Inclusive Design: Design Approach for All Users

Have you ever listened to Podcasts on Spotify or read subtitles when watching foreign language films? 

You might not be familiar with the concept of Inclusive Design, however, the examples above are common applications of Inclusive Design in our everyday lives!

In this article, we’ll dive deeper into understanding the definition of Inclusive Design, its benefits, and the principles of Inclusive Design as outlined by Microsoft. 

Note: While Inclusive Design can be applied to optimize most products in life, the examples that Lollypop will provide in this article will focus on its applications in digital products such as Websites and Apps.

What is Inclusive Design?

Inclusive Design is an human-centered design approach that aims to create products, services, and experiences catering to the needs of a wide range of user groups, beyond the ideal personas. Typically, inclusiveness in Website/App design is often manifested by considering all user groups, regardless of their gender, geographic location, language, culture, or physical abilities.

To demonstrate the benefits of Inclusive Design, the Centre for Inclusive Design collaborated with Adobe and Microsoft to conduct a study in Australia on the topic: “The Benefits of Designing for Everyone Report“.

The results showed that up to 5 million Australians were unable to access certain products/services. This group includes people with disabilities, the elderly, or those excluded due to their geographic location, gender, or financial status. However, they have a total disposable income of more than $40 billion per year, which could provide a significant revenue source for businesses (if the products/services are better optimized for inclusivity).

According to the same study, when Education, Finance, or Retail products/services in Australia are optimized for Inclusive Design, they can:

• Bring an additional 228,000 university degrees, contributing to increased employment and wages up to $4.5 billion per year.
• Support more than 830,000 Australians to improve their financial capabilities.
• Help retailers increase their revenue by up to $4 billion.

You may want to read about: Understanding the role of culture in website and app localization

Inclusive Design vs Accessibility Design

The terms “Accessibility Design” and “Inclusive Design” are often used interchangeably, but in reality, Accessibility is just one of the elements that make up Inclusive Design.

Accessibility Design is an approach that design for disabled people, aiming to minimize barriers so that features and content can be easily accessed and used by people with hearing, mobility, vision, speech, or cognitive impairments.

Inclusive Design, on the other hand, has a much broader scope! In addition to creating accessible products for people with disabilities, Inclusive Design also considers factors such as age, culture, economic status, education, gender, weight, geographic location, language, and ethnicity to ensure that the design can meet the needs of everyone.

A product is designed with accessibility in mind can still cause some problems such as:

• Gender discrimination: Providing only Male/Female options in a registration form, without including options for LGBTQ+ individuals.
• Skin color bias: Using only images of white people to represent beautiful or successful people, excluding diverse representations.
• Body Shaming: Designing a fingerprint sensor based on the “average” fingerprint pattern, making it difficult for people who are overweight or have larger hands to use the device.

3 Key Principles of Inclusive Design

Microsoft consistently places a strong emphasis on the importance of Inclusive Design in its product development. According to the company, the reason why design solutions often lack comprehensiveness is that designers are typically influenced by their own inherent biases.

In 2016, Microsoft published a document called the “Inclusive 101 GuideBook” that outlines 3 key principles of Inclusive Design to raise awareness and promote inclusiveness in product design.

1. Recognize Exclusion

The first principle of Microsoft Inclusive Design states that to create a truly inclusive design, designers must first acknowledge their own biases and recognize the groups of people who are excluded as a result of those biases.

Most products on the market today are designed primarily with the “ideal” user and usage scenario in mind. This approach inadvertently excludes not just people with permanent disabilities like visual, hearing, or speech impairments, but also users who are using the product in different or challenging circumstances, such as: Driving a car, Having one arm in a cast, Watching a video in a noisy environment,…

2. Learn from Diversity 

The second principle highlights the importance of being aware of exclusion during user observation or interviews, allowing designers to create solutions that truly address real-world needs. For example, designers can perform simulation exercises such as “blindfolding” or “covering their ears” to better understand the challenges that people with disabilities experience when interacting with their surroundings.

However, it’s essential to understand that these simulations only offer a limited perspective of the user experience. In reality, numerous factors — such as abilities, experiences, emotions, and cultural contexts — influence how people interact with a product.

Examples of specific user groups:

• People with visual impairments: May require screen magnification, adjustable contrast, or text-to-speech functionality.
• People with dyslexia: Benefit from legible fonts, shorter text blocks, and the option to listen to content through voice narration.

3. Solve for One, Extend to Many 

The third principle advocates for focusing on solving the usability challenges of a specific user group, often those with disabilities or other significant barriers, as the path to enhancing the experience for a much broader range of users. In our everyday lives, we encounter countless examples that illustrate the power of this approach:

• Closed Captions: Initially developed to cater to the needs of individuals with hearing impairments, closed captions have become an invaluable feature for users in all sorts of noisy environments, from airports to hospitals.
• High-Contrast Displays: Designed primarily to assist the visually impaired community, high-contrast displays have also proved tremendously beneficial for people using devices in direct sunlight.

This principle also applies to a wide variety of features and devices, including remote controls, automatic doors, audiobooks, and more. By focusing on solving the specific usability challenges faced by “extreme” users, designers can often unlock solutions that end up greatly improving the experience for the masses.

Figure out more: 7 UI UX Design Principles for Mobile App Development

3 Essential Elements of Inclusive Design

Inclusive Design is a holistic approach that encompasses three essential elements: Accessibility, Usability, and Inclusivity. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, these three pillars work together to create products and experiences that cater to the diverse needs of all users. Let’s dive into each of these elements:

1. Accessibility 

First, when evaluating Accessibility, you can assess how user-friendly and inclusive your website or app is based on the following aspects:

• Accessibility of Text: Evaluate how readable and legible the text content is — including font size, color contrast, meaningful HTML structure (semantic structure), and the use of clear, simple language that can be easily understood by all types of users.
• Accessibility of Images, Audio & Video: Ensure that non-text content is accessible to everyone. This includes adding alternative text (alt text) for images, captions or subtitles for videos, and transcripts for audio content, so users with special needs can fully access and understand the information.
• Accessibility of Interactive Content & Transactions: Assess interactive elements such as forms, buttons, and navigation menus. Key criteria include providing clear labels, easy-to-understand error messages, support for keyboard navigation, and visible focus indicators to help users understand and interact with elements effectively.
• Accessibility of Technology: Check the system’s compatibility with assistive technologies, and ensure it helps users prevent and recover from errors easily. The goal is to enable all users to complete their tasks conveniently, accurately, and efficiently.

Additionally, you can refer to the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) — a framework that includes 13 guidelines and corresponding success criteria, helping designers systematically evaluate and improve accessibility throughout the design process.

Learn more about: How to optimize Mobile-first Responsive Design 

2. Usability

Next, to assess the usability of your product, you can conduct a UX Audit using two common methods:

• Usability Heuristics: This is a set of 10 design evaluation principles developed by Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich in 1990. In practice, designers often use Heuristics to review whether their interface design violates any usability principles to make timely adjustments and improve the overall user experience. 

Note: Research has shown that about 43% of issues identified through Usability Heuristics are not actual usability problems. Therefore, designers typically combine this method with Usability Testing to ensure a more accurate evaluation.

• Usability Testing: This method evaluates a product by observing real user behavior. Essentially, UX researchers ask participants to perform specific tasks while observing their interactions and asking follow-up questions to understand their motivations. These responses and behaviors are then recorded and analyzed to identify potential usability issues — forming the basis for design improvements.

3. Inclusivity

Finally, to enhance your product’s inclusivity, you can refer to the Inclusive Language Standards created by the Atlassian Design System.

Here are some improvement suggestions highlighted in the system:

• How you describe people: Address users in the way they want to be addressed.
  For example: instead of saying “special person,” use “person with a disability” — or more specifically, “visually impaired person” or “hearing-impaired person.”  Likewise, instead of “the elderly,” use “older adults” or “seniors.”
• Language use: Avoid terms or phrases that may unintentionally exclude or stereotype underrepresented groups.
  For example: Replace “women and children” with “everyone.” Avoid assumptions such as “people from rural areas are less tech-savvy” or “young people are always tech experts.”
• Designing for inclusivity: Ensure that both tone and visuals reflect diversity across cultures, genders, and age groups.
  For example: When illustrating user groups, include people of different skin tones, ages, body types, and clothing styles — rather than limiting visuals to “young, urban, office workers.”

Talking about language, you may not want to miss: How we localize UX content in Asia Pacific Region

Final thought

This overview from Lollypop has provided a comprehensive understanding of Inclusive Design. It’s important to remember that creating a truly inclusive design for every single user in the world is an immensely challenging, if not impossible, goal.

The key is to identify your target audience, set realistic Inclusive UX goals, and establish milestones for each stage of the design process. This strategic approach will be the most effective way to create an inclusive product that caters to the diverse needs of your users.

Keep in mind: Designing for inclusivity is an ongoing journey, not a one-time effort. It requires continuous testing, evaluation, and product refinement to ensure that the design remains accessible, usable, and inclusive over time. 

By embracing this iterative mindset and focusing on the specific needs of your target audience, you can make meaningful progress toward crafting products and experiences that empower and engage a wide range of users.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) 

1. What is the Importance of Inclusive Design in UX Design?

Inclusive Design is crucial in ensuring that products and services can be effectively used by everyone, regardless of their gender, location, language, culture, or physical abilities. By prioritizing inclusivity, we can create a more equitable and respectful digital landscape that empowers all users to engage and participate fully.

2. How to Create an Inclusive UX Design?

To create inclusive design products, we need to follow a clear and structured process. First of all, we need to identify the following factors:

• Who are we designing for, and what is the usage scenario?
• What is important to these groups?
• What are Internal resources and limitations (manpower, time, cost)? With these insights, you can then follow a standard design process from Research, Design, Prototyping, Testing, and finally Development. Czech out the Agile Design Process that Lollypop applies as an example!

3. What are Inclusive Design examples in Practice

Some examples of Inclusive Design in practice include features such as Speech-to-Text or Audiobooks to support people with visual impairments, High-contrast colors for people with color blindness, Customizable language/font size features to support users in different geographical areas as well as those with vision problems,…

4. What are the differences between Inclusive Design vs Universal Design?

Inclusive Design aims to create “one-size-fits-one” solutions – personalized for each individual with differences in ability, culture, gender, age, understanding,… Universal Design aims to design “one-size-fits-all” solutions – i.e. creating products and services that everyone can use without the need for special adjustment or adaptation.

5.  What are the differences between Accessibility and Inclusive Design?

The main difference between Inclusive Design and Accessibility Design lies in the scope and design goals. While inclusive design solutions aim to create flexibility and personalization for each individual with differences in ability, culture, gender, age, and understanding,… Accessibility Design aims to “Design for Disability” which focuses on ensuring that products and services can be used by people with disabilities, meeting accessibility standards and regulations, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) principles.