Inclusive design framework
What do you need to take into account when you want to practice more inclusive design in you organisation? This framework visualise the building blocks for inclusive design within the holistic parametres of products & services, design process, design team and company culture.
The inclusive design framework is a visual overview of the building blocks of inclusive design. The framework enables you to create a better understanding of what inclusive design consists of and what to pay attention to, in order to improve your inclusive design practices across the organisation.
A framework with four dimensions:
Products & services
The framework consists of four dimensions. A big part of the impact that can be made through inclusive design is done through design of Products and services. How inclusive products and services are, can be evaluated on many different aspects. The framework divides this first dimension into five elements: Mental wellbeing, belonging, physical needs, neurodiversity and a ‘people first’ mentality.
Design prosess
Looking into products and services will not be enough to enable change within organisations. They are the results of a Design process. To enable designers and design leaders to make their design practices more inclusive, this framework shows a range of steps in the design process that have significant impact on the inclusivity of outcomes: the design brief, user research, the idea phase, user experience design, co-creation, user testing and marketing and PR.
Design team
The first two dimensions are areas that design leaders have direct influence on but when approaching inclusive design from a strategic angle, other areas come into play that are also important to improve inclusive design practices. The Design team itself needs to be equipped to design for inclusion. The design team can be evaluated on: team diversity, the team knowledge (of inclusive design) and access to external resources to supplement the design team.
Company culture
Finally, Inclusive design will only thrive if the Company culture supports this. DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) therefore needs to be enforced through the organisational vision and goals. Leadership should be openly committed and partners need to be supportive of it.
Holistic approach to DEI
Understanding the building blocks for inclusive design is the first step towards creating a holistic approach to DEI (diversity, equitey and inclusion).
To assess you organisation along the elements of a strategic inclusive design framework DOGA has developed an inclusive design assessment tool .