Understanding how inclusive design can win hearts and minds and create business value is a very personal journey. The authors illustrate the importance of inclusive design through practical examples applied in the healthcare field. Guide designers to think about how to redefine the user concept to create more attractive customer channels and have a positive penetration effect in society. This article explores the guide to inclusive design practice, providing designers with a new idea, follow the author to see it!
UX designers often agree on the core principles of our work, and our role is simple: to strive to understand the user, to provide an innovative solution to the product or service to meet the needs of the user, and to generate business value.
Designers often subconsciously use their own understanding of the world to make assumptions and push their designs toward business goals. This will result in an experience that is valuable to the business and very useful to most users.
This definition of the UX designer role has always bothered me, and it's not a complete and comprehensive description because it only considers the main user groups: "regular" users. What about "extreme" users? The needs of this part of the user have exceeded the scope of our current design understanding.
We all agree that this subset of users should be taken into account when creating products and services, even if they are the special groups we assume. In fact, I think it's crucial to understand the needs of all types of users, especially those with special groups of users. Not only is this the right thing to do in design, it also offers a real advantage in business.
First, who are the "extreme users"?
Who are the ‘extreme users’？ Families containing confirmed patients
The healthcare business scenario provides a perfect illustration of the importance of extreme design, including those of extreme users, after all, it can mean the difference between life and death.
Whenever we think about health care, our attention is naturally tilted towards the patient. In fact, there is a special user group that also needs to be taken into account, which is an often overlooked user group: the patient's family.
Case in point: A couple of parents find out that their two-year-old can't speak yet, which worries them. Doctors examined and found the child deaf. In an instant, parents are caught up in an extreme state of fear, they are uneasy about their child's future, worried about whether their families have enough resources to cope with such a situation, and worst of all, they lack information about how to deal with their child's condition and how to communicate with the hearing impaired child.
For this boy, the world is still the same. He was as happy as ever. But for parents, everything is gray, and all they can do is wait, wait for a doctor's call.
"The key is to prioritize expanding the capacity of patients and caregivers to manage health more effectively."
Designing Truly Patient-Centered Healthcare
2. Designed for the patient's family
What does Designing fora patient's family consider? Why consider?
When people's status quo changes in a traumatic way, they usually go through five stages of grief: rejection, anger, discussion, frustration, and acceptance. This type of behavior needs to be considered during the design process because it is important to understand when the design will appeal to users.
The five stages of grief
When patients are unaware of their condition, their family and friends still suffer emotional harm in silence (need to conceal the condition or deal with the current situation) – but family and friends are often overlooked and designers don't take them into account.
In this case, some principles are needed to help us design effectively for families:
- Definitive diagnosis – provide the family with as much information as possible about the patient's condition and the extent of the problem;
- Give emotional support – Not only can family members better support their loved ones, but they can also make important care decisions more effectively;
- Explain the likelihood of treatment — Provide as much information as possible about all situations, from the success to failure of treatment, and everything in between.
In this case, the family quickly discovered that technology was their savior: it provided the details of the child's diagnosis, connected them with other similar families and medical professionals around the world, and would be a booster for their child's future normal life – bringing people with disabilities together.
Through cochlear implants, boys can hear their favorite music and converse normally with their peers. He can even plug headphones directly into his ears! With his bionic ears, he would hear the sound of butterflies flapping their wings, and when he made that decision, he experienced the purest silence — something that most people can't experience.
The truth is that you will be sad forever. You will not be able to recover from the pain of losing a loved one, and you will learn to endure the pain. You will be healed, you will reinvent yourself in the midst of all your suffering. You will be complete again, but you will never be the original you. You shouldn't be the way you are, and you don't want to be the way you are.
—"Lessons in Life" by Elizabeth Kübler-Rose and [American] David Kessler
Let's go see the family together
Now let’s meet the family
Yes, you've been reading my own story. The boy with the cochlear implant was my son: Joe.
Personal family information
The personal family profile picture above details the mental health index and emotional status of the son (Joe), mom and dad (author) during the process.
I'm proud of him and what he's faced so far, and proud of the strength he's shown us. He is now learning how to handle his bionic ears and how to communicate effectively without using sign language.
I'm passionate about thinking about how designers can give patients and his/her family a more intimate and human experience throughout the fight against the disease. My story can be the story of any family, maybe it's about an old man instead of a child, like an Alzheimer's patient. What they have in common is that patients don't know what's going on and must rely on their families to support them.
Fourth, find out your special user groups
Find your outliers pursue their experience of having love
Designing for extreme situations is not easy, especially when designers often accidentally make assumptions and think around themselves. We need to remind ourselves that we're not designing for ourselves – we're designing for special users who may not even know the challenges they face.
Find out your special users: In my case, my family was a special group. However, in many cases, you need to focus on research to identify these particular groups, ask them about the biggest pitfalls they face, and try to understand how design can help.
Unlock business value: All design work should deliver business value, not just the most innovative ideas or the best-looking designs. If you're able to discover the real business value behind the design and include it in your product or service, it won't be seen as extra, but as part of the value you can create.
Not just empathy, but also inclusion: As designers, we always talk about empathy for our users, but not only to do that, we have to think inclusively and conceive of a design that is accessible, understandable, and used by all users, regardless of their age, body shape, or ability. Inclusive design is not a methodology or framework. It's a mindset that should be present in all products or services to provide comfort for every possible user.
Inclusive design not only improves people's living standards, but also improves our entire world. This design thinking leads us to see disability not just as a personal health condition, but as a mismatch in interactions between people in society.
Author: Bruno Perez
Original: https://uxdesign.cc/an-introduction-to-inclusive-design-487602877a01
Translator: Cai Linyan; Reviewer: Zhang Yutong; Editor: Liu Li
This article is published by @三分設 translate and published by Everyone is a product manager, and reproduction without permission is prohibited
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol