Inclusive design is good business, and here’s why
Inclusive design is not just about generating feel-good PR. It is also a smart business strategy that leads to better products.
By attending to the needs of the most marginalized customers, we create a product experience that satisfies the most market demand.
Now that’s a winning strategy.
Check out Xbox’s accessible controller, first introduced in a 2019 Super Bowl commercial. The ad shows kids with disabilities beaming with joy while playing video games with the accessible controllers. They seem so happy that we feel happy for them.
- The new product attracted an overwhelming lot of positive publicity saying Microsoft’s moving Xbox ad was the best thing about the Super Bowl.
- It also helped Xbox capture new customer segments, earning rave reviews from disabled gamers and a partnership with the Department of Veteran Affairs.
- Perhaps most important of all, the accessible controller is a better product for everyone, meaning that even I, an inexperienced gamer with not-so-limber fingers, could derive value from the adjustability of the controller.
Still greater than the business success are the social impacts and ripple effects that the new product campaign generated.
- On one hand, the campaign fostered an important discussion about the visibility and normalization of the disabled community.
- On the other hand, Xbox’s new product pressures competitors like PlayStation and Nintendo to respond with their own accessible consoles.
In short, Xbox’s 2019 adaptable console is a case in point showing that inclusive design has the potential to drive business success and social impact.
One of the most prominent advocates for inclusive design in tech is August de los Reyes, who I had the opportunity to hear from through Berkeley Jacobs Institute’s Design Field Note Series.
In an engaging talk interweaved with personal stories, August made the same point as mine, that when we design for the most marginalized users and make accessibility a central focus, our products become better and our businesses more successful.
He provided more examples.
- Remote controls were originally designed for people with limited mobility.
- Email was commercialized as a precise way of communication by Vint Cerf who has hearing impairment.
- Cruise control was designed by Ralph Teetor who was a blind engineer.
- Bendy Straw was invented by Joseph Friedman because his daughter was too short to reach her milkshake with a straight straw.
All of the innovations above were designed for, with, and by the disabled community, but overtime they have become daily staples of the society and have delivered tremendous values for everyone. Inclusive design is a viable business approach.
But how often do we consider the margins when bringing a product to the market?
Product managers and business analysts are all too familiar with a bell curve. They study the heck out of the mean, constructing confidence intervals around it, and sometimes pursuing the extreme by proposing probabilistic models for the average customer.
What about those outside the 95% confidence interval?
To focus on the margins is not to fail in prioritization. We should have faith that the insights distilled from the “5% sample” is not a bit inferior to the “statistically significant” conclusion drawn from the “95% middle.” They serve different purposes: one is meant to confirm certain assumptions about the overall population, whereas the other is meant to discover trends and ideas that are not yet mainstream. If innovation is about disrupting the status quo, then it is by exploring the margins that we have a higher chance to stumble on the next big thing.
We should design from the margins. Take it not just from me, but also…
- Founder and entrepreneur Tarig Hilal, who furthered expanded on the nexus between entrepreneurialism and exclusion in his blog “Innovating from the Margins.”
- Head of Marketing Mark Walker, who proposed a correlation between digital accessibility and robust use cases in his article “The Business Case for Accessibility and Inclusive Design.”
- Inclusive Design Practitioner charley.pothecary, who anticipated business concerns against inclusive design and provided thoughtful responses in her story “The Business Case for Inclusive Design”
- Best-selling author Nicholas J. Webb, who supported the merit of designing for the margins by saying “as you identify ways to deliver value and relevancy to one customer, you create a byproduct that allows to deliver benefits to another customer” in What Customers Crave.
Product teams, I challenge you to think about who is left out of your current work. I encourage you to practice inclusive design, because — you never know — you may invent the next remote control, email, and bendy straw by hanging out with your marginalized customers.
For an extensive list of resources concerning inclusive design and accessibility, check out Shane Doyle’s wonderful post: “Inclusive Design the What, the Why, and the How”
For an extended conversation with August de los Reyes, check out Robert Kett, PhD’s interview with August: “Centering the Margin: August de los Reyes on the Design of Disability and Futures of Well-Being”
