Key Insights

• •

  Inclusive design involves intentionally including previously excluded groups, such as people with disabilities and underrepresented cultures, from the earliest research stages.

• •

  Intel developed an Inclusive Design Maturity Model with phases from ignorance to cultural integration to measure and guide progress.

• •

  A head, heart, and hands exercise revealed that teams often understand and care about inclusivity but lack concrete actions.

• •

  Secondary research and bite-sized frameworks help busy designers gain baseline knowledge about diverse communities without overwhelming them.

• •

  An inclusive card deck framework helps teams prioritize which communities to research and identify where solutions are clear or require participatory design.

• •

  ‘Nothing about us without us’ is a core mantra, stressing collaboration with disabled users and involving them as co-designers and team members.

• •

  Scaling inclusive design beyond early adopters requires embedding accessible-by-default design systems and creating shared tools and exercises.

• •

  Traditional UX collaboration methods like sticky notes exclude some people with disabilities, urging adaptation of tools for inclusivity.

• •

  Publicly published corporate inclusivity goals create accountability and help put inclusion on the agenda, but do not guarantee change alone.

• •

  Progress requires repeated, sensitive conversations with champions across the organization to build momentum and culture change over time.

Notable Quotes