Why Inclusive Design Matters

Hello again! 👋

Before I begin, if you’re celebrating Lunar New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai! 🍊🍊 Lunar New Year celebrations started 14 days ago, which is why I decided to have this rest for a cycle and enjoy the holidays. I thought I might want to address one of the lesser discussed topics within an organisation—inclusive design. Usually businesses care about numbers and these things kind of just sit at one side with a few people looking after it, but not much gets improved upon. I think this would be something that could make you an outstanding designer, product owner, or entrepreneur if you can tackle this.

Your First Question Might Be—Why Bother?

When we live on our own terms without concern of the others, we effectively exclude people who might not fall into the categories of normal or even people whose circumstance differ from us. We’ve heard of dark UX, and in real life, hostile architecture is rampant in cities around the world. There’s this article the you can read about how cities use design to deter homeless or drive them away, and it’s quite heartbreaking to see that sort of thing happen to people who circumstance differ from us but yet have little to no options in those situations. The Singapore Government, if you notice, are very proactive in being inclusive with their design of HDB flats (a type of high rise apartments in Singapore). It started with adding lifts to existing flats that allow residents to alight at every storey (there used to be no lifts on certain storeys and they had to walk up or down to get to their house). They now have shelters from bus stops, with ramps that allow physically handicapped people to utilise.

Innovation Comes from Solving These Challenges that No One Thought of Solving

People talk about innovation all the time, but yet don’t really have much of a breakthrough. The reason why ChatGPT and AI is of the talk right now is because we can do interesting things with it—things that we could have only imagined 5 years ago are within our grasp today at the type of a command. Back when the App Store first came about, apart from funny fart apps, there were companies sprouting just from solving problems of people who faced challenges in their daily lives. AirBnb was the app to allow people to travel without needing to book hotels as accommodation. Uber solved the problem of trying to flag down taxis and them ignoring you. We don’t think much of it, but the innovation that came from solving these challenges brought about changes and evolved the way we do things today. As a matter of fact, this video below was what inspired me to look into inclusive design and see how people were solving this in ways that we’ve never seen before.

Do note that this was more than 10 years ago. So Airbnb was one of those startups back then that sprouted because of the App Store. At the end of the video, when the visually handicap person said “Thank you for giving me my freedom back.” that really got to me and it made me think deep. It was one of the moments where I thought to myself that I hope that one day, I could change someone’s life if I could do something to change their lives for the better.

If you’re thinking inclusively as a designer, product owner, or even an entrepreneur, this gives you an edge over other because you are further ahead that anyone who is trying to just solve a pixel problem. Thinking inclusively helps to train our mind to avoid making assumptions or have generalisations and instead be more conscious of our own thoughts. There are many things to consider when being inclusive, such as culture—that varies around the world. We may not agree at times, but should always be respectful, calm, and tactful when approaching topics as they might be sensitive. The basics of inclusive design also utilises First Principles Thinking (utilised by Elon Musk) that I would try to cover in one of my future newsletters to you.

I would stop here for now but I just want to give you some space to do a bit of research and find out more about inclusive design—how accessibility and all those things sit under that big umbrella, and how you can segregate them and tackle those one at a time.

Reflect: Larger organisations would have some sort of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) department or a council that is handling this for the organisation as one of the goals to hit. Talk to these people because a lot of times, they are concerned with only numbers—which isn’t the whole story. Understand where they are trying to do or create and help them solve the bigger picture through thinking inclusively.

Mentor’s Notes

Remember that change takes time. Learning about being inclusive took me more than 10 years, and writing a thesis about it gave me more insights when I was doing my research. Don’t seek perfection or a fast way of being inclusive because it usually has to be well-thought out and structured. At the same time, don’t beat yourself up if it’s your solutions were not meeting the needs of the user. The data and research that you do over time will enable you to see things differently and help make a difference in people’s lives—slowly but surely.

Take care & till next time,

P.S. Yes, as always, please share it with your friends if you think it’s useful.