These 5 Tips Will Help You to Create a Better Inclusive Design

In this blog, our mentor Azmina Poddar shares the 5 Tips Will Help You to Create a Better Inclusive Design.

What is Diversity & Inclusiveness?

‍Diversity and inclusion are some of the most-hyped words in our industry. Everyone wants to be part of it. It focuses on including people from different backgrounds, experiences, and abilities during the design process to create more universally relevant and useful products. 

What’s the difference between these two words?

“Diversity is inviting everybody to the party, while inclusion is people feeling free to dance at the same party.”

Diversity and inclusion design is about emphatizing users and adapting designs to address the various needs of those users. Product experiences are driven by a deep understanding of user backgrounds and abilities. Designs that prioritize diversity and inclusion principles can positively impact the user experience by fostering a sense of belonging. The focus is on fulfilling as many user needs as possible, not just as many users as possible.

What does it cover?

• People of all backgrounds and abilities
• Addresses accessibility
• Addresses age, gender, race
• Considers economic situation & education
• Geographic location, language, and race

It’s a bridge to a common ground

‍Diversity and inclusion in design can also help connect and unite user groups and a wider society. We see this with social media and other platforms that facilitate community building and the shared economy. If designers are not careful, there is a danger that end products can polarize and divide. 

What is the difference between accessibility and inclusive design?

Accessible design is the primary outcome of an effective inclusive design process. It focuses on the end result or the outcome of a design. The goal is to ensure that all users, especially those with differing abilities, are able to use and benefit from your product.

The Web Content Accesibility Guidelines (WCAG) were created to provide a single shared standard for web content accessibility. When creating your style guide and UX design system, it is very important to keep these guidelines in mind. 

Inclusive design focuses on how to approach a design, rather than the outcome. It is a process for creating an experience that can be used by a wide, diverse group of users. This process begins by identifying situations where people are excluded from using a particular circumstances, which is a key element to inclusive design methodology.

By empathizing with a diverse group of users through inclusive design, designers can create products that are accessible for all.

‍These 5 Tips Will Help You  Create a Better Inclusive Design

1. Identify ability-based exclusion

When approaching your design, proactively seek out points of exclusion and use them to generate new ideas and highlight opportunities to create new, inclusive solutions. Once designers understand exactly how and why people are excluded, they are able to help establish concrete steps towards being more inclusive.

       2. Identify situational challenges

Exclusion can also happen on a unique, situational bases. Differing from ability-based exclusion, situational execution stems from various scenarios when a user is unable to use a product effectively. 

       3. Avoid personal biases

Involve people from different communities throughout the design process. To help accomplish this, include certain user communities across your research and testing phase. Remote usability testing is a good method to help avoid biases. Companies such as UserZoom and UserTesting  have a diverse pool of users signed up and waiting to test your product.

4. Offer various ways to engage

When a user is given different options, they can choose a method that best serves them in their unique circumstances. For example, you can offer those with hearing impairments transcription options to enhance their experience. Consider offering a full transcript, allowing for quick skimming in addition to closed captioning, which provides real-time translation of the audio. 

5. Provide equivalent experiences to all users‍

Ensure experiences are comparable when designing different ways for people to engage with your product or service. Just because you meet excess standards does not mean you have offered a usable or comparable experience. For example, offering different playback speeds to users with hearing impairments helps ensure your experience is equivalent for everyone. 

Want more tips to create an inclusive design? Book a free 1:1 mentoring session with our mentors! 

Contributor:
Azmina Poddar (ADPList Mentor) 
Asia Pacific & Middle East Regional Director For Design Studios at BCG
ADPList account: https://adplist.org/mentors/azmina-poddar
LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azmina-poddar-azyoulikeit-9283bb7/ 

Editor & Writer:
Farah Radzi
Content Marketer and Writer at ADPList
LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/famr/