Universal design, inclusive design, and equity-focused design
This are my notes from Google UX professional certificate
Here we’ll talk about three more ways to put the user first in our designs.
When designers began considering how to include an even broader range of people in their designs, they called it universal design.
Universal design is the process of creating one product for users with the widest range of abilities and in the widest range of situations.
Designers propose one solution for everyone. The problem is that when you focus on creating one solution for everyone, the designs lose their effectiveness. It’s often difficult to achieve any goals with your product when you have so many intended users.
Even though it had the intention of being inclusive, it excluded a lot of people. It turns out one-size-fits-all isn’t a great solution. As UX designers realized that universal design didn’t meet the needs of every user, the approach to including people began to change. Designers started thinking about the concept of inclusive design, which focuses on finding solutions to meet different needs.
Inclusive design means making design choices that take into account personal identifiers like ability, race, economic status, language, age, and gender.
Inclusive design includes researchers and designers from traditionally excluded populations in the process, so they can provide their unique perspectives during all phases of the design process.
If universal design is a one-size-fits-all solution, then inclusive design can be described as solve for one, extend to many. With inclusive design, you solve for one type of user, and the benefit of that solution can extend to many other types of users.
Our goal as designers is to build experiences that are accessible to users with the widest range of abilities. In other words, no one should be excluded from using a product that we built because we didn’t consider their needs when building it. In inclusive design, there’s no such thing as normal. There’s no average person or target audience that we should design for.
Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities.
Accessibility is just one aspect of inclusive design.But keep in mind that the idea of “solve for one, extend to many,” only benefits the group the design was created for and existing users. Many groups are still left out. Over time UX designers realized that inclusive design wasn’t always enough, and that’s where we find ourselves today as equity-focused design becomes a new industry goal.
Equity-focused design asks designers to focus on designing for groups that have been historically underrepresented or ignored when building products.
The goal of equity-focused design is to uplift groups that have been excluded historically. In order to design with equity as a goal, we first need to know the difference between equality and equity.
Equality means providing the same amount of opportunity and support to all segments of society. In other words, everyone gets the same thing.
Equity means providing different levels of opportunity and support for each person in order to achieve fair outcomes.
Instead of building products for groups of people who are currently being excluded, which is the goal of inclusive design, equity-focused design seeks to build products that meet the needs of specific individuals in groups who have been excluded in the past. So what does this look like in the real world?
Start by identifying a product you want to build. Then, think about the groups that have not been served by this type of product in the past. Finally, build your design while keeping the groups who identified as underrepresented front and center. It’s important to keep in mind that equity-focused design doesn’t solve all problems, just like inclusive design and universal design don’t either. The key point is that these are all different approaches to solving issues of underrepresentation and designing for a more equitable future.
Often, schools and companies consider accessibility, inclusive design, and equity-focused design as methods to consider during the design process, but not as a requirement.
