Inclusive design is a methodology which includes people with a wide range of different perspectives in the design of a product.
Think about your own abilities and biases:
Imagine if you designed a product solely based on your own abilities and biases, who would you be excluding from using the product?
Think about this definition of disability:
"Disability ... is a complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives" –World Health Organization
More than 1 billion people around the world live with a disability but all of us have experienced being disabled by our environment either through a permanent, temporary or situational disability.
Image taken from Microsoft's Inclusive Design Toolkit licensed under CC BY-NC-ND license - permission obtained
Activity: In breakout rooms, consider how features on Apple's iPhone support these types of disability. Discuss whether these features are specific to this disability or useful to everybody.
In an intensive one-week design sprint, the Xbox team came together to re-imagine the possibilities of social gaming through the lens of inclusive design.
Listen to their discussions here:
Take a look at these inclusively designed products/buildings:
Activity: In breakout rooms your group will be asked to research one of the following inclusive designs:
Discuss what benefits these companies will gain from these new products and whether the products are useful to everyone regardless of disability.
Your Customer has added new requirements to your next Agile sprint. They require you to ensure the product is fully inclusive.
Review the Personas and User Stories you created previously. Add new Personas and User Stories for individuals with permanent, temporaral and situational disabilities (3 in total). Discuss with your team how you can modify your design to meet the diverse needs of these and other users.
If you would like to read more about Inclusive Design the following links are recommended.