Category: Design tools

The Inclusive Design Toolkit has proved to be an invaluable tool for designers since it’s inception in 2007. The updated version includes the exclusion calculator which shows how many potential users might be excluded. This makes it a great toolkit for designers in any field.

The news bulletin from the Engineering Design Centre that produces the Toolkit and other resources has information on:

• • The tenth anniversary of the Inclusive Design Toolkit and what has been achieved in that time.
  • New exclusion calculator for better assessment for vision and dexterity.
  • E-commerce image guidelines for mobile phone viewing.
  • Impairment simulator software for vision and hearing is now very handy for showing how vision impairments look and sound.

The Engineering Design Centre has made great progress in inclusive design. It began by working with business to show the benefits of including as many people as possible in the design. The design team continue to break new ground keeping users at the centre of the process. 

An article in the Inclusive Design Toolkit Bulletin explains how a student redesigned the chip packet for easier opening. A beer and a packet of chips is a simple pleasure for most. But if you can’t open the chip packet then not so pleasurable. This is a problem for more people than you might think. 

Two gadgets to help designers, gloves and glasses, are available. Using a pack of Post-it Notes, Sam Waller demonstrates in the video below how many people will find it impossible to remove the cellophane wrapping. A good example of including people with low vision and/or arthritis is good for everyone and increases market size.

Everyone has a bias. Our biases can lead us to fall into the traps that create unintended barriers or inconveniences for users. Recognising biases in our outlook is the key to countering them in design processes. Airbnb Design has a tool for overcoming bias in design. 

It’s a human trait to hold on to initial evidence more strongly than information we gather later on. Then we fit our interpretation of the world to match that initial evidence, regardless of what else we might learn as time passes. This can prevent the process of designing inclusively.

Airbnb Design partnered with journalists from News Deeply and came up with a toolkit for designers. Another Lens is a research tool for conscientious creatives. “We believe that both designers and journalists have the responsibility to shine a light on their bias by asking the right questions, seeking conflicting viewpoints, and expanding their lens to build inclusive, global solutions”.  

Three principles underpin the thinking process: balance your bias, consider the opposite and embrace a growth mindset. All good principles for universal design thinking. The website tool is simple to use, poses critical questions and provides the thinking behind it. 

It’s the way the brain processes things

Dr Belina Liddell argues that culture may affect the way your brain processes everything. And that is important. The term “culture” is a very complex web of dynamic systems – beliefs, language and values, and also religion, socio-economic status and gender may play a part too.

Liddel explains how culture makes a difference to the way we not only perceive things intellectually, but visually as well. All this is from the emerging field of cultural neuroscience.  Now we have new acronym to deal with, WEIRD – Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. The article also discusses refugee populations. See the ABC science website for more on this interesting article. 

Doctors and architects speak different languages. That’s understandable – they’ve been to entirely different schools. We can get by in a foreign country with gestures. But when it comes to communicating detail we need a phrasebook. Similarly, architects and health professionals a similar tool – Playmobile. It helps with design translation. 

Using Playmobile figures and 3D printed beds and hospital equipment designers and medical staff can shape the spaces together. Not everyone can grasp the concept of spaces on a two-dimensional drawing. Likewise, designers do not have an intimate understanding of how clinics work. But everyone has played with toys. 

This is a great example of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The short article on FastCompany doesn’t mention this specifically, but it follows the basic tenets: multiple means of engagement, representation and expression. 

This is not a new idea – Lego has been used in other situations.

Ever wondered what it is like for someone with hearing loss trying to be part of a conversation in a restaurant? Or wondered what it is like to try and read a transit map if you have glaucoma?  Now you can check this out using online hearing and vision simulators to get the idea of the way things sound and look.

The Inclusive Design Group at the University of Cambridge have come up with a hearing simulator that covers mild, moderate and severe hearing loss in five different settings: restaurant, classical music, rock music, a ringing phone, and a station platform announcement. Similarly, the vision simulator includes the main vision impairments including macular degeneration, glaucoma, cataracts, and diabetic retinopathy. 

You can also use their Exclusion Calculator for vision, hearing, thinking, dexterity, reach and stretch and locomotion, to see how many people might be excluded if not thought about in the early stages of design. You can set the calculator for multiple capacities, such as sight, hearing, thinking and locomotion – all of which are needed to negotiate public transport, for example. A very useful tool for any designer.