Inclusive Design Workshop – Calgary UX

It’s Lien here, bringing you another blog post! Woot.

This time I’ll be discussing what I learnt in the workshop I attended. This post is more for my sake because I needed a place to record my notes from this workshop, but I figured why not share the knowledge. That and it’s easier to find notes again if it’s all online.

Anyways, as you know by the title of this post, I went to the Inclusive Design Workshop hosted by Calgary UX and it was a lovely time. It was housed over at the ATB Entrepreneur Center down at 17th ave SW and man that place was nice. It’s a place for people to book rooms and host meetings or workshops in. As a bit of an introvert, I was a bit nervous attending my first UX meetups, but I was determined to learn more about inclusive design so I tossed the nerves away and waltzed in there. I ended up meeting new people, discovering career opportunities, and learning a ton about inclusive design.

If you’re interested in UX and is Calgary base like me, I highly recommend checking out Calgary UX and attending one of their meetups!

Here’s what I learnt during the workshop.

Inclusive design is a methodology that enables full range of human diversity. It’s very important to note that our experiences are not universal. There’s a term in social psychology for this. It’s called the False Consensus Effect, the effect where we believe people hold the same perspective to things as you do. When designing things, we need to include qualities that make experiences open to all. One example that companies have tried to encompass more diversity is in the video game industry. There are a community of deaf players playing video games. Players would utilize emojis with text so that everyone can better understand the emotional context.

Disability is not a physical issue. It is a mismatch of human interactions. Not only that, but there are three stages of disabilities; situational, temporary, and permanent. Therefore, we need to empathize with those disabled and focus on how we can solve the clash of human interactions to make the experience more seamless. Because if the design works for those with disabilities, it’s surefire to work with those without disabilities.

Some resources we can use to focus more on inclusive designs are Perspective Cards, A11Y Project, and Microsoft Inclusive Design. 

And if you’re a bookworm like I am, check out Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Greever.

Of course, after we learnt what inclusive design was and how we could change our mindset to be more inclusive, it was time to take it to the test. UX Calgary created a few design problems for us to do and we had to create solutions as to how we could provide a better experience to those disabled. My group got Peter who is recovering from a leg injury, which means he has a temporary mobility issue. Peter wanted to order food, but has no way to receive the food from the door.

We discussed ways we could allow for him to communicate with his deliverer that he has mobility issues and needs a in house delivery. We also considered ways to allow a complete stranger inside Peter’s home so that he wouldn’t have to get up to open the door. In the end, there was no real right answer to this design problem, but at least we came up with some viable solutions that would work.

Overall, I had a great time at the workshop and I look forward to attending more in the future! Thanks Calgary UX for having me!