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.
How might we enable organizations 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, your products and services also have to be designed inclusively
Lomi's process revolved around the involvement of design leaders. As the head of design, they will have a good understanding of why inclusive design is, or isn't, used strategically in their organisation. Design leaders also have significant influence on the use of inclusive design and therefor form an interesting target group. Lomi has involved Design leaders, alongside experts in the field of strategic design and design leadership, for interviews, validation and feedback.
The first key ingredient to increase motifs to use (strategic) inclusive design is to create a strong positioning. Inclusive design is currently often related to accessibility, limiting to a very small part of inclusive design and its value. By connecting inclusive design with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Lomi completely changed the perspectives of design leaders. DEI is one of the main strategic elements in most organisations today, and inclusive design forms a great fit opportunity to align design practises to organisational goals.
Positioning inclusive design as part of DEI, draws a lot more attention from design leaders. The next major challenges we found amongst design leaders are about the understanding of enabling factors for inclusive design, finding relevance for organisational specific goals and implementing change. Lomi has developed the Inclusive design framework, assessment and change guide to tackle these challenges.
The framework enables you to understand the building blocks for inclusive design. It visualizes four core dimensions to inclusive design and breaks these dimensions down into concrete elements. The elements are tangible aspect to consider in the process of enabling your organization to create more inclusive products and services.
Lomi also developed a assesment tool to help organizations understand where they stand. The assessment is an online survey that allows organizations 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 organization.
