Microsoft is in. Microsoft is never the same. The old flashy word helper is long gone. With the introduction of the Surface Studio, a revolutionary touch-screen PC with a magical handle, Microsoft has successfully marched into the creatives’ world.
On the soft side, Microsoft has recently updated, if it ever existed, its Microsoft Design site. With the extensive survey of common design languages, including the typical color, type, icon, grid, etc, Microsoft really excites me in the concept of “Inclusive Design”.
In the downloadable toolkit manual, inclusive design is defined as the following:
A design methodology that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity.
And accessibility, a buzz word in the design community for quite some time, is redefined as the following:
1. The qualities that make an experience open to all,
2. A professional discipline aimed at achieving №1.
Unlike the accessibility that is commonly conceived as a plus feature in order to make the service available to some certain groups of “not normal” people, here in Microsoft Design, it is defined as to make the experience “truly usable and open to all”.
Human Centered Design Redefined.
“The heart of interactions design is not about our interaction with technology, it’s our interaction with each other through technology.”
We all have the time that trying to type to your significant other a really urgent message in one hand on our oversized phone while the other hand is busy holding a melting ice cream cone that almost ruined your favorite T-shirt. Do you see yourself as “disabled”? Of course not. Can you free both of your hands in the moment? Nah. In inclusive design, you fall into the “situational disability” spectrum.
In Microsoft Design, “disability” is redefined. It’s not a static “personal attribute” any more. It’s instead viewed as “context dependent”. And that, is the core concept and also the beauty and the brilliance of inclusive design.
Inclusive is to make accessible design a norm. Designing for certain conditions, once viewed as abnormal, even without spoken out loud, such as a person without functional eye sight or unable to use both hands simultaneously, was the typical scenario of “accessibility” and “human-centered design”. It is as if it were to design for a completely isolated group rather than to design for all.
Inclusive is a mindset.
“It’s not make the machine smarter, it’s about making the individual smarter so that they have a choice over what works for them. ”
It’s not about acting noble or being power over other person. It’s about respect, and being human. It’s about providing and gaining access to information, through various ways, including visual, auditory and kinesthetic.
While watching the promotional videos, it strikes me that how little attention I’ve ever paid to how physically disabled people live their routine. The video itself also served as a fine example of inclusive design: voicing over on default. It doesn’t feel odd or anything with the extra narrator that are not commonly found in other promotional videos. I can only guess how much help it would provide.
“It’s not about us and object, it’s about us and each other.”
That’s the true meaning of universal. Applaud to Microsoft.
