Insights

Inclusive design

Nina Warburton is a Director at product and interaction design consultancy TheAlloy. She is also one of the leading proponents of inclusive design. In this article she outlines the importance and potential impact of inclusive design and highlights the breakthroughs that can be achieved by embedding inclusive design principles into the creation of technology products and services.

Most designers want to create products that have mass appeal, that have the potential to enjoy kudos, awards and, sometimes, commercial reward. With this in mind it is surprising how many products, especially in the technology sector, seem to fulfil the needs of a few, highly technically literate consumers, rather than the many. This is a great shame because, as I will illustrate below, by practising inclusive design, everybody wins. Products more suited to a wider audience are more likely to have mass appeal, and therefore be more commercially successful. Furthermore, by practising inclusive design, "breakthrough" moments can be achieved, delivering a better user experience to everyone.

What is inclusive design?

Inclusive design is also sometimes referred to as accessible or universal design. Include 2001, an international conference dedicated to the subject, defined inclusive design as "a process whereby designers and manufacturers ensure that their products and services address the needs of the widest possible audience." On the face of it, this sounds like a fairly simple thing to achieve.

Inclusive design is not a specific form of design catering for specific needs. By definition it is about catering for the widest possible audience with the widest possible needs. To achieve this, inclusive design must be practised as an everyday activity within all design. In this sense, inclusive design can also been seen as simply "good design".

Creating empathy

It is part of human nature for designers to create products that they themselves would like to use or be seen with. Add to this the fact that the majority of designers, be they in consultancies or companies, are male and in their 20s or 30s, and it becomes apparent that the ability to empathise is a critical skill for inclusive design.

It is undeniably challenging for anyone to put themselves in the shoes of someone with impaired vision or hearing, just as it is hard for those of us who have never experienced life in a wheelchair to understand how difficult it can be to switch on lights, light a gas fire or reach the top shelf of a bookcase. Yet this is exactly what is required in order to apply inclusive practices to design.

Unfortunately, empathy doesn't just "happen" automatically. Eliciting key insights into people's behaviours, needs and motivations requires the careful application of knowledge and tools within the design process. Empathy is something that all designers should take extremely seriously. Like creativity, it is not something that can be left to eureka moments. Creating empathy is and should be, a rigorous part of the design process.

There are a wide range of research processes that can be employed to help gain insight and build empathy, including ethnographic research (the study of real lives), in-depth interviews and task analysis, but one of the most powerful is role-play. Role-play can be as in-depth as required: at one level quite simple, for example role-playing the events surrounding taking a call in a busy train station; at another, we might conduct what we call immersion role-play.

Immersion role-play can be illustrated by a project to design a thermal imaging camera for fire-fighters, where the design team undertook professional fire training to fully understand the environment within which the product they were designing would be used.

Combining role-play with other research techniques allows the designer to gain real insight into the way people use products and live their lives. It is this insight that drives the design process and has the potential to generate wholly appropriate, innovative and inclusive design solutions.

The commercial opportunity

The overriding message is a simple one. Inclusive design means creating products that anyone can use. To do so requires designers to rigorously build empathy into their design processes. Inclusive practices should be embedded into all design activity, to make better products that are more usable by a wider range of people.

The most powerful argument for inclusive design to be embedded into product development is a commercial one. Digital products and technologies present enormous opportunities for both consumers and developers alike. The application of inclusive design principles can create digitally inclusive products, promoting social and technological inclusion, and creating enormous commercial gain for those who get it right.

By embedding inclusive practices into design, by forcing designers to have empathy for the needs of a diverse audience, we get the products we deserve and everyone benefits ? not only those who have previously been excluded but everyone else too.

Example: Digital Impairment

Technology is having a huge impact on society and being technically literate is, for many, proving a huge advantage. As a society overall we are getting wealthier, but for those excluded, especially those excluded by a lack of technology, the picture is not so rosy.

In a recent edition of Computing magazine, the value of digital inclusion was calculated to be worth up to £60 billion to the European economy over the next five years.

In the digital world we all have some degree of impairment, be it a lack of technical knowledge or a physical limitation. Today, our ability to understand the intricacies of human behaviour and to build inclusive principles into design is more important than ever, and offers potentially explosive rewards.

In 1992 members of the Alloy team designed the Converse 200 phone for BT, the first specifically inclusive phone for BT. Designed according to guidelines drawn up by the Age and Disability Unit at BT, the product was part of the BT portfolio for more than eight years. Although designed with these specific needs in mind, the product sold millions of units over almost a decade, becoming a very popular business phone. Its "extreme" ease of use made it appeal to a much wider audience than initially expected – inclusive principles crossed over to the mainstream.

Since then, inclusive products have sat at the heart of the BT portfolio, generating strong revenues and satisfying the wide ranging needs of the BT customer.

www.thealloy.com

Debate this article in the DesignTalks forum.