Becoming inclusive by default

Building inclusion into your practice is tricky but benefits everyone

Each of us carries our own unique mix of identities, beliefs and circumstances that shapes how we interact with the world. These can change from one situation to the next, and shift throughout our lives. That’s why inclusive design benefits everyone, and why it’s important.?

Take video subtitles, for instance. They don’t just improve the experience for people who are deaf or have hearing loss. The option to use captions helps those in places where it’s better to read than listen, like very noisy places (a factory) or very quiet ones (a library). And some people simply prefer them: research has shown that more than half of Gen Z uses subtitles regularly .

Inclusively-designed services and products make things easier for people in more situational experiences too, like moments of heightened stress. So designing with this in mind is crucial in sectors like healthcare and financial services, where people are often required to make critical decisions while feeling vulnerable, but relevant in every service.

The flip side of this is that a poorly-designed service can cause real harm – being unable to complete a form, or facing questions that make you feel disparaged or lead you to relive a past trauma. The controversial Personal Independence Payments (PIP) system in England & Wales is a case in point, having been the source of ‘pain, humiliation and failed claims’ .?

The public and third sectors have been cultivating different approaches to inclusion for decades. The private sector is now catching up, as failing to consider inclusion not only causes harm but affects the bottom line. Increasing regulation around how we design for vulnerable customers (such as the FCA Consumer Duty) is adding even more pressure to prioritise inclusion.

Inclusion by default

We believe every business should aim to become ‘inclusive by default’. That means embedding inclusion throughout, rather than treating it as an add-on. However, it’s important to recognise the challenges of reaching that point. Making the shift from viewing inclusivity as part of the design process (or not considering at all) to it being a common cultural mindset throughout your business is a slow process, because:

• The field is constantly changing, and the way people engage with the subject is highly personal. This means what works today might have to change tomorrow, or what resonates for one person might not sit right with another.?
• Inclusion requires integration across services and business functions. It doesn’t work unless the whole organisation gets behind it and moves in the same direction, with the systems and structures in place to support it.
• Responsibility for the organisation becoming inclusive must be shared by everyone, from its most senior leaders to those on the front line.

Without strategic coordination and direction, and without a genuine commitment to inclusion, it’s easy to see how such a cultural shift can fail. That commitment must be more than just in principle; it requires an active investment of time and energy to ensure inclusion doesn’t get sidelined when other work takes priority.

Laying the groundwork

Having recognised inclusion is vital, and that it’s a challenge to properly embed it – how can you actually go about creating a culture that values inclusion? At a strategic level, it has to be embedded in your core model and values.

Start by clearly defining what you mean. There’s a misconception that inclusion means designing for everyone and every possible outcome. This is impossible and can immediately feel overbearing. It’s really about creating products and services for the people who need them. For financial firms, the FCA has been explicit in calling for “products and services designed to meet the needs of a clearly defined target market”. At Nile, we define inclusion as the idea that anyone who needs to engage with, participate in or benefit from a product or service can do so effectively. This works at any point in the design process – in a meeting, a research interview, or when designing a product or service.

Practically, it’s important to take the fear out of doing ‘the wrong thing’:

• Go into the design process led by curiosity and open to correction. Put participants in a position of control, listening to what they say, letting them share their lived experiences and define their own needs.
• Reflect on what’s been shared by your target audience, and how you can build a service or product that meets those needs.
• More generally, take the time as a team to reflect on your biases – we all have them – and build a common picture that can work cross-service and across hierarchies. Doing this cultivates the shared understanding and shared responsibility that is so vital to an inclusive culture.?

Sustaining the change

Make it part of your practice to engage in continuous research with diverse and underrepresented groups (again, for the financial sector, this is at the core of the Consumer Duty). Ensure you know what data you’re looking for, both in order to maintain an up-to-date picture, and to ensure the insights you get are useful and manageable. This research will not only help you stay on top of situational changes, but replace opinion and guesswork with informed tools that paint a clear picture of your target market’s diverse needs.

Benchmark inclusion: see what others are achieving, and set realistic targets for your own organisation. Implement governance and structures to hold yourself accountable, such as having measurement and evaluation frameworks in place. This will help you move away from a piecemeal approach to a centralised, integrated one.

Remember this is cultural change, so it will take time; it has to involve education and training and internal comms, as well as a rethink of your processes, to ensure inclusion is truly embedded. Creating toolkits, how-to guides and documented standards can help your colleagues know how to embed inclusion in their work.

This is a journey that requires commitment, continuous learning, and adaptation. By defining inclusion clearly, embracing curiosity, engaging in ongoing reflection and sustaining the change you can ensure inclusion is no longer an add-on but embedded at the heart of everything you do.

Thanks to our Senior Service Designer, Katherine Snow , for her insights and helping put together this guide.