UNIVERSAL DESIGN vs INCLUSIVE DESIGN
As UX designers, there’s no average person or target audience that we should design for.
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
Universal design is the process of creating one product for users with the wildest range of abilities and in the wildest range of situations. You can think of it like a one-size-fits-all approach entailing designers proposing one solutions for everyone. The problem is that when you focus on creating one solution for everyone the designs lose their effectiveness. it’s often difficult to achieve any goals with products when you have so many intended users, it’s like when you go to a store that sells just female clothing. The store would definitely not have clothing’s for the male gender and as such, wouldn’t fit some people, or you go to a store that sells a shirt for a particular size only. The tag might read, one-size-fits-all but still won’t fit a lot of people.
Universal design had the same problem even though it had the intention of being inclusive, it excluded a lot of people and it turns out one-size-fits-all wasn’t a great solution after all. As Ux designers, we should understand that universal design won’t meet the needs of every user.
INCLUSIVE DESIGN
This is where the concept of inclusive design which focuses on finding solutions to meet different needs comes into the picture. Inclusive design means making design choices that take into account personal identifiers like ability, race, economic status, language, age and gender. Inclusive design includes researchers and designers from traditionally excluded populations in the process, so they can provide their unique perspectives during all phases of the design process. If universal design is a one-size-fits-all then inclusive design can be described as solve for one, extend to many.
With inclusive design, you solve for one type of user and the benefits of that solution can extend to many other types of uses. Our goal as designers is to build experiences that are accessible to users with the wilders range of abilities, in other words no one should be excluded from using a product that we built because we didn’t consider their needs when building it. In inclusive design, there’s no such thing as normal, there’s no average person or target audience that we should design for.
