Inclusive Design, what it is and how you can use it to address gaps in education

1. INCLUSIVE DESIGN
THAT AH-HA MOMENT!
Jutta Treviranus
Jess Mitchell
OCAD University, Toronto
How many of you consider yourselves designers?

2. WHAT IS
INCLUSIVE DESIGN
Inclusive Design is design that considers the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference.
Stacked, colourful cups https://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/2987668742/in/photolist-5y1zQ3-9iioxp-4hGtdR-e86mXv-7S3xLA-oGJ71U-2GKVgd-cqo7RQ-
LgBMB-LB3EG-5SZRyN-LBbgF-9GAD7c-6tYNTm-4Ev2tX-4QjDbk-8Vd1QL-gnpzqR-6ZKrmp-rsfoP-teU2X-9q5WPk-9q8YjY-7BF8ob-LBbgP-7EQk6t-dx7TCA-e8bXp5

3. 3 P R I N C I P L E S O F
INCLUSIVE DESIGN
1. recognize diversity and
uniqueness
2. use an inclusive process and tools
3. have a broader beneficial impact
3 principles
1. recognize diversity and uniqueness — Empower individuals to express personal needs and preferences
2. use an inclusive process and tools — get experts to make the best solutions — if you’re designing learning materials for 6 year olds who are the experts? use tools to
create that do not create barriers to co-create
3. have a broader beneficial impact — Individuals become their own decision-makers and designers of their own experiences breaking down barriers of exclusion and
discrimination

4. 3 P R I N C I P L E S O F
INCLUSIVE DESIGN
1. recognize diversity and uniqueness
• Let individuals be unique
2. use an inclusive process and tools
• Nothing about us without us
3. have a broader beneficial impact
• look at the big picture
3 principles
1. recognize diversity and uniqueness — Empower individuals to express personal needs and preferences
2. use an inclusive process and tools — get experts to make the best solutions — if you’re designing learning materials for 6 year olds who are the experts? use tools to
create that do not create barriers to co-create
3. have a broader beneficial impact — Individuals become their own decision-makers and designers of their own experiences breaking down barriers of exclusion and
discrimination: caution on this one — being invited to the table isn’t enough if you’ve never been there before and have no idea how to participate.

5. 1. mismatch as design solvable
2. one-size-fits-one
3. design decisions — as exclusion
3 things I want to focus on

6. DISABILITY
Inclusion then is about human difference — one way we describe people who are different is to talk about their difference as a disability. We sometimes
hear disability describes as a medical condition — someone is afflicted, they can’t do something — they lack an ability.
Stethoscope http://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2014/01/24/d6bd0d38-cb4a-4411-bd1d-7a5dcc4e319d/thumbnail/620x350/
fa75501812b1d1d699dd40da9648001a/stethoscope.jpg

7. DISABILITY
And it is often associated with the medical model of 4 main categories of disabilities:
mobility impaired
cognitively impaired
hearing impaired
seeing impaired
But at the IDRC we completely redefine disability. It isn’t a medical condition to us…>>>
Four categories of disability:https://www.worknetncc.com/Uploads/Disability_symbols_16.png

8. MISMATCH
Disability is a mismatch between the needs of the individual, their goals, and the learning experience offered
Disability is not a personal trait and because it’s so context dependent, it is a relative condition not permanent.
Accessibility = the ability of the learning system to match the needs of the individual
>>>>>
Square peg, round hole: http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/adrianwarnock/files/2015/08/3546059144_1b33dfdc0e_o.jpg

9. DISABILITY IS MISMATCH
MIS MAT C H I S SOLVABLE
D E S I G N C A N S O LV E M I S M AT C H
ALL EXPERIENCE MISMATCH
When I’m in the car and I get lost, my navigation system won’t let me easily search (even using voice commands). When I have a passenger in the car with a smartphone we can fire up Google Maps and use
it for navigation.
Making content available to those with cognitive disabilities often means simplifying the content — you know who else benefits from that? What about the executive 2-pager? In some cases it’s become a 1-
pager — they’re busy, they don’t have time or energy to focus. They are cognitively impaired at that moment.
I was sitting in a lecture and I got a video from a friend — I wanted to watch it right away (i assure you it was relevant to the lecture) but it had no captions and I had the volume off. Putting earbuds or
headphone on would have been too disrespectful so i couldn’t watch it.
I wanted to work on this slide deck in the park yesterday — it was so beautiful out — but the sun was shining directly onto my screen making it impossible for me to read my monitor. I can change the
brightness and contrast though — this simple solution also helps the sight impaired user who has partial sight but needs slight modifications.
Context
Ability within the context
Needs

10. 1. mismatch as design solvable
2. one-size-fits-one
3. design decisions — as exclusion
3 things I want to focus on

11. THE PROBLEM WITH
ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL
• treats people with different abilities as
a homogeneous group
• ignore the multiplicity of needs and
preferences
• marginalizes with one-off solutions for
particular populations

12. THE MAGIC AT THE
MARGINS
• the edge case and the edge scenario
• innovation
• benefits the majority
• supports the spectrum
• resiliency
Instead of fearing the edges or trying to forget them we should be focusing on them.

13. EDG E CASE S
“We have clients come to us and say, “Here’s our average
customer:”, for instance, “She’s female, she’s 34 years old, she has
2.3 kids…” And we listen politely and say: “Well, that’s great but we
don’t care about that person”. What we really need to do to design, is
look at the extremes, the weakest, or the person with arthritis, or the
athlete, or the strongest or the fastest person. Because if we
understand what the extremes are, the middle will take care of itself”.
– Dan Formosa, Smart Design, “Objectified”
http://sugoru.com/2013/07/14/designing-for-the-extremes/
They aren’t describing a person. It’s so abstracted and so removed from what a person does, it’s not that functionally useful. In other words, it’s useless.
How about instead this is Angela, she’s 74 years old and was a school teacher for 40 years. She taught English literature to high school students (Salinger, Shakespeare,
Byron). She loves to read and to garden. Her favourite flower is the lily. Though being on her knees in the garden is painful, Angela spends as much time there as she can.
After a long day in the garden she hunkers down with a hot tea and a good book and spends her evening flitting about through Literature masters. On Saturdays Angela’s
two granddaughters come over to have a tea party and play in the garden. Angela has a goldfish named Sal.
For a great read about how the average isn’t a real person and why we’ve historically come to defer to it so thoroughly, I recommend reading Todd Rose’s book, The End
of Average that just came out in February this year. It’s a perspective changer itself.

14. • Pace, Path, Content, Delivery Method
• text, visual, sonification, video…
• individual, group, didactic, participatory
• Motivation – external, internal, positive, negative
• Social support – peer, instructor, other
• Degree of structure
• Learning Outcome?
What is personalization in inclusive spaces?
It is all of these things — and this is a lot. We have a lot of opportunities to let the individual decide.

15. ONE SIZE FITS
ONE
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Stafford_livingroom.jpg

16. ONE-SIZE-FITS-ONE
16
Personalize
-­‐ USER
INTERFACES,
CONTENT,
AND
DEVICES!
Adapt
to
me
–
not
me
adapting
to
you!!
Wherever
possible
take
a
one-­‐size-­‐fits-­‐one
approach
—
LET
THE
USER
DECIDE
when
you
can
offer
flexibility
and
customizability
or
personalization
do
it!
examples:
car
dashboard
—
with
digital
i
can
change
units
same
phone,
different
ways
to
organize
the
screen
sit
down
at
someone
else’s
computer
and
everything
is
different:
the
mouse
scrolls
the
other
way,
the
dock
is
somewhere
else,
the
hot
corners
keep
making
your
screen
fly
away.

17. WHY PERSONALIZE?
http:/insideupmc.blogspot.ca
http://dc.about.com/od
http://www.thejournal.ie
http://inhabitat.com/
http://www-­‐03.ibm.com
WHO
is
using
WHAT
and
WHERE
E-­‐Z
access
keypad
An
increasingly
digital
world.
Eliminate
barriers
to
access
to
the
web
museum
kiosks,
ticket
machines,
ATMs
public
computer
terminals
(e.g.
library,
school)
Users
and
settings
are
unique

18. ONE-SIZE-FITS-ONE
• Flexible
• Accessible
• Meet people where they are
FLEXIBLE
(levels
of
complexity)
–
ecosystem
of
tools?
One
adaptable
tool?
Give
user
ability
to
choose
from
multiple
ways
to
interact.
E.g.
keyboard
vs
mouse
interaction,
iphone
provides
multiple
ways
to
take
a
photo
ACCESSIBLE
–
avoiding
assumptions
about
comfort
with
tech,
ability,
environment
MEET
USERS
WHERE
THEY
ARE
((comfort
level,
environment,
context)

19. 1. mismatch as design solvable
2. one-size-fits-one
3. design decisions — as exclusion
3 things I want to focus on

20. BRILLIANT DECISION?
• Mode
• Context
• Affordances

21. https://static.pexels.com/photos/1315/stairs-fog-path-entrance.jpg

23. D E S I G N I D E A S :
BR ILLIANT OR EX CLUS IO NARY?
• With this brilliant design idea who
just got excluded?
• Is there a way I can bridge the
gap I just created? A way I can
solve for the mismatch or avoid it?
One way we do this in the digital world is to
make it multi-modal
- text
- audio
- video
- image
avoid hard to read fonts or font sizes
create an appropriate level of contrast
simulations and visualization provide interesting challenges
make targets easy to hit
can you use it with the keyboard?
be wary of time-based operations
keep content structured — semantic content

24. SCRAPED KNEES,
FAILURES, AND MISTAKES
•Make mistakes early and fix
them
•Learn from our mistakes
•Get feedback
Get to know what works for you by trying things — in a safe way and safe place. You won’t shut out the lights in Cincinnati. It gives us a chance to try things without
committing too much or potentially losing too much.
And we learn just how important and helpful failure can be! We all strive for perfection, for solutions.
First thing you do if someone presents a problem to you —> you try to solve it. Slow down and WAIT. And explore. This is where Innovation happens!
1. Silly Putty — meant to be a synthetic rubber for WWII — there was a rubber shortage because of the war
2. Text Messages — cell phone carriers letting customers know about problems with their network
3. Microplanes were for wood or metal — I use them on orange rinds or horseradish when I cook!
Scraped Knees: https://www.flickr.com/photos/theloushe/4630743266/in/photolist-84cLD9-6aJifh-2kUyK-fjxqAu-yA7Bw-hjQKc3-kpzP6x-gKfCM-
yA7Br-499dY-4i8wVP-88F5zy-aoQPQc-nKQJQi-f5bAkX-8d7G1D-crYbzb-dSMYUY-hPjrmR-p3SToX-8eeJKQ-p3T4aa-4stR9T-Mnt19-7JnWR-nUuCpS-9JPb8w-awBeAc-
rBUPem-7KLPot-8ewzdm-9hkGYk-8qVgNs-2qDqNC-bJLYGg-oLEes2-fhLbKE-GgexGw-oLEfYP-d6pSe-e6Zmjg-9EFqFx-6bKiWZ-e7vMAH-dT5y9B-nmgVY-f4STJ6-
cfPSHs-p27npC-aJk6wD

25. LEARNING EVERMORE
•Think broadly
•Relaxed
attention
•Rethinking
•Questioning
assumptions
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Men_fly_fishing.jpg

26. CO-DESIGN
Avoid
design
decisions
as
exclusion
by
co-­‐design
What
co-­‐design
is
not:
Us
versus
them
–
observing
people
Expecting
others
to
do
the
“work”
of
design
What
co-­‐design
is:
Collaborative
Iterative
Diverse
and
Broad
Blue
Men:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/yuan2003/1796355617/in/
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27. GOAL
To co-design inclusive education for
diversity— learning that enable a
MATCH
• Meet people where they are
• Allow people to be unique; make
learning materials and spaces adapt to
those uniquenesses
Design
tools
that

28. What is accessibility?
In Universal Design there’s the curb cut — does everyone know what a curb cut is?

29. What is accessibility?
29
We have examples in the digital world too:
3 uses:
1. in a bar
2. in a gym
3. in bed with a sleeping spouse

30. ONE-SIZE-FITS-ONE
30
https://www.mavenlink.com/images/blog/mobile_home_screen/04-iphone.png | http://www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/4779911251/
-­‐ can’t
take
a
one-­‐size-­‐fits-­‐all
approach
(traditionally
“universal”
design)
when
you
can
offer
flexibility
and
customizability
or
personalization
do
it!
examples:
car
dashboard
same
phone,
different
organization
screen
sit
down
at
someone
else’s
computer
and
everything
is
different:
the
mouse
scrolls
the
other
way,
the
dock
is
somewhere
else,
the
hot
corners
keep
making
your
screen
fly
away.

31. HOW CAN I DO THIS?
• think about the edge cases early and solve
for them — MISMATCH
• can you let the user decide — ONE-SIZE-
FITS-ONE
• think about design decisions as excluding
rather than solving — BRILLIANT?
EXCLUSIONARY?

32. THANK YOU
Email:
jtreviranus@ocadu.ca
jmitchell@ocadu.ca
Twitter:
@juttatrevira
@jesshmitchell