Industrial design is the process of creating products that are functional, aesthetic, and user-friendly. But how do you make sure that your products are accessible for all users, regardless of their abilities, preferences, or contexts? In this article, you will learn some principles and methods that can help you design more inclusive and adaptable industrial products.
The first step to make your products accessible is to understand who your users are, what they need, and how they interact with your products. You can use various research methods, such as interviews, surveys, observations, and personas, to gather insights about your users' characteristics, goals, motivations, and challenges. You should also consider the diversity of your users, including their age, gender, culture, language, physical and cognitive abilities, and environmental conditions. By understanding your users, you can empathize with their perspectives and design products that meet their expectations and requirements.
It is difficult to design a product for everyone. Find a specific problem, find a niche. And from there guide the process. Empathy is key, designers need to understand the user's needs more than they know them themselves. Users usually don't know exactly what they need but what it's hurting them. Real-time observation, reflection about the user's verbal and physical expresions and active listening are important when meeting with them.
Universal design is a concept that aims to make products usable and beneficial for the widest range of users possible, without the need for adaptation or specialization. This concept is based on seven principles that can guide your design decisions and evaluations, such as equitable use, flexibility in use, simple and intuitive use, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, and size and space for approach and use. For example, products should be appealing and accessible to people with different abilities and preferences, accommodate a variety of user choices and preferences, be easy to understand and operate regardless of experience or language skills, communicate information effectively using different modes of presentation, minimize hazards from unintended actions, reduce physical effort required to use them, and provide enough space for users to reach and manipulate them.
Accessibility guidelines and standards are sets of rules and recommendations that help you ensure your products comply with legal and ethical requirements. They also provide best practices and examples of how to design products that are accessible for different types of users and situations. Examples of these guidelines and standards include the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which provide criteria and techniques for making web-based products and services accessible; the ISO 9241 series, which cover various aspects of ergonomics and human factors in interactive system design; and the ANSI/BIFMA standards, which outline performance and safety requirements for office furniture and equipment.
Unfortunately Wcag compliance has not reached to manufacturing factory floors. We have to enforce ADA standards to the manufacturers so that people with disabilities can contribute with operating plc other machines !
The final step to make your products accessible is to test and evaluate them with real users and in real contexts. You should involve users with diverse abilities and backgrounds in your testing and evaluation process, and use various methods, such as usability testing, user feedback, and accessibility audits, to measure and improve your products' accessibility. You should also test and evaluate your products throughout the design process, not just at the end, to identify and address any accessibility issues early and effectively. By testing and evaluating your products, you can validate your design assumptions, learn from your users' experiences, and make your products more accessible and satisfying for all users.