Why do inclusive design?

The primary focus of the majority of new product development projects is time and budget. However, delivering the most commercially successful product can conflict with this focus.

There is often the perception that good design takes longer and costs more than bad design. Indeed that design is something we can choose not to do and thereby reduce cost and timescales. In reality, the true costs of bad design (such as warranty returns from unsatisfied customers) emerge later on in the product life cycle, and have the potential to cause irreparable damage to the brand image through customer frustration.

The following pages aim to demonstrate that an inclusive design approach results in better products with greater user satisfaction and greater commercial success whilst reducing product development risk.

The pitch for inclusive design is presented according to the worldwide case, the company case and the project case. A template presentation is provided to help you convince others of the business case for inclusive design.

On this page:

The demographics of the developed world are changing; longer life expectancies and a reduced birth rate are resulting in an increased proportion of older people within the adult population.

This is leading to a reduction in the Potential Support Ratio (PSR), which is the number of people aged 15-64 who could support one person aged over 65.

• In 1950 the worldwide PSR was 12:1
• In 2000 the PSR was 9:1
• by 2050 it will be 4:1 globally and 2:1 in the developed world

Maintaining quality of life and independent living for this ageing population is increasingly important and will soon be an absolute necessity for all countries in both the developed and developing world.

With increasing age comes a decline in capability, yet also increased wealth and free time. Where previous generations accepted that capability loss and an inability to use products and services came hand in hand, the baby-boomer generation now approaching retirement are less likely to tolerate products that they cannot use, especially if due to unnecessary demands on their capabilities.

Typically, people are viewed as being either able-bodied or disabled, with products being designed for one category or the other. In fact capability varies continuously, and reducing the capability demands of a product results in more people being able to use the product as well as increased satisfaction for those who previously had difficulty.

When the capability demand of a product exceeds that of the user – they can no longer use it. Often this is seen as the person’s fault for having a poor memory, reduced strength or imperfect vision; inclusive design places the responsibility with product designers to ensure that the capability levels required to use a product are as low as possible. There are several ways to achieve this goal without compromising the features or aesthetics for the more able population, this will be elaborated in further detail in the Getting started section.

Ever advancing technology leads to products with ever more features, yet this wealth of features can transfer focus away from a product that is actually useful and usable. Typical household products such as microwaves often have a bewildering array of dials, codes and buttons, so users end up trying to remember the precise action sequence required to achieve one desirable function, and simply ignoring the rest.

The foundation of a successful design is a focus on simplicity, together with an understanding of what users actually want from the product. Philips (2004) found that only 23% of Americans use the full range of features on most new technology products. 65% of Americans say “they have lost interest in purchasing a technology product because it seemed too complex to setup or operate”. The fact that some products can be set-up and operated easily has raised the bar for what’s possible. Ease of use is so important to the public (76%) that it is now equal in importance to the dimension of “high quality”.

References

Philips (2004) The USA Philips Index: Calibrating the Convergence of Healthcare, Lifestyle and Technology. A web-based survey of 1500 internet users aged 18-75 www.usa.philips.com

Superior company performance

The key test of the value of design from a business perspective is whether a design aware company outperforms its competitors who are not. The Design Council (2005) showed that an index of design aware companies outperformed the FTSE All share by over 200% in both bull and bear markets over a 10 year period.

There are clearly other indicators of good management apart from design, however, the evidence that ‘good design is good business’ is compelling.

Corporate level risk management

Design is not optional. It is an inevitable consequence of specifying or developing a product or service. The question is whether your design is good, bad or indifferent. Good design helps to manage development risk, asking

• Are you building the right products (or services)?
• Are you building the product right?

These two questions are fundamental to understanding and mitigating risk. It is imperative that the business at a strategic level empowers those developing and managing products to use design effectively to reap the benefit at a corporate level.

References

Design Council (2005) Design Index: The impact of design on stock market performance. Available from www.design-council.org.uk. Image copyright Design Council, adapted with permission.

Good design brings a number of benefits to a project.

• Project teams have a clear focus and objective
• Design decisions are made in an informed and decisive manner, without relying on the project team’s ‘best guess’

The cost of change increases exponentially throughout the design and development lifecycle; hence these costs can be minimised by ensuring a thorough understanding of the real user and business needs at the start of the design process, and correctly translating these needs into an appropriate requirements specification.

Design decisions based on appropriate insight into user needs are likely to carry less risk, and ultimately lead to

• Clear differentiation from the competition
• Customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Market success

This presentation has been created as a resource to help inclusive design practitioners or supporters present a description of what inclusive design is (at the highest level), why it is becoming increasingly important in society and why it is valuable for organisations to adopt inclusive design principles.

We would encourage you to use as many or as few of these slides as needed in your presentations. Notes have been created for each of the slides to help indicate the pitch that is intended to accompany the slides and images

The general contents of the presentation are:

• Examples of the diversity of the world
• Inclusive design as a response to diversity
• Why inclusive design is important from the perspective of general product and population trends/demographics
• The commercial imperative for inclusive design and a single example of the success it can bring

You can download the business case presentation (MS PowerPoint 2003) and modify it for your own purposes. We have also made an amateur video of the presentation being given.