Inclusive design is about creating products and services that cater to the needs of a broad range of human diversity. When done right, it is good for people and society, and it is good for business. But it is not easy. Organisations need to define their relevance within inclusivity and tie efforts in this space to business goals, they need to approach inclusive design strategically. To support leaders in practising strategic inclusive design, Lomi designed the inclusive design framework, assessment and a change guide.
Enabling organisations to bring inclusive design to a strategic level.
Inclusive products and services allow more people to truly participate in society. That is why DOGA is stimulating inclusive design through several initiatives. While organisations are increasingly interested in inclusive design, only a handful have connected it to business goals. In this project, the goal is to enable organisations to lift inclusive design to a strategic level, increasing the social and business impact.
If you are committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), your products and services also have to be designed inclusively.
Design leaders have been at the centre of this project. As the head of design, they know better than anyone why inclusive design is (not) being used in their organisation. Throughout the project, design leaders have been involved for interviews, validation and user testing.
One of the biggest insights from our research is that Diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) and inclusive design is closely related, yet somehow DEI is much higher up priority lists than inclusive design. That is why before we went into solution development we positioned inclusive design with regards to DEI.
From there we went into concept development and user testing. For the solution development, we involved Inklud, as experts on accessibility and Solvr, as development partner.
The framework enables you to understand the building blocks for inclusive design. It visualises four core dimensions to inclusive design and breaks these dimensions down into concrete elements. The elements are tangible aspects to consider in the process of enabling your organisation to create more inclusive products and services.
The assessment is an online survey that allows organisations to identify specific focus points to make their products and services more inclusive. It covers the dimensions and elements of the inclusive design framework and enables participants of the survey to self-assess their organisation. The assessment will become available soon on DOGA’s website.
The DOGA inclusive design change guide
The change guide is a tool that supports design and innovation leaders to implement change into their organisation to improve inclusive design practices. It follows a step-by-step process that starts with the output of the inclusive design assessment. Reach out to us for more information about the change guide.
In February 2023 DOGA organised the Strategic design event where Lomi presented this project. With over a 1000 sign-ups the interest and importance was once more confirmed.
