A few months ago, I was invited to give a talk to a lovely client team about ‘inclusivity’. In truth the challenge was posed as a question… “Do you reckon you could come and talk to the team about inclusivity?” to which my answer was… “I think so…yes”.
The caution and slight reticence came from the fact that both of us knew there was a lot of stuff already out there on the topic. In truth the client team themselves already had a ‘playbook’ created by a previous agency on how to ‘design for inclusivity’. Lots of pro-formas, checklists, considerations, wheels and funnels…all of which made perfect sense and left me somewhat nervous about what more I might actually add to the mix.
But the request had come from someone who knew that these playbooks existed. They wanted me to put my own ‘spin’ (if spin is the right word…which it probably isn’t in this case) on the subject and – more importantly – get the wider team to step away from what you might call ‘predictable tickbox’ thinking and into something more provocative and ‘muddy’. The audience was a mix of research scientists, packaging peeps, marketing, consumer insight and management and my job was to ‘prod and provoke’.
*cracks knuckles*
If I’m honest, I didn’t have the first clue where to start. I began by googling the term and predictably found myself squirrelling down rabbit holes of age old examples and products designed for people with various forms of physical disability. Nope.
The one thing I did have on my side was a bit of time. There were a few months between the request and the delivery so I gave myself time to let things percolate. I decided to metaphorically sit back and observe the everyday world to see where inclusivity raised itself and crossed paths with my own life – whether directly or indirectly. Walking the dog, watching TV, listening to my kids, scrolling through social media, wandering around the supermarket…that sort of thing. I wanted to see how inclusivity as a theme (and its a biggie!) intersected with my life and what observations I had.
BTW I’ve deliberately avoided anything bloody obvious. There’s far too much of ‘in your face inclusivity’ out there. Gimmickry masquerading as ‘inclusive design’ if you will. Well…having said that, I’ve made mention of this gimmickry in one section later in the article…
Many confuse inclusivity with the very opposite…exclusivity.
Designing for a specific user group, despite how noble, is exclusive by its very nature. Nothing wrong with that at all. It’s unfortunately needed in our society, but it’s not inclusivity.
Inclusivity is about widening, not narrowing.
A deodorant designed to be used specifically by amputees or people with congenital or acquired limb deformities – for example – is not inclusive design. The target user group is narrow and incredibly specific. Exclusive. Of course it allows people to do things they may have previously been excluded from doing, which is bloody brilliant and not to be scoffed at, but it ain’t inclusive.
I know that sounds odd and contradictory but it’s important to be clear.
So whilst this certainly isn’t an article about ‘how to design for inclusivity’, I hope it prompts people to have a bit of a think about some aspects of what we do as designers that could be better. Widening our view.
Here are the things that intersected my world in the weeks I decided to observe and listen. In my eventual presentation to the assembled group, I attempted to hang these observed themes together with some form of tenuous logic but I’m not sure it worked. Essentially, this is simply a list of things I’ve noticed, read, heard or felt between being asked to give a talk, and giving the talk itself.
As always, in no particular order of importance…
1. Martin Luther King.
On one of the many dog walks I do each week, I started listening to an audiobook. It was ‘Citizens’ by Jon Alexander. I haven’t finished it yet but I was struck by a quote by Martin Luther King about philanthropy. The quote is thus… “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” In other words, if we were fair and balanced in the first place, we wouldn’t need huge gestures from those that ‘have’ to ensure the wellbeing of those that ‘have not’.
It made me think that the same could very easily be applied to inclusivity. We now have tools and systems in place to help us all identify and resolve issues around inclusivity that probably should not have been barriers in the first place, if we’d all done our jobs properly. Commerce, speed, positioning, manufacturing ease, lack of empathy, zero user research…all factors that have led to a plethora of products and services that we now have to adapt or redesign because they didn’t consider enough people in the first place. They become commonplace and established by nature of volume, ease of production, cost and accessibility to the ‘average’ mass populous.
It’s easy to place the blame on the ‘client’ as an agency designer as they are the purse strings holders. The owners and guardians of the brief. They say jump. We say “How high?” But I could just as easily argue that we as designers could very easily do so much more in everyday consideration and definition to ensure a greater level of inclusion. I’m not calling it laziness. More a level of focus on delivery and profitability that often makes excuses for a lack of wider consideration.
2. Intersectionality.
One of the people I follow with interest on LinkedIn is a guy called Mike Adams. He runs a business called Purple Tuesday which supports businesses in helping to understand how and adapt for people and families with disabilities. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t really know how to describe Mike. He has (virtually) no arms and his legs are short and different lengths. The world is a hugely complex and intimidating place for him to navigate, and yet I don’t think I’ve ever read more fulfilling and positive posts from anyone else. I would urge everyone to follow him and read his regular posts which shed light on some of things we don’t give a second thought to. Things like exiting a car park or simply picking up his daughters from ballet practice.
There’s one particular post which I shared about how he has to have his nose and ear hairs removed with ‘wax laden lollipops’ to avoid the curse of having to blow his nose or itch his ear. To quote his post… “Never been the greatest fan of disability simulation activities. Wearing a blindfold cannot replicate the lived experience of being blind. Provides a brief insight. Glimpse. Accepting the caveats perhaps you can get a glimpse of my current experience. Challenge yourself by metaphorically strapping your arms to your side for a couple of hours. You will quickly find multi task uses for your chin. Nose. Shoulder. And teeth. Try opening a jar. Or loading the dishwasher. Next time you need to blow your nose. Don’t. Resist. See what happens. When your ear itches. Or tickles. Leave it. And immerse yourself in the frustration.”
Now with all these posts highlighting the barriers to people with disability it’s easy to simply focus on the physical aspects of his life, but it was another post he made which got me thinking about something else entirely…intersectionality.
It’s something I hadn’t heard of as a term before so I had to google it. Essentially it’s how different aspects of a person’s identity combine to create unique experiences of discrimination or privilege. In Mike’s case he was discussing the issues of being an older parent in combination with his disability. Something you wouldn’t necessarily expect.
In Mike’s own words again… “I am not defined by my age. Being an older parent. Or twice married. I definitely am not defined by my disability. I am Mike. Who are you?” Powerful words.
It reminded me of the sheer complexity of people’s lives and our tendency to drive assumptions based on observed (or worse…anecdotal) simplistic evidence. Notwithstanding everything Mike has to deal with on a daily basis, we naturally assume his life is made complicated primarily by his disability, but he was keen to explain that it was a series of assumptions made by another parent at a kids party, that he was the grandparent and not the father of his daughters. Assumptions that led to him being treated differently and excluded at yet another level.
In the presentation I share an image of 16 different coloured dots in a 4 x 4 square array. Each dot represents a different aspect of that person’s day. And yet as designers or businesses looking to understand our consumers, we define those people by exploring only one (or maybe two) of those coloured dots, and then broadly assume that the other 15 dots are the same as the one we have uncovered.
Not so. People are insanely complex and multifaceted creatures. We also have different relationships and personalities depending on who we are with, what we are doing, and where we are. Just because we like bikes, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are into fitness. Someone who loves travel programmes might have a pathological fear of flying. A metalhead might actually have a kickass Barbie collection. But even these so called ‘extreme’ examples are shallow. People have so many layers, overlaps and contradictions to their selves and we shouldn’t be so quick to ‘box’ them in the pursuit of ‘user centred’ personas and subsequent idea substantiation.
Intersectionality. Remember it. It’s a useful reminder not to tar a user with a broad brush.
3. Real Reality.
I am privileged to work with a client who develops prosthetics and bracing products (mechanical and bionic) to people with varying levels of need. It is powerful stuff and hugely empowering. We regularly discuss both the physical and the emotional needs of such products and solutions in improving peoples’ lives.
Notwithstanding that, the prosthetics industry promotes its products using people doing fabulous physical things. Fly-fishing. Running over mountains. Leaping. Washing cars (OK…somewhat less fabulous!) But the intention is to communicate that these people are empowered to do everyday things you might not consider possible with a prosthetic. Empowering right?
But a rather sobering statistic is that for every 1 ‘active’ user (and the word ‘active’ here is somewhat loose) there are 95 elderly, inactive users. ‘Elderly’ in this case is over the age of 65. That’s pretty much 1%.
1 bloody percent.
The reality of this market is that the majority of ‘users’ are remarkably immobile, fiercely static, and emotionally struggling. People for whom their disability is often a curse. A source of crippling anxiety. A reason to stay indoors and avoid the world at large. They have a prosthetic because they have been ‘prescribed’ one and they’ve been ‘issued’ it by the medical system. People for whom getting ready for the day is a huge chore and utterly exhausting (physically and emotionally). And don’t even mention stuff like taking a shower or having a pee. And it’s important not to understate the emotional bit. Design can often look to solve the functional, and overlook the truly emotional, making vacuous excuses about how having a ‘really functionally capable product’ can compensate somehow.
That’s the reality of this world. No Paralympian blades and stretchy Lycra. Just standard issue, rather ineffective, heavy wheelchairs and endless hours of reluctant immobility. Now, I appreciate I’m over-egging the pudding here to make a point, but it’s clear that the industry messaging – showcasing amputees playing volleyball – is about making us feel better, weaving a positive emotional message around a perceived unfortunate set of circumstances. This is admirable but doesn’t help to address the reality. Advertising and marketing has always been focussed on spinning the positive. What do you mean Big Macs don’t look like the picture???
But as designers, we can often get swept up in the positive messaging and look to find the nett ‘positive impact’ our work can have. It’s great to see our work being used by athletes bounding over volcanic streams or striding into a packed bar with a luminous red prosthetic cover. But we also need to push for realities. Like….real realities…gritty, unpolished, rather uncomfortable realities. The underlying, unseen masses who can genuinely benefit from small, inclusive considerations. People who will never complain or champion the products but whose lives will be infinitely improved by your work. Silent gratitude. Stuff that never makes it to billboards or slide decks.
The kind of stuff we all harp on about as a design community…you know… good design goes unnoticed.
4. Dignity.
This is huge. And yet something I only really noticed when I forced to deal with it as a secondary carer for my Dad. If you want the backstory here’s the article I wrote about accessibility.
Long story short, our society and the inherent touch-points designed for our interactions are woefully inconsiderate of dignity. I have no doubt that every designer responsible for these missteps would be horrified to learn of this (myself being equally guilty of this, and equally horrified) but notwithstanding disability, mobility or accessibility, many interactions inherently drive us to shelve our dignity if we can’t do what society expects of us.
Disabled toilets where you often have to ask someone at a front desk for a key to unlock the toilet door – where the front desk is often a stupidly long distance away interrupted by elevators and stairs. This has nothing to do with the design of the toilet itself but the ignominy of having to ask and the ensuing rigmarole and unwarranted attention. And don’t get me started on the numbers of disabled toilets with broken locks, where I have to stand outside the door, leaning against it like a weirdo, nodding cagily at passers by, while my Dad gets on with ablutions, having to unceremoniously hammer the door with his stick when he’s done.
I take my Dad out for a pub lunch every Friday (when possible) and he struggles with using a knife to cut his food (he invariably drops his knife at some point every time we go out). His strength and co-ordination are hugely compromised, so when the food arrives, I have to swap dishes while I unceremoniously destroy his beautifully arranged food into bite sized and ‘fork able’ pieces he can eat easily (I do my best to preserve some semblance of ‘plating’ but it’s not always successful!). If you bear in mind he loves a steak, you can understand the difficulties. One lovely pub landlady we visited regularly, caught on to this and quietly asked me if I’d like the chef to slice the steak up for him. Amazing! Thank you. I don’t mind cutting the steak but it’s the unwanted ‘show’ of having to cut up his steak in front of other diners that we want to avoid. His dignity is the thing that is taking a battering.
It would be fabulous if at the bottom of every restaurant menu there was a simple request to prepare a dish for people who might not be able to use a knife as easily as the rest of us. They shouldn’t have to resort to risotto or stew because it’s the only option available to them! Subtle, dignified inclusivity please.
Having been out to many a pub lunch on a Friday lunchtime, I can attest that the swathes of rather frail, truly elderly and somewhat immobile groups of friends (and people taking their old folk out for a welcome lunch as an escape from the drudgery of the care home) would absolutely welcome such an option. I’ve watched so many of them struggle to dissect a gargantuan pie or small shark* whilst attempting to preserve their dignity.
*Age doesn’t seem to have any effect on appetite I hasten to add. Most little old ladies can still sink a decent plateful of fish and chips. No problem at all.
5. Generational Babel-fishing.
I took my eldest daughter to Bristol city centre for a shopping day. She was 19 and at University so is neither naive nor fully forged as an independent adult yet. She’s done her fair share of clothes shopping in her teenage years and has a very broad understanding of brands and what they mean or who they represent.
So it was interesting to hear her say as we were walking along a pedestrian shopping concourse… “Oh!..I never realised that was an ACTUAL shop…like…a real place!” She was pointing at Bershka, a brand she had purchased and worn several items from. It made me stop and think that between us we had two very different generational expectations of retail.
She assumes that most brands she buys clothes from are ‘online only’. That these places have no physical presence on the high street, or anywhere for that matter.
I – on the other hand – tend to default to assuming that brands I buy clothes from are physical stores first, with a secondary online presence (I am fully aware that’s not always the case but it serves me well for the purposes of this argument). It’s the way my brain has been programmed as someone who has grown up as the internet has invaded our lives. Shops had to be physical places as there were no other options. We’ve migrated to buying online as a by-product of convenience or choice or speed of delivery, but there is always some residue in the back of my brain that assumes the product has come from a shop. With a sign. And people.
But my daughter was genuinely surprised (and a little delighted) that the brand she wore existed beyond the website and the Instagram account. She spent ages in there as she could feel and see ‘all the clothes’ in one place. It was like she was discovering something new…which was weird to see.
It made me really start to think about the generational divide and how so much of what each of us takes for granted is simply not ‘seen’ by the other. You could argue that this has happened since time immemorial, but I think that the most recent set of generations is seeing this in a more acute and dramatic way than any before. Things are moving faster in that regard.
This fascinated me, so I then sat my youngest daughter (17 years old) down and had a chat with her about our perceptual differences. We ended up discussing allsorts, but some of the key topics were things like not wanting to talk on the phone, asking anyone for anything using actual IRL conversation, the difference between having someone’s details on Snap versus having their actual phone number (BIIIIIG difference apparently), a short fuse for simplicity (if they can’t find something in an App quickly they will give up on it immediately versus persevering and learning), and the difference between ‘Item shopping’ and ‘Style browsing’…apparently they shop for looks rather than for items. I appreciate there is some level of crossover, but these behaviours are amplified and concentrated moreso in Gen Z and Gen A. And this was just from a 20 minute chat in her bedroom.
All of this has made me ever more aware that my preconceptions for simply understanding the world around me should never be assumed. Even my own children see the world differently to me and they live in the same house and hear everything we say. Just goes to show. It’s not just lingo (I’m not even going to get started on Gen A buzzwords right now)…it’s perception and generational programming. Now extend that thinking to multiple sets of differing generations across millions of different touchpoints and communication channels and you have squillions of misinterpretations or assumptions.
Worth double checking.
6. Faddery.
One thing I noticed in preparing for this talk, was the self-aggrandising poppycock that orbits the inclusivity conversation. Stuff that shouts from the rooftops about how marvellously inclusive they are, yet does so superficially.
I won’t name names, but you can too the detectoring if you so choose… There was a big noise made a while back about ‘add on’ handles for electric toothbrushes that enable those for whom brushing their teeth is an ordeal, to do so with greater ease. This is a noble cause. I have no issue with people making a task easier that was previously tricky. More of that please.
But like many PR sensations, this was lauded as an inclusivity masterclass. It is not.
It is a niche solution.
It uses manufacturing techniques that are not realistically scalable so will always stay niche. It is prohibitively expensive. It costs £50 for basically a lumpy 3D Printed sleeve that goes over an electric toothbrush. Which – by the way – only fits one brand of niche electric toothbrush. When it’s on the toothbrush, it covers up the battery indicator light (so you have no idea when it needs charging until it actually just dies on you) and the cleaning mode selector switch (so all the natty technology in the brush is inaccessible to the user).
The product ‘add on’ has to be purchased online so you have no idea what works for you until you’ve bought and paid for it and had it delivered. So you have to make considered tactile decisions about shape, texture and size from a computer or mobile phone screen. When I visited my local supermarket to do a bit of a recce, the only stock of the ‘one brand’ electric toothbrush in question was on the top shelf, on a euro hook, tethered by an electronic tag and pushed back so I couldn’t easily reach it…and I am able bodied and 6’2”…and I was standing up and reaching. Also, when attempting to find the ‘add on’ brand online, it’s almost impossible find as the brand is a generic term which spits out everything, except what you are looking for.
It’s basically a new fangled, hyper branded version of the ‘add on’ plastic levers my Nan put on her cold and hot water taps to help her turn them on and off when she suffered from arthritis.
It’s basically an ad agency wet-dream.
That is not inclusivity. It’s just a neat idea.
If you are going to do inclusivity, and make inclusivity your ‘thing’, be inclusive. Period.
7. Varifocality.
I mentioned my trip to the supermarket in the previous item. This in turn provided me with another useful inclusivity anecdote. That combined with my shortsightedness.
I’ve always been shortsighted. At age 11, I was bestowed with those god-awful National Health plastic glasses that creaked, were ever so slightly too narrow for your head and reminded everyone of a sad tortoiseshell cat. Thankfully that didn’t last long and I was allowed to choose my own ‘style’ (a very loose term I’ll admit) ever since. Like most I went through a Harry Potter phase…before Harry Potter was even a twinkle in J.K. Rowling’s eye.
When I hit my mid-forties, my optician soberly advised me that it was now time to consider varifocals. I’d always assumed varifocals were those ‘old men’ glasses (careful!) that perched on the ends of wrinkly noses with a small – what looked like a – magnifying glass bit in the lower section. They were for tying flies or mending clocks. I’m waaaaay too young for that stuff. Right?
Apparently not.
So for the last 5-6 years I’ve been wearing varifocals. It seems lots of others do too. There are lots of reasons for needing them. Age. Lots of computer work. Not having to carry around a pair of reading glasses as well as your normal glasses. But mainly age. Bear in mind that roughly 50% of the UK population is over 40 and you have a lot of people. Particularly considering many people over this age typically have to start wearing glasses, even if their eyesight has been perfect their whole lives.
Nowadays varifocals look normal. There’s no way of telling unless you are similarly shortsighted and end up putting them on to try. The technology used to manufacture the lenses is quite something, but to all intents and purposes, you can’t tell if someone is wearing normal lenses or varifocals ones.
Unless you watch the movement of their head.
If you wear varifocals you have to ‘bob’ your head to find the sweet spot. The ‘long distance’ part is located in the top 50% of the lens. The ‘close up’ reading bit is located in the bottom 30% of the lens with a gradual fade between the two to avoid it looking like the clockmaker I mentioned earlier. Then you have slight left and right fades to allow middle distance vision when glancing sideways. I’m sure I’ve done the optical industry a huge disservice but that’s how I understood it to be.
But this means that in order to get the best ‘view’ and depending how far up or down your nose the glasses are, you have to bob your head up and down like a bird to settle upon the best ‘optics’. It’s why older people look a bit surprised when they try to read a menu or a book…their heads go up but their eyes go down. It takes a bit of getting used to. Some don’t. My wife tried it and decided she’d rather carry around 2 pairs of glasses than struggle with the ‘bob’.
Anyway, I digress somewhat.
In the supermarket, it struck me quite how tricky it is to find stuff with varifocals. Particularly if brands do that ‘shelf blocking’ thing where they ‘own the shelf’ and place their whole product range on a series of 5 different height shelves. If I’m focussing on the top two shelves, the bottom three are fuzzy. If I shift my ‘bob’ to the bottom two, the top three are fuzzy. I feel sorry for the middle shelf!
It makes things more even more complex when products are relatively small and messaging on pack is compact and subtle. The more you bob your head, the more everything looks and feels the same …confusing even. Rows and rows of the same coloured fuzzy blobs, all vying for my focussed attention. Particularly frustrating when you are being challenged to make a choice between flavours, treatments, specifics or otherwise…all typically in the same colourways with minor differences.
If I’m being honest, I end up using the Nectar Purple splodge as a marker. A target if you will. It gives me something to aim for. I haven’t got the time or the inclination (or energy for that matter) to constantly bob my aching neck up and down, and in and out (albeit subtly) to ascertain the correct pack to put in my trolley. So I sidetrack all those lovely brand tactics and grab on price or offer!
But bear this in mind. I’m a ‘savvy’ consumer. Given my background, I understand how brands work and how packaging is designed to attract, and can – to a certain extent – shortcut the fluff and hone in on what I think I need. But even I get bored. Frustrated even.
Scale that up to 50% of the population and you have a problem. A silent problem maybe, but definitely a problem. A little bit of creative thought with these consumers in mind would no doubt open up a multitude of improved decisions at shelf and an increase in sales for those brands that understood the nuances.
I’ve seriously rambled on. I apologise. This might be a record.
The point of all of this is that I’m not an expert in inclusivity. I simply opened my eyes up to the obstacles and opportunities that crossed my path in a 6 to 8 week period when I wanted to notice it. Some of it you could argue is peripheral and niche. Fair enough.
But most of it is endemic in wider society. Just consider a few of the topics. A majority of adults over 40. Whole generations miscommunicating with each other. The dignity of an aging population. These are widespread and impossible to avoid. I fully appreciate I am somewhat exaggerating to make my point, but even if you consider a fraction of these, it’s still hugely significant.
Like I said at the start, inclusivity isn’t about simply ‘designing for disabled or marginalised people’. It’s something you need to widen your mind to consider. It’s less about understanding misrepresented or under-represented sections of society (although I’m not playing it down….that stuff is still incredibly important) but more about understanding people and how they live, cope and adapt. Complex people. People with stories and foibles and eccentricities and failings and irrationalities.
I’m not sure you can simply push a design through an ‘inclusivity’ filter to double check you’ve crossed your t’s and dotted your i’s (or whatever the inclusivity letters are!). It warrants a deeper and more considered approach to understanding. For sure, inclusivity playbooks are a useful reminder of maybe some of the more obvious things you should be considering but got lost in the murkiness of project development, but they rarely prompt you to think in a way that really opens the mind to the absurdities of humanity.
I’m pretty sure the playbook I saw didn’t mention varifocals 😉
Heck…what do I know. Like my kids say…I just colour in for a living.
