Navigating the Complexity of Diversity and Inclusion in Design: Best Practices for Creating Inclusive Experiences Across Touchpoints
Diversity and inclusion have been largely discussed topics, especially in recent years, and yet its translation into practice has been, and still is, troublesome. We have been presented with many examples but the complexity of the topic still leaves space to a lot of grey areas, leaving businesses struggling to keep up and incorporate these considerations into their day-to-day work.
Specifically, it seems that when designing an experience that goes beyond the singular digital touchpoint, guidelines and directions for best practices become less defined. As a service designer, I’ve come to notice that when designing wider experiences from a zoomed out perspective, lines become blurred, and it boils down to the designer’s personal sensibility to keep inclusion at the heart of the project.
Here you will find my personal considerations around the themes of accessibility and inclusivity in the practice of service design. The following reflections and tips are based on my personal experience and by no means is the list all encompassing, but it’s instead a starting point to build awareness around this topic.
In most cases the interactions that a person has with a service occur through different channels: interactions can be human, digital and physical. Orchestrating these multiple touchpoints is what the practice of service design is about.
I can’t help but notice that oftentimes good practices for inclusion are not carried out consistently across all touchpoints, which results in a fragmented experience of the service. Here is an example. Imagine a dinner party with a set menu. When receiving the invites, attendees are also asked to fill in a quick form for dietary requirements. Although the initial form is a good way to make all attendees feel like their needs are being heard and welcomed, you might imagine that having a waiter come into the dining room and ask at the top of their voice “Where are the three vegans and the gluten intolerant sitting?” can only result in making people feel awkward.
In this example, we can see how the experience ‘dinner party’ is a set of multiple steps and interactions that occur in different spaces. Customers receive invitations and dietary forms in the digital space (where everything seems to be going smoothly). Then they go to the physical reception to attend the party and be served dinner. What makes things go wrong is the lack of design to identify attendees with specific requirements once sat at their tables, leaving blank space for the staff to find their own solution according to their personal sensibility. So what started as a good practice for inclusion (the form), resulted instead in an unpleasant experience that pointed out to the protagonists how different they are from the wider group. And that’s not what good design aims for.
The goal instead should be embracing differences, not only allowing everyone to use a service regardless of their circumstances or abilities, but also making sure no one feels like a non — so called — “normal” user (as there is no such thing).
Disconnected inclusion practices occur not just in the case of dietary restrictions but also for people with physical or cognitive impairment. Or simply people that find themselves in circumstances that are not represented by a restricted and biased representation of “user”. Often the personas used in the design process are not an accurate representation of the full spectrum of customers, but a reduced and simplified version of it. It may make it easier for the business to use them as a reference, but it unfortunately leaves a lot of potential users unable to use a service or unwelcomed to do so.
Besides the lack of ability to do something, often the reason that prevents someone from using a service has to do with who that person is. As Lou Downe states in his book Good Services:
“All too often, things that are to do with who a person is — such as their gender, sex or religion — are also added to this list of qualities required by services for optimum use.”
This inconsistency in inclusive practice across different design disciplines needs to be addressed holistically, in order to work out the consequent issues.
Service designers might be in a strategic position to drive change on this issue, as they apply a wider lens on the overall experience that goes across touchpoints.
Here are some personal hints and further reflections to ensure we design end-to-end experiences that are truly inclusive, across all touchpoints.
1. Explore and test scenarios
Spend some time exploring different scenarios and entry points to your service. Whether it’s an application form, a reception space or something else, make sure you test all entry points and curate the journeys through your service in a way that is seamless for your end users, regardless of their starting point.
2. Make your service functional for everyone
Before anything else, your service needs to work for the people that are going to be using it. Make sure you are providing varied options to access your service and use it, for example checking that it is perceivable through at least one of the senses (sight, hearing, touch). That might mean removing barriers both in the physical space (like a step in front of the entrance) or in the digital space (like a non color-blind friendly interface).
In order to address everyone’s needs, it’s important to consider inclusion in the early stages of your design process. We know design choices should be measured against research insights, so make sure your research takes into account a wide range of potential users, including a selection of edge cases if you can.
3. Don’t neglect physical spaces — they need to be inclusive too
Although it may seem that everything is pivoting to an online format, touchpoints in the physical world are still much needed and they deserve the same attention we give to digital platforms.
As humans, we tend to be very reactive to our surrounding environment, hence why creating multi-sense customer journeys where physical elements are curated in combination with digital interactions is key to creating very meaningful experiences.
Designing inclusive spaces is a goal shared among various disciplines including architecture, interior design, urban design, etc. In service design, physical spaces act as a stage for the interactions that we are designing, so they need dedicated attention.
- Signaling
Just like using a user interface, navigating through a space and wayfinding should be intuitive and seamless for everyone, without preconditions or prior knowledge. In order to achieve that, consider accessibility needs: lighting, colors, wheelchair ramps, gender neutral spaces, language, printouts, etc - Training of personnel
The people that our users will interact with when using our service need to be in line with our inclusion practices. That might mean giving specific personnel training on how to recognise hidden biases and ensure the interactions with customers are respectful and non judgemental. Language, for example, carries a lot of cultural assumptions and stereotypes, being aware of that is the first step to overcome involuntary barriers. - Acknowledging you biases:
Dedicate some time testing your service prototype by doing service walkthrough or — where possible — body storming, possibly with a diverse community so that it will become easier to identify gaps or mistakes, often not visible due to our blinding biases.
4. Ensure personalisation doesn’t turn into user hierarchy
Is everyone experiencing your service/brand in the same way? When designing for inclusion we don’t want some people to feel like they are second-class users. If you have a specific journey planned for users with, for example, motion impairment, this shouldn’t be perceived as a specific path for “diverse users”. Instead keep all options for access on the same level so that users don’t perceive a hierarchy, but just a mere suite of options to choose from, according to personal preferences and personal conditions.
This might also mean to keep default options as neutral as possible. Where possible make best use of customer information that was previously captured to filter what happens later in that journey, so that users don’t have to keep repeating their preferences or limitations. That might also include remembering pronouns across channels and touchpoints, remembering preferred channels or senses (sight vs hearing).
In conclusion, the topic of diversity and inclusion in design is complex and multifaceted, and its practical implementation remains a challenge. Service designers have a unique opportunity to bring innovation, creating inclusive experience ecosystems for brands and businesses.
Despite the challenges, I truly believe there is so much potential to make positive change through thoughtful and deliberate design practices.
