Strategies to Create Inclusive User Experiences

Article published on 25 Jan 2023

With the constant advances in the internet and technology, anyone can develop content and products with instant global reach. Moreover, there are people of different ages, genders and looks all over the world. Consequently, products need to take into account the different social identities of the global audience.

 

In this situation, the term "inclusive user experience design" comes into play. Inclusive user experience design involves people with all social identities and disabilities. This inclusive design allows individuals to use and benefit from the product. Since people have different backgrounds, an inclusive design strives for everyone to be able to use the product.

 

While inclusive design does not mean that it is designed for everyone, it simply means that a variety of options are provided so that everyone can benefit. The result is that many people use the different ways of interacting. This inclusive design also ensures that everyone has a good user experience.

10 Best Practices to Create Inclusive User Experiences

Companies that engage more with their customers create memorable user experiences for all customers. It is equally important for the usability and accessibility of the design that the content is inclusive. So below are some notable best practises for an inclusive user experience. 

1. Conduct User Research and Include Diverse Participants

Many user testing approaches, such as interviewing potential users, are used in the design of user experiences. Also, provide a variety of demographic data relevant to numerous people when assessing how users will interact with your design. 

End-user feedback can help developers shape and improve their designs and content to be more inclusive and diverse. By considering the priorities and context of use of different users, you can make your content compelling and accessible to everyone.

2. Prioritize Simplicity 

When you create something that appears inclusive, the usability of the content or service produced is the critical goal. Simplicity is a great practise to tackle because it promotes usability. Users want to discover what they are looking for and quickly and efficiently grasp the information they see. On the other hand, high-level content that uses complex language or data causes difficulties for users with cognitive issues, language problems, low reading ability and many other problems. 

Your content needs to be simple for all end users to understand in order to appeal to all readers. Simplification to simplicity is a subtle way to communicate that a brand cares about all its users and helps build trust.

3. Incorporate AI-based Assistance Tools 

An inclusive UX design is the most efficient way to reach a global audience worldwide. Therefore, artificial intelligence, plug-ins and other technologies that enable users with different abilities to use the content or product are an important requirement. Inclusive designs also enable AI technologies that translate information into different languages to provide access for people who need translation. 

4. Effective Utilization of Images and Illustrations 

Use photos, symbols, drawings and other illustrations to make the content more understandable. Pictures, logos and drawings can convey thousands of words. However, they are all so simple that anyone can learn through them.

5. Utilize More Tools Based on Voice Assistance 

Voice assistant tools not only help the hearing impaired, but also the physically fit. For example, the inclusive designs of UX, which offer reading assistance or text-to-speech features in the product or content, also allow people with visual impairments to access information. In addition, you can quickly complete many tasks using voice commands.

6. Test with a Diverse Group of Users 

It is ideal for incorporating more user feedback into the design process. UX Design testing with a broad group of consumers allows for collective access to knowledge. You learn from a different perspective to create a positive cycle of inclusion. So present your created content or product to a large group of people to get feedback. 

7. Deliver Alternatives to Visual Content 

Users who are blind or visually impaired need to have a lot of trust in people and technology to feel safe. Therefore, it is important to adjust the settings for font, colour and spacing and to enlarge text and images significantly so that blind people can adapt the user interface to their needs.

8. Consider Accessibility From the Beginning 

To make UX more user-friendly, accessibility criteria must be considered as a set of design constraints. Unfortunately, almost everyone is disabled in some way, whether permanently, temporarily or situationally. 

Therefore, it is important to know the main disabilities, conditions or limitations that affect how users interact with digital services. By making sure that everyone can use your product in the most straightforward way possible, you can prepare a UX design for progressive improvement.

9. Embracing the Power of Specificity 

A design strategy known as inclusive UX design aims to create products and services that are usable, enjoyable and accessible to everyone, regardless of their needs, circumstances or abilities. Specificity, i.e. designing for unique users rather than a broad, fictional or average user, is a critical component of inclusive design.

In inclusive UX design, designers can develop more specialised and successful solutions that address the particular needs and preferences of different people by embracing the power of specificity. Designing for specific disabilities, cultures, languages, technologies or use situations can fall under this category. 

Adopting Specificity in inclusive UX design has several advantages, such as: 

• Improved usability: By designing for specific consumers, designers can take into account the particular difficulties and obstacles these users face and develop more logical and simple solutions for them. 

• Improved accessibility: By taking individual disabilities into account, designers can provide more accessible goods and services that are easier for users. 
• Greater inclusivity: Designers can provide goods and services that are more welcoming and inclusive to all people, regardless of their abilities or requirements, by designing for different users.
• Higher user satisfaction: By designing for specific customers, designers can create engaging and personalised experiences that better meet those customers' needs and tastes. 

Designers can develop more useful, usable and enjoyable goods and services for different people by harnessing the potential of specificity in inclusive UX design.

10. Follow Design Standards 

Designers can adhere to various design principles and rules to create a more inclusive UX design. The most widely used standards and guidelines include:

• WCAG - The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has created the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to improve the accessibility of web content for people with disabilities. The WCAG provide suggestions for addressing various accessibility issues in web design, including visual, auditory, cognitive and motor disabilities. 
• ISO 9241 - An international standard called ISO 9241 provides recommendations for the ergonomic design of human-computer interfaces. Usability topics covered by ISO 9241 include usability concepts, user interface design and user-centred design methods. 
• IDRC - The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has developed the Human-Centred Design Toolkit to help designers develop more inclusive and user-centred designs. User research, prototyping and usability testing are just some of the design-related topics covered in the toolkit.

Conclusion 

A product is not perfect if it is inaccessible to a certain group of people. By applying inclusive design, you can develop products that are accessible to people from different backgrounds. An excellent inclusive UX design strives to provide a positive user experience for everyone who comes into contact with the product. 

Designers can use the inclusive design method to develop products that work effectively not only for members of the design team but for everyone, reaching a wider audience that can benefit from your product or service.

References

• https://www.boia.org/blog/five-strategies-for-creating-an-inclusive-design
• https://www.clearpnt.com/5-tips-for-inclusive-ux-design/
• https://uxplanet.org/6-principles-for-inclusive-design-3e9867f7f63e

About Author, 

Siya Hingorani

Lead Product Designer & UX Researcher

I solve complex problems creatively, balancing user needs with business objectives and technological constraints. With over 14 years of experience in human-centered design, across visual design, interaction design, user experience, customer experience, and service design, I advocate for users’ needs and try to make their lives easier by creating innovative solutions.

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Hotjar vs Clicktale - Digital Experience analytics tool comparison

Continuous focus on user behaviour and actions is the key to craft better user experience and improve designs. Focus is not limited till the product design and development phases but also in post release phase. Once the product is live or released, another set of UX activities get started, where product designers and researchers focus on various Usability & UX metrics. Measuring & analysing these metrics help in identifying further improvements and identifying new needs. There are various frameworks to execute post release research activities such as Google Heart framework, Pulse, AARRR Metrics etc. Web analytics tools also play an important role in capturing the real time activities on product which helps data science researchers, product owners, UX researchers and designers etc. to draw actionable and critical insights about the release product. 

What is Digital Experience Analytics

Digital customer experience analytics are all of the metrics that track and measure relevant data about the customer journey during every stage of the customer lifecycle. Customer experience analytics guide the digital marketing agenda and are used to prioritize the use of marketing investments. [1] There are a huge list of behaviour analytics tools available in market. "Which tool to choose for your product analysis" is one such a big question for a product team. There are some parameters which can help you decide the best tool for your needs which are listed in below table. I have tried to do comparison of two top tools in behaviour analytics ecosystem: Hotjar and Clicktale. 

Hotjar

Hotjar is a behavior analytics company that analyses website use, providing feedback through tools such as heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. It works with web analytics tools such as Google Analytics to offer an insight into how people are navigating websites, and how their customer experience can be improved. [2]

Clicktale 

Clicktale is a Software-As-A-Service, cloud-based analytic system and service that allows you to visualize your customer's experience on your website from their perspective. It provides the ability to analyze their interactions in aggregate in the form of heatmaps and reports, as well as individual session replays.[3]

Parameters	Hotjar	Clicktale
Website	https://www.hotjar.com/	https://www.clicktale.com/
logo
Short description	Easy to use visitor heat mapping, visitor recording and website polling platform	Enterprise analytics and customer conversion platform
Features
Click Heatmaps	Yes	Yes
Move Heatmaps	Yes	Yes
Scroll Heatmaps	Yes	Yes
Download and share Heatmaps	Yes	Yes
Heatmaps split by device type	Yes	Yes
Session recordings	Yes	Yes
Activity mapping in session recordings	Yes	Yes
Funnel analysis (Task analysis)	Yes	Yes
Recordings of task completion	Yes	Yes
Form analysis (field engagement, drop-offs and submission stats	Yes	Yes
Intercept surveys & polls (NPS)	Yes	Yes
Website analytics	Yes	Yes
Integration	Easy & quick (Few lines of code to be integrated in Java Script file)	Easy & quick (Few lines of code to be integrated in Java Script file)
Integration with Usabilla	No	Yes
Integration with Adobe Target	No	Yes
Dynamic content click heatmap	No	No
Best used by	Mainly by Product team, UX team. Data analytics team with limited capability to integrate with other analytics platform.	Primarily used by UX, product, data analytics, marketing team, customer success teams, sales team with personalised dashboards & platforms.
Preferred for	Basic B2B, B2C, Web applications	Enterprise applications, B2B and complex platforms.
Pricing
Price	Free version - Free with limited capability	By quote, Basic Plan starts at $99/month for 20,000 page views
Price	Paid version - Starting from 89$ per month	Silver is $290/month for 80,000 page views, Gold is $990/month for 300,000 page views
Integration with Top analytics tools	Yes	Yes
Ranking
Similarities Rank	7 (495K+ websites)	83 (14K+)
Smartscore	9.6	8.4
Available in platform
Mac	Yes	Yes
Windows	Yes	Yes
Linux	Yes	No
Mobile iOS	Yes	Yes
Mobile - Android	Yes	Yes
Web SAAS Cloud	Yes	Yes
Language supported
English	Yes	Yes
German	Yes	No
Italian	Yes	No
French	Yes	No
Hindi	No	No
Japanese	Yes	No
Swedish	Yes	No
Dutch	Yes	No
Polish	Yes	No
Chinese	Yes	No
Spanish	Yes	No
UX analysis (Rating 1 to 5, 1 being low and 5 being high rating)
Output of the tool	5	5
Helpful in analytics	5	5
Easy to operate	5	5
Dependency from technical side in conducting analysis	4	5
Running Poll/Survey/Feedback/NPS real time	4	1
Overall	Hotjar is easy to use and easily integratable to live websites. The output like heatmaps, funnel analysis and live sessions are great value add for UX research analysis and to take actionable insights.	Clicktale is very easy to deploy and can provide detailed multi tire analytics visually. Apart from heat-maps, scroll reach, & funnel analytics, one could also additionally setup custom test to observe the engagement of user with each element on screen.

Explore more UX Tools

References: 

1. https://www.earley.com/blog/enhancing-your-digital-customer-experience-analytics-and-insights 

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotjar

3. https://uxmag.com/articles/clicktale-review 

Designing for the “Gen-Z”

Image Source - www.eduswami.com

www.futurumresearch.com has coined a very interesting term called Digital Native for the ones born after 2000, the world calls them Generation Z. Adding to Generation Z are the millennials who are not only come to claim the largest share of market products today, but, are also will be the next biggest share of the working class. While Generation Z comes totally equipped with mobile and digital media, the millennials are but a mixed lot of digital and analog experiences.

Generation Z is integrally born in the digital wave and does not consider their involvement in the technology as addiction, as the other generations think they are. In fact, Generation Z sees technology as an extension of their normal life. They have aligned and adapted to the technology to fill their social, mental and physical spaces. The impact of technology so penetrating the lifestyle has its adverse effects and researchers are studying the involvement of Generation Z and their technology involvement.

Gen Z is born to technology and they see technology as inseparable. Rather their smartphone devices are such integral part of their lifestyles that it resembles an extended organ of their body. Education, entertainment, shopping, ordering food, booking movie tickets or online banking, everything is at their fingertips. Gen Z is spoilt for information and choices and therefore they value technology as a practical tool and not a developmental luxury. While the other generations have come a long way adopting and adjusting to technology, Gen Z is riding the

technology wave. No wonder you see babies, surfing YouTube for their favourite rhymes and children gamming like professionals. The adult Gen Z is supported to deal with different challenges except for the emotional one through technology. For emotional ones too they can easily reach their friends through technology.

The traditional shift to marketing and buying patterns

The buying patterns for Generation Z has largely been the digital way. The millennials and now the Generation Z are posing a challenge to marketers and promoters to hook these young consumers to screen. Considering the very short attention span and multiple screen juggling practices. The challenge is to keep these young consumers glued to your screen. Short and crisp is the way ahead for Generation Z.

The Budding Clients

It will not be a distant day when Gen Z will be the major clientele. From schoolwork, games, surfing, texting, shopping and entertainment, Gen Z relies on technology. Going forth many applications and products need to be designed around the needs of Gen Z. To capture this wave of Gen Z in all its fervour, designers and companies need to be workaround a few parameters that will define the user experiences for Gen Z.

Dependence on Memory

Generation Z and to an extent the millennials are up for easy grabs for a calculator for solving simple math. The dependence on scheduler apps for updates and reminders is common. They have glued on to the screen and adrift from the world under the veil of their headphones. The short-term memories dependency of Generation Z is dependent and supported and controlled by the scheduler. They are continuously fed with a sea of data and thus a limitation to remember, recollect and the process is left to the comfort of external devices and technology.

www.Forbes.com states, we off-load memories to 'the cloud' just as readily as we would to a family member, friend or lover. It may be that the Internet is taking the place not just of other people as external sources of memory but also of our own cognitive facilities. The researchers call it "the Google effect."

Attention Span

Plethora of information makes data accessibility so easy that the essential what? and why? is often lost in a flood of information. The attention span of Generation Z is just 8 secs and they browse a minimum of 5 screens at a time.

Generation Z is not celebrity endorsement kinds. They are the ones who are captivated by the maximum follower bases- the influencers. YouTube has therefore seen the most subscriber base as Generation Z. The believe in what the masses believe, then call it herd mentality or a choice.

Image Source - www.openbusinesscouncil.org Influencers to Marketers

Working Designs

Designs that are bold, captivating and trendy will catch the fancy of a Gen Z, but be wary that their attention span is a few seconds and to make them stay on your product site is to supplement them with valuable information and insights, leading to call for action.

Building Content

Gen Z would go through as much information to get their desired inputs. But, if you want to anchor the Gen Z to your product, creating compelling, authentic and versatile content is the need.

Fluid Borders

Geographical barriers are not a concern of Gen Z. For them, this world is their playground. The Gen Z is easily accessible to information across the world and that has again changed their decision-making power. The comparison now is not locally, but internationally. The fluid geographical borders technology presents have made Gen Z more worldly and accepting. Their tastes and communication sphere has enhanced to worldwide options. Worldwide education prospects and online shopping are the majorly accessed options.

Gen Z calls for constant information and likes to regale in this whirlwind of information. They are spoilt for choice and are experimental with their outlook.

There is a sea change the generations over the last decades have transitioned over. Lifestyles, education patterns, travel, food, culture and business have all influenced under the scope of technology. However, as Gen X or Gen Y, who were adroitly sharp at their memory and remember facts and figures from the wee days, are the Millennials and Gen Z losing the power of memory over cloud-based artificial storages as well as smartphone devices. The transition is to a technology-based lifestyle that is facilitating, yet, daunting the mere existence of your inherent resources. Call it development or name it an addiction, the fact is, the world is changing and so are the behavioural patterns.

Going forth, the challenge is not to deviate the Gen Z from technology, but be able to build experiences that are making Gen Z spend more and valuable time on your product page. The earlier generations would call this paradigm shift

merely losing control to technology whereas, the Gen Z calls it ‘Tuned-in to Technology.’