What Moments Matter in Your Inclusive Design Journey?

The instant we decide to design inclusively.?

By Cindy Nguyen

In part 1,?Why Inclusive Design Matters Right Now, I ended with?we can do this – and we can. So?many moments matter in your journey to inclusive design. Take a step back and take a hard look?at how?you are?creating products and services today. Are you truly understanding the unique?needs of your users? Too often our work is driven by limited resources, not enough time, or?budget to even think about adding more factors to our projects.?If?we?don't?take the time to think?about inclusivity and accessibility, the products?we are?working so hard to develop will fail to?achieve their full potential.

We must prioritize inclusive approaches in our work.?It’s?an essential first step to improving?equity and access to those you serve and interact with.?It’s?what each person expects and?ultimately results in a better experience for everyone.?

“We now need to align our programs, technologies and systems to the customer journey, and not?align the customer to our systems,” Andy Lewandowski stated in?Designing a Government for the?People, in his role as digital experience advisor to the Federal CIO in the Office of Management?and Budget.”

Customer experience and inclusive design are a beautiful marriage of principles that go together.?If?you have?delighted a customer with an inclusive experience,?you have?created an experience?that allowed them to access your service or use your product without feeling stuck or frustrated.?You made it simple, accessible, and provided inclusive language.?

Whether?you are?just embarking on a new journey or knee deep in a project right now, you can?start to integrate inclusive design principles into your work. Here’s how.?

Start with the Right Mindset

Have an inclusive mindset from the beginning. Though it may seem obvious, this often?is not?part?of most teams’ priorities. To exercise this muscle, begin identifying inclusivity as part of your?objectives, goals, vision, and measurements.?

In the initial stages when?you are?defining your requirements, conducting research, reviewing?data, and building the customer journey, be intentional about thinking inclusively (this really?applies to every stage in a project). Research is a great place to obtain different perspectives. In?your initial budget forecast, include funds to pay for participant engagement. This will help with?specific demographics that may have economic limits, or specific audiences?you are?targeting?based on representation needs.?

Be intentional about what?you are?you doing, while?you are?doing it. While you may not feel?confident, or maybe terrified at the possibility of making a mistake, know that starting with small?changes is progress and?it will?get easier.?Lean on your team, trusted advisors, coaches and?friends to help you too.?

As you define what?you are?designing, be sure to explicitly identify how your design will include?accessibility standards. Avoid waiting to address accessibility at the end, as?it will?introduce?technical debt and force rework and redesign. If?you are?brand new to or need a refresh on?accessibility requirements, a great place to start is with GSA’s?Section 508 training. The benefits?of starting with accessibility standards is that?you have?already begun to think about users with?different abilities.?

In addition to GSA’s accessibility training, there are other publicly available resources to help as?you get started. The Digital Experience Council created a?go-live checklist for federal websites.?This checklist follows the nine categories outlined in various federal web policies: accessibility,?analytics, content, design and user experience, governance, privacy, search, security, and trust. It?outlines the criteria for each category and can help ensure?you are?meeting the requirements for?each.?

Think about Your Team’s Unconscious Bias

Take a moment to recognize that everyone, including you and your team, has unconscious bias.?Oxford Languages defines bias as “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group?compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.” This bias?does not?necessarily?have mal intent;?it is?informed by an individual’s unique experiences.?

It?doesn’t?matter if?you have?been working on the same team for a long time or on a completely?new team. The opportunity for unconscious bias to impact your design still exists. If?you have?been working with the same team members and not reaching out to others outside of your team?for feedback,?you are?likely missing an opportunity for diverse perspectives. Be intentional in?your discussions about your work and conduct retrospectives to engage in a safe space with?honest feedback. Did you and the team get diverse perspectives and feedback on the designs,?imagery, content, or prototype? Why not? Identify these blind spots so that you can avoid them?moving forward.?

Build a Safe Space and Diverse Teams

Make it a point for you or your team members to reach out to others for input and insights into?your designs – a range of perspectives outside your team’s point of view is important to obtain.?You and your team will gain important feedback and learn from different and diverse?perspectives. Think about leveraging design sprints – two weeks dedicated to a specific design?activity – for research in areas not previously explored. For example, if your first sprint was?dedicated to users with loss of hearing, your next sprint might focus on users with light?sensitivity. Consider using internal employee resource groups (ERGs) to test your ideas and?prototypes or gain feedback from sources?you have?not reached previously.?

It is?also important to build in a safe space for giving and receiving feedback. Consider different?methods to receive feedback to make sure everyone is comfortable, as it can be difficult for?some people to speak up more freely than others. Provide options to those who are giving?feedback, such as an anonymous survey or one-on-one sessions. Sharing the value of how their feedback will help to improve?the experience of underrepresented users is also key.

Looking at your team itself is also a good practice. Is your team diverse in expertise,?experience, and backgrounds? Diverse teams provide several advantages such as tackling?complex problems that result in creative solutions and better decision-making. A?study?reported by?Cloverpop?found that diverse teams?make better decisions 87% of the time.

Set the Right Goals and Objectives

Clearly state your goals and objectives so you can hold yourself and the team accountable for?designing a more inclusive product, service, and experience.?

In the book?Build for Everyone, Annie Jean-Baptiste, the head of product inclusion at Google,?stresses the importance of defining your end objectives and key results. The goal is to define?– what do you want to accomplish in terms of product inclusion? John?Doerr, who authored?Measure What Matters, a handbook for setting and achieving audacious goals, created a?formula for setting goals: ?

I will (objective) as measured by (set of key results).?

Here is an example of an inclusive objective and key result:?

• I will?design a simplified application process for one government benefit?as measured by?testing a prototype with 100 potential users to confirm they agree that the application?was designed for them and easy to use, based on their different abilities.??

In this objective and key result, I am focusing on a simple experience that frustrates many?people today – completing a form for a government benefit. In many cases, government?forms have complicated instructions, take too long to complete, contain confusing?unnecessary steps, and ask for information that people may find exclusionary. To meet the?stated objective, the design team will need to think about ways to include language that can?simplify a form or how to provide information in a way that reduces burden to the applicant.?The best part of the planning and working towards this inclusive objective is that many more?will ultimately benefit from the outcome.?

Review Your Objectives Regularly

Throughout your design process, perform checks against your objective and key result and be?clear and direct about what you and the team want to achieve, no matter where you start.?These checkpoints are an excellent place to ask the following questions:

• Who might be overlooked or excluded?
• Does more than one language need to be included?
• Have we considered diversity dimensions such as age, education, gender identity, marital?status, race and intersectionality or overlapping identities and dimensions?
• Will this product, service, or experience work for people with limited resources??

Collect Feedback Even as You’re Building?

Once you start designing, building wireframes, prototypes, and iterating, check in on how your design is resonating with others. You may want to begin by?testing internally first to confirm that you are meeting the requirements and objectives. When the product is ready to test with a broader audience, identify and target a diverse representation of users with varying levels of intersectionality (i.e., not just women – but it could be a woman with hearing loss, age 20, Asian-Hispanic, in a lower economic class).?? ??

For digitally-focused products, consider whether your design works with multiple input modes such as speech, touchscreen, and keyboard. Does it work well with a slower internet connection? Is the desktop experience comparable to the experience someone would have on a mobile device? Does the product make sense using assistive technologies like a screen reader? These questions and more are helpful to think about in terms of abilities and access to technology.?

For any project, review language. Are you using universal phrases and gender-neutral language such as “they” instead of “he or she”? Review content with several people with different perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds to help identify idioms or expressions that could be offensive.?

Document Your Findings and Share Them?

Throughout the process, document your feedback. This is fuel to help educate your team and learn from the findings. Documenting your findings provides an educational moment for everyone. You and your team will be able to gain a deeper understanding of what is or isn’t working with the design, functionality, language, imagery, and general accessibility of the product. The same goes for any checkpoint in the process where feedback is obtained.??

Add Inclusive Design to In-Flight Projects?

Have you already started your project? That’s ok, be creative. You can still identify ways to enhance your objectives and add inclusive design principles. Take small steps at first to help you and your team not feel too overwhelmed. Perhaps start by planning a single inclusive design sprint, giving team members the space to create alternate solutions with inclusive design goals in mind.??

Keep Iterating and Improving?

By applying these principles, you and your team are demonstrating your commitment to designing products and services that meet the needs of all users! You are actively incorporating accessibility standards and constantly learning from your users. More people are delighted by and use your product with ease, which not only feels good, but it also helps ensure your product is reaching its maximum potential!??

In the next edition in this series, we will discuss how to launch and amplify your products and services in a way that is truly inclusive. We will also explore the importance of maintaining and iterating on your product and service using inclusive design principles.?