What is Inclusive Design?

Inclusive design is a design methodology that seeks to create products and experiences that are accessible and usable by people with a wide range of abilities, disabilities, ages, languages, cultures and backgrounds. In class, we began to consider some individuals we personally admire and respect. This activity highlighted that these choices are impacted by our subconscious bias and experience.

Key Principles:

• Recognise Exclusion
• Learn from Diversity
• Solve for one, extend to many

Disability as a Personal Attribute

It was not until 1980, that the World Health Organisation defined what a disability is. This has since been updated to emphasise how this impacts the interaction between an individuals body and the world around. Designing without considering disabilities, can create a world which excludes masses of people.

In class, we considered different disabilities which may affect how an individual interacts with a product or service including visual impairments (e.g., colour blindness); auditory (e.g., deafness); verbal (e.g., non-verbal, stutter, language barriers and accents); motor (e.g., paralysis, cerebral palsy); cognitive (e.g., dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism, alzheimers disease). Considering the wide range of disabilities which in total effect the majority of the population, highlighted to me how many shortcomings there are in many digital and physical products which could easy be improved through design.

It was also interesting to consider temporary, acquired and situational exclusions which has the possibly to affect an even larger audience when interacting with a product. For example: visual brightness (e.g., temporarily blinded by the sun while driving or the opposite, unable to see ahead on a street without lights); in the same vein, auditory (e.g., a loud concert) and verbal (e.g., unable to speak after surgery, accent and dialect); or injury (e.g., breaking a bone, feeling ill, stroke) and also pregnancy. Companies like ESO have been tasked to create accessible products designed to be used by first responders interacting with their products in the back of a fast moving vehicle or emergency situation.

Empathising with Granny Stitch’s target audience

• Who is using your product?
  • Young people wanting to learn a new skill
  • People who want to socialise with others while learning a new skill
  • Potential for older users who are more likely to experience loneliness (creates potential to share skills with younger generation while connecting)
  • Amateurs who want to pick up a hobby but don’t know where to start
  • Those experienced with textiles who want to share their knowledge, connect with others and get inspiration for their next project
• What are they doing?
  • Watching tutorials to learn a new skill
  • Actively completing the activity (e.g., Crocheting)
  • Public transport liking and bookmarking new ideas and tutorials
  • At home browsing and searching for inspiration
  • Sharing updates of their textile projects through posting option
  • Connecting with friends and other creators
• Where are they doing it?
  • At home learning and creating
  • On public transport browsing and connecting
  • During local in-person meet ups organised using the app
• When are they doing it?
  • In their spare time on the app
  • During a commute
  • After work meeting up to exchange skills and socialise in person
• Why are they doing it?
  • Ability to socialise and connect with friends or new people in community
  • Learn a new skill and continue to enhance this skill
  • Want to cut down their consumption of material goods for financial purposes
  • Want to cut down their consumption of material goods for environmental reasons e.g., stop buying fast fashion and contributing to large amount of waste materials
• How are they doing it?
  • Watching tutorials on the app to learn new craft
  • Actively participating in knitting, crochet, updating and mending clothes
  • Connecting with other user’s to ask questions when stuck (potential for older people to reply to individuals new to crafts)
  • Attending meet-ups to socialise and learn in-person
  • Gathering new ideas on how to reuse fabrics, revamp clothes to reflect current trends or mend garments (rather than buying new clothes unnecessarily)
  • Sharing tutorials and inspiration to encourage others to stop buying fast-fashion
  • Keeping up to date with new sustainable ideas, news and updates

How to make accessible products?

• Interaction methods and modalities

• Structure and semantics

• Timing (giving user enough)

• Language and readability (consider AI to translate paragraphs etc)

• Visual and auditory alternatives (eye scanning for those who cannot use a keyboard for example)

• Navigation and wayfinding (make it easy for a user to find their way out)

• Error prevention and states

• Colour scheme (considering contrast for those with visual impairments)

• Predictability and consistency (consider the user’s mental model)

• Movement and flashing (overwhelming)

How can AI help with inclusive design?