitable experiences
Inclusive Design helps us get rid of the barriers that create differentiation and separation. It provides equal access to everyone, regardless of identity factors.
Being a UX designer, I always look forward to building new and improved experiences for people. This involves in-depth research and taking into consideration all types of users that might use a specific product or service. As designers, it is our responsibility to include the needs of users who have experienced exclusion while using day-to-day products due to being a part of historically underrepresented communities or groups.
This is exactly where Inclusive design comes into the picture. Inclusive Design talks about building a framework for people that empathizes with human differences by researching and studying from a diverse range of users. Using this framework, designers and researchers make design choices that take into account personal factors such as gender, age, sexual orientation, language, race and abilities. The goal here is to uplift the traditionally underrepresented communities while keeping in mind their needs and goals.
As a beginner in the field of UX design, some people might find the idea of Inclusive and equitable design a little overwhelming, due to its high research requirements and design goals. But at the end of the day, it’s the users we are designing for and in order to design for all, it is our responsibility as designers to stay inclusive and equity-focused in our work.
“Designing with constraints in mind is simply designing well.” — Microsoft’s Inclusive Design Toolkit
Inclusivity in your products will always help expand your service reach and create better and relatable experiences for all. Inclusive Design consists of various experiences that users expect while using a product:
Usable Design addresses cognitive behaviour and how one can achieve goals efficiently and effectively.
Accessible Design focuses on designing for people with diverse abilities including hearing, motor, cognitive and vision impairments. Accessibility is about making products and services accessible to all people. As designers, we focus on something known as the social model of disability which defines a disability as being caused by the way the surroundings are organized or how services are designed, rather than a person’s ability or difference. Here, we account for permanent, temporary and situational challenges a person may face throughout their lifetime.
Ethical Design revolves around protecting and respecting an individual’s values, needs and goals. It addresses human rights and privacy.
Equitable Design aims at designing for groups that have been historically underrepresented and addresses diverse identities, taking into consideration gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality and abilities. Creating LGBTQ+ inclusive experiences, including minorities, all races and nationalities in your products, comes under equity-focused design.
As researchers, we are at the core of building inclusive experiences by understanding diverse cultures and communities. These insights help designers make better decisions during the design processes.
Keeping this in mind, let’s go through the 6 principles for Inclusive Design as explained by Lillian Xiao.
Seek out points of exclusion -
Understanding the background of why users from diverse groups have historically been excluded is important. It is the starting point to come up with new ideas and establish solutions.
Identify situational challenges -
Biases and exclusion can occur based on different situations and therefore design experiences to be accessible and in the context of use. This helps designers identify the pain points and frustrations of the users, for different situations.
Recognize personal biases -
Involving users, researchers and designers from traditionally excluded and underrepresented communities throughout the design process help us keep aside our personal biases and abilities and provide us with unique perspectives.
Offer different ways to engage -
Since UX is all about keeping the user in the centre, letting the users decide what method serves them best depending on their circumstances and situations is a good practice.
Provide equivalent experiences -
Going one step ahead from meeting recognized accessibility standards is important since it ensures comparable experiences. Instead of designing for a specific type of user, it is a good practice to design for all the target groups to maintain equal experiences.
Extend the solution to everyone -
“Solve for one, extend to many”. When we create designs of a product easier for a specific group of users, we also often make better experiences for everyone else.
Inclusive Design starts now and must be considered as a core step in the design process, making sure to include users from the planning phase to the final design stage of any product.
