How to get started?

Every design decision has the potential to include or exclude customers. Successful inclusive design requires informed decision-making at the concept stage, because it can become prohibitively expensive to make changes later on.

This section first states four fundamental questions of concept design, then describes how these questions are answered through exploration, creation, evaluation and project management. The principles of inclusive concept generation are outlined, followed by a detailed description of the specific activities that should be performed. These detailed descriptions can be navigated using the map of key activities.

The activities described should be integrated into the early stages of an existing development process. They represent a basic set that should be considered the minimum required to design inclusively. Completing these activities delivers a lead concept, complete with evidence of its potential to satisfy the user and business needs. Subsequent design activities will be required to take this concept to market, but these are not covered here.

In order to implement the activities described here, read the rest of this page and then follow the further instructions at the bottom.

Four fundamental questions of concept design are:

1. What are the needs?
2. How can the needs be met?
3. How well are the needs met?
4. What should we do next?

The diagram opposite shows how these questions are answered through successive cycles of exploration, creation, evaluation, guided by project management.

Activities within project management need to determine when to advance from concept development to the next stage in your process, based on the following criteria:

• If the needs are not well understood …… more exploration is required
• If the concepts are not able to meet the needs ……more creativity is required
• If there is insufficient evidence …… more evaluation is needed
• If you are confident in all of the above …… move on to the next stage in your process

1. Repeat to refine. Successive cycles of exploration, creation and evaluation should generate a clearer understanding of the needs, better solutions to meet these needs, and stronger evidence that the needs are met.
2. Test early and test often. Perform quick tests with rough prototypes, early enough in the process that meaningful change is still possible.
3. Strive for simplicity. Simplicity is powerful but elusive, it requires a clear and succinct vision of what the product is about. Ask "can you do it with less?".
4. It's normal to be different. In addition, it's normal to want different things and do things in different ways. Understand diversity amongst your customers. Understanding disability is only one part of understanding diversity.
5. Consider the whole user journey. Satisfying user goals involves designing for end-to-end journeys that takes place in real-world contexts.
6. Detail matters. Dig deeper to uncover and address the things that people really do, really want, and really need.
7. More than just users. Consider the needs of stakeholders such as regulators, shareholders, manufacturers, retailers, purchasers, installers, supporters, and maintainers.
8. Challenge assumptions. It's easy to get stuck in thinking that the way things have been done is the only way they could be done. List your assumptions and ask "why?".
9. Let ideas breathe. Give wacky ideas the chance to become great ideas.
10. Prove it. Complement opinions with evidence.
11. Wear different hats. Be creative, be critical and know when to switch.

The starting point for inclusive concept generation is to review your current status and plan the next steps. The following questions help this activity:

• What have we got?
• What are we missing?
• What resources are available?
• What are the deadlines?
• What are the risks?
• What should we do next?

Reviewing and planning should continue throughout the project, monitoring the current level of confidence in:

• The understanding of the needs of users and other stakeholders
• Concept solutions that satisfy those needs
• Evidence that these solutions meet those needs

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you review progress and plan next steps

The product goals state the factors that will make the product different and better. Determining and refining the goals of the product underpins the whole process of inclusive concept generation, as it provides focus and direction for all subsequent activities. The following questions can help this activity:

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• What are the big issues?
• What is the proposed solution… and why is it different?

Reducing the problem statement and solution summaries down to one or two sentences helps to capture the real essence of what the product is aiming to achieve. These statements should be outlined at the beginning of the project, and updated and refined throughout concept development.

It is easy to get stuck in the detail and find it difficult to see the way forward. Such difficulties can often be resolved by referring back to, or clarifying the goals for the product.

While delivering the lead concept to market, the clear statement of product goals should be used to prevent subsequent decisions and compromises from eroding the concept's strength.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you refine the product goals

The business case demonstrates the product's potential for profitability. Market success requires the product to be delivered at the right price point and profit margin. Achieving such commercial viability requires ensuring fit with the brand, technical feasibility, manufacturability, differentiation against competitors and more.

In order to build a business case determine the factors that impact profitability, such as:

• Reduced cost of no fault found warranty returns
• Increased brand loyalty
• Widening the scope of the target market

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you build the business case. Further Business case materials are also available.

Ensuring common understanding is about having:

1. A shared vision of the product goals
2. Alignment with an agreed plan
3. A common terminology

The first two have already been covered. To address the third, it is important to seek out and resolve the communication difficulties that can easily occur due to the diverse range of backgrounds amongst different stakeholders.

Acronyms and jargon benefit from being precise but may not be understood (e.g. Wi-Fi, http://, 3G). Conversely everyday words may appear to be understood but can easily be misinterpreted (e.g. user, client, customer, design, and test). A glossary of terms can provide a simple but valuable solution to these issues.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to produce a glossary of terms.

A stakeholder is a key player who has something to gain or lose from the product. Missing the needs of any of the stakeholders could result in the product failing. A stakeholder map helps to identify all the different stakeholders, and understand the relationships between them. Stakeholders have an impact across the development, sale, use and support of a product.

The purpose of a stakeholder map is to show all the key players who will contribute to the product being successful. This helps to capture the needs list, especially ensuring that both user and business needs are considered.

Generating personas can help to bring stakeholders to life, which is especially useful for stakeholders that the design team find are difficult to relate to.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you create a stakeholder map

User observation is about uncovering what people really want, what they really need, and what they really do. Observing actual behaviour is vital because people often struggle to clearly articulate their real needs, due to:

• Poor awareness of their own habits and practices
• Filtering opinions to what they think you want to hear
• Inability to imagine what could be

Focusing on real user needs helps the design team avoid overloading the product with every feature that the design team wants, or think the users want.

User observation helps to describe user journeys, capture the needs list, and refine the product goals.

User observation should be complemented with other methods to uncover user needs, such as: interviews, questionnaires, diary methods, focus groups etc. Anthropometric, ergonomic and capability data can also supplement user observation to provide insight into user diversity. See the User capabilities section for further information.

Further information on User methods and Ethics are also available from the Designing with people website.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you observe users

Personas are character descriptions of key users, usually accompanied with a photograph. The purposes of persona descriptions are to:

• Provide a method of summarising user diversity, which also includes physical, social and cultural contextual factors
• Enable the project team to stand in the shoes of their users
• Focus the design team towards resolving real user needs, rather than trying to add in as many features as possible
• Assist the evaluation of concepts and ideas

Persona descriptions should be representative of larger groups of users, as discovered through observing users. Personas are particularly relevant to the business if they are created to represent different market segments.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you generate personas. An additional Example set of personas is also available.

A user journey is a step by step description of the product being used, together with the steps that occur immediately before and afterwards. The primary purpose is to help ensure that the needs list comprehensively covers an end-to-end user journey.

A user journey can be described by writing down each task step, and is further enhanced if photos are added. User journeys should ideally be constructed by observing users .

When specifying a particular user journey it is important to record assumptions regarding the product, the user, their goal, location, and the initial state of anything that would affect the user journey. Describing user journeys often leads to refining the product goals.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you describe user journeys.

A needs list is used here to refer to a comprehensive and categorised list of the user and business needs that the design solution should satisfy. Each need can be captured with a statement similar to:

“As a <insert role description> I need <insert need description> so that <insert reason>”

The purposes of the needs list are to:

• Provide a link between the requirements of the design project and the needs of the users
• Enable prioritisation of needs, based on the outcomes that they enable or prevent

The stakeholder map, personas and user journeys provide stimulus to help ensure that the needs list is complete and correct. At the highest level, the needs list should be able to answer questions like “what constitutes success of the business” and “what do the users want to achieve”. These high-level questions should also tie in with refining the product goals.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you capture the needs list.

Stimulating ideas is about setting up a creative environment in order to break out of established ways of thinking. The human brain is extremely good at recognising patterns. However this fixation with patterns can impede lateral thinking, and most creative tools use techniques to help thought processes break away from existing solutions.

In the early stages of idea generation the creative environment needs to:

• List and challenge assumptions
• Initially emphasise quantity of ideas over quality
• Suspend critical judgement to allow ideas to develop
• Build ideas on other ideas
• Encourage wacky ideas: the best ideas can originate from ones that were impossible, impractical, expensive or useless
• Group ideas to draw out key themes
• Record all your ideas (clearly)
• Produce an initial prioritisation of ideas using anonymous voting by relevant stakeholders
• Use evaluation activities to inspire further creativity

To help with idea generation, many tools are freely available online, such as www.mycoted.com

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you record ideas.

Developing concepts is the process of combining together different ideas to make a complete solution that could satisfy all of the user and business needs, as defined within the needs list.

Although closely linked with making prototypes, the primary purpose of concept development is to consider how different ideas may be combined. In contrast, the primary purpose of making prototypes is to enable testing, refinement and communication.

Concepts can be described according to the ideas that they combine together. A systematic approach to concept development first involves grouping the underlying ideas that are related. A starting set of concepts can be created by selecting one idea from each group, either through purposeful selection, or randomly.

The set of concepts can then be improved by substituting, combining or eliminating different ideas from each of the groups. Grouping ideas has the additional benefit of identifying areas where few ideas have been generated, which helps to stimulate further ideas.

Concepts should initially be prioritised using an agreed set of criteria and in consultation with relevant stakeholders.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you develop concepts.

Making prototypes involves producing physical or virtual demonstrations of a concept. The fidelity of the prototype should match its objectives, which can include:

• Demonstrating technical feasibility
• Enabling evaluation and refinement
• Communicating the potential look and feel
• Simulating how an interaction would occur

Prototypes can include sketches, or models constructed with paper, cardboard, foam or computer software. Interactions can also be prototyped using combinations of these methods, together with someone who manipulates the materials to stimulate the behaviour of a fully working system.

Prototypes are often thought of as expensive, high fidelity demonstration of the finished concept. However quick tests with rough prototypes can be used to gain vital feedback before all the important decisions are finalised.

Full screen PowerPoint presentations can provide a surprisingly effective method for simulating a user interaction with software. Parts of the interface that the user can click on can hyperlink to another slide, which shows the effect of this action. An early interactive PowerPoint prototype of this section is available to download.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you store images of prototypes

Agreeing criteria is the process for determining all the things that matter for a product to be successful. This supports objective assessments of how well different concepts meet stakeholders' needs. A starting set of assessment criteria are summarised below and described in full within the Integrated design log.

• Utility
• Usability
• Desirability
• Affordability
• Technical viability
• Compatibility and legality
• Sustainability
• Commercial viability

A small number of headline criteria aids clarity when assessing different concepts, so it is likely that each criterion will need to be defined in terms of a number of more specific measures. For example usability may be composed of measures covering time taken, error rate and satisfaction. Headline criteria can also be used on there own for quick and initial evaluation during the early prioritisation of ideas and concepts.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you agree criteria.

Testing with experts is about a range of relevant experts using their skill and knowledge to systematically judge and test concepts against the agreed criteria. Expert judgement is needed because it may be difficult to formally test how well initial concepts could ultimately perform against the different criteria.

A multi-disciplinary team is needed in order to make judgements against all the different criteria. This ensures the complete set of criteria are appropriately represented and prioritised.

The initial descriptions of the user journeys should be extended into a comprehensive task analysis in order to provide a framework for the expert appraisal. This task analysis should cover all aspects of the user life-cycle, including purchase, installation, use, maintenance and disposal. For each task step the concept performance should be evaluated against the relevant criteria. Personas can also be used to help assist the evaluation from different user perspectives.

The comprehensive task analysis and insight gained from expert appraisal should be used to set the scope for testing with users and estimating exclusion .

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you test with experts. Other tools that can also assist expert appraisals include the Cambridge simulation glasses and Impairment simulator software.

Testing with users should objectively evaluate whether they can use something, how quickly they can use it and how much they like using it. Early user testing is vital because it is hard to judge user performance.

A comprehensive task analysis of the user journey and testing with experts should be used to help choose who should be recruited, and what tasks they should perform.

Further information on User methods and Ethics are also available from the Designing with people website.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you test with users.

Estimating exclusion identifies the task steps where a product or prototype places the highest demands on the following users capabilities:

• Vision
• Hearing
• Thinking
• Reach & Dexterity
• Mobility

This process highlights the causes of frustration, difficulty and exclusion for a diverse range of users so that they can be priortised and addressed.

The Integrated design log contains a grid that allows you to assess the demand for each task step against each user capability. Reducing capability demands (while achieving the same features or functions) should lead to a more satisfying product that can be used by a wider percentage of the population.

Estimating exclusion should be complemented by testing with experts and testing with users. In particular, user testing helps the assessor understand how to score the demand levels of each task.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank template to help you perform an initial estimation of exclusion. A more detailed Exclusion calculator is also available.

Presenting evidence draws together, summarises and communicates all of the evidence that has been generated from the evaluation activities. This should drive the objective choice of the lead concept.

The Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools) contains a blank grid that allows you to assess a range of concepts against each of the agreed criteria.

Having read the four questions of concept design, understood the principles of inclusive concept generation, and read the further detail on each of the key activities, you are now ready to:

• Check an existing development process
• Perform the key activities within a design project

Instructions for checking your existing design process

Download the Design process checklist (within Inclusive design tools) to determine whether your existing process is missing any of the key activities described here.

Instructions for performing the key activities within a design project

1. Download the Integrated design log (within Inclusive design tools)
2. Using this integrated design log, start by reviewing progress and planning next steps
3. Perform the activities that you planned, and use the integrated design log to summarise the key outputs from each activity
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3, until you have sufficient evidence that The four questions of concept design have been answered