Why is Universal Design, not a good fit?
Universal Design is one of the first approaches in designing a product that leads designers and researchers to think out of the box, where they can focus on the widest range of abilities and the widest range of situations about the users, where they come across with different ideas and solutions that helped users in making their life easier.
Universal Design
“Universal design is the design of buildings, products, or environments to make them accessible to all people, regardless of age, disability, or other factors.”
Universal design has helped users in tackling many problems with the most desirable solutions but still questioned many times. The fact is that Universal design is not ideal for all being said universal, this approach still excludes many people.
The universal design follows one rule, “One size fits all”. which is not an ideal case, making it universally doesn't make it useful at all. When you’re designing a practical solution for a niche audience, you have to ignore the wishes of the outlying individuals in favor of the entire group. So that client who asks you for something ‘universal’ actually isn’t trying to appeal to the masses.
Universal Design is not only applicable to the needs of people with disabilities but to everyone, regardless of age, size, ability, or disability.
Universal design is a proposition that products and environments should be designed with the whole population in mind. It is about maximum amenity and useability by the widest number of people possible regardless of background, age, gender, or status.
While there will always be niche markets for particular goods, there are many items that almost everyone uses (a kettle, a door handle, a tap), or wants to use (a shop, a school, a bus).
At first glance, this seems a reasonable idea — why to exclude people by design: after all, sales opportunities are greater if the product appeals to a broader cross-section of people.
However, while universal design is considered a ‘good idea’ by many, it has been insufficient to change housing design processes in any significant way.
Accessibility: The design of products, devices, environments for people with disabilities.
Inclusive Design
When the Universal design approach failed to solve people's need, then it leads designers and researchers to introduce a new term i.e. “Inclusive Design”.
Inclusive design means making design choices that take into account personal identifiers like
- Age
- Race
- Economic Status
- Language
- Gender and etc.
This design approach follows, “Solve for one, extend to many”.
As such, there is no target audience. They are just designed for one and will help other people of their own.
Accessibility: The Design of Products, Devices, Environments for people with disabilities. it's one aspect of Inclusive Design.
Still, the approach Changed Since Inclusive design was only focused on a particular group.
Thus another approach followed was more focused on those who are underrepresented or ignored. Which leads to “Equity focused design”. Now here you people might get confused that equity sounds similar to equality but there stands a huge difference in between. Let’s first know about Equity focused design.
Equity focused design
This is a designing approach where designing is done for groups that have been historically underrepresented or ignored when building products.
Equality: Providing some amount of opportunity and support.
Equity: Providing different levels of opportunity and support for each person in order to achieve fair outcomes.
Equity design is a creative process to dismantle systems of oppression and (re)design towards liberation and healing by centering the power of communities historically impacted by the oppressive systems being (re)designed.
Equity design uses this targeted approach to achieve change. This focus is coming to the forefront of the design world due to mass protesting across the world against racist systems against individuals of color. Designers are taking it upon themselves to help tear down systems of oppression and redesign these systems with the communities that are most oppressed.
Each Problem-solving approach is unique in some way or other and to be precise not any of the approaches is capable enough to cover all types of audiences and their pain points.
Accessibility can also be called as “a11y".
Thinking through all the aspects of a designed product and making sure the product is both accessible and fair to all genders, races, and disabilities. Plus the designers need to specifically consider underrepresented and excluded groups.
Now, a new term came into consideration that is “Next Billion People”(NBU). Every week, millions of people come online for the first time. Everyone — no matter their location, language, or digital literacy — deserves an internet that was made for them. Google’s Next Billion Users initiative conducts research and builds products for people around the world.
Thus with the introduction of this term, there come new challenges and they are:
- Cost.
- Connectivity.
- Digital Literacy.
- Literacy(general).
With the introduction of new technology, we need devices or platforms to take the advantage of them and not everyone is capable enough to afford the cost of their expenses, On top of that literacy plays a very foundational role in accessing these technologies and becoming aware of. Still, efforts are made in order to solve all these problems in a more appropriate and easy way.
Next will be discussing Assistive Technology in-depth in my future blogs till then stay tuned and keep learning new things daily.
