Original subtitles

Hey there. I'm Shabi,

an interaction designer here at Google.

My role focuses on scaling

accessibility across Google's design systems.

After high school, I wasn't really

sure what kind of career would be a good fit for me.

I was interested in technology,

but I didn't have any technical knowledge,

so I was afraid I wouldn't do well in the field.

But eventually, I realized what

a huge impact advances in

tech had on society and my life.

I wanted to harness this power to

positively affect the lives of people around me,

especially those who tend to

be marginalized or forgotten.

As an intern in UX design,

I worked on products for people with chronic pain.

I realized how important and impactful

it is to consider the needs of people with disabilities,

and how much I wanted to create products to help them.

So I continued researching

and empathizing with those who are

disabled to understand how

I could uplift them with my work.

It's a passion I'm looking forward to

sharing with you during this program.

So far, you've learned about user-centered design,

which concentrates on meeting users' needs.

As we mentioned before,

there are many UX design frameworks,

and those frameworks change over time.

In this video, we'll talk about three more ways to put

the user first in your designs: universal design,

inclusive design, and equity-focused design.

Let's start from the beginning.

When designers began considering how to

include an even broader range of people in their designs,

they called it universal design.

Universal design is the process

of creating one product for

users with the widest range of

abilities and in the widest range of situations.

Think of it like a one-size-fits-all approach.

Designers propose one solution for everyone.

The problem is that when you focus on

creating one solution for everyone,

the designs lose their effectiveness.

It's often difficult to achieve any goals with

your product when you have so many intended users.

It's like when you go to a store

that sells a hat in just one size,

the label might read,

One-size-fits-all, but the hat

still won't fit a lot of people.

Universal design had the same problem.

Even though it had the intention of being inclusive,

it excluded a lot of people.

It turns out one-size-fits-all isn't a great solution.

As UX designers realized that

universal design didn't meet the needs of every user,

the approach to including people began to change.

Designers started thinking about

the concept of inclusive design,

which focuses on finding

solutions to meet different needs.

Inclusive design means making design choices

that take into account

personal identifiers like ability,

race, economic status, language, age, and gender.

Inclusive design includes researchers and designers from

traditionally excluded populations in the process,

so they can provide their unique perspectives

during all phases of the design process.

If universal design is a one-size-fits-all solution,

then inclusive design can be described

as solve for one, extend to many.

With inclusive design, you solve for one type of user,

and the benefit of that solution can

extend to many other types of users.

Our goal as designers is to build experiences that

are accessible to users with

the widest range of abilities.

In other words, no one should be excluded from using

a product that we built because we

didn't consider their needs when building it.

In inclusive design, there's no such thing as normal.

There's no average person

or target audience that we should design for.

For example, when designing

we focus on the needs of people who are blind and

deaf even more than we consider the needs of

those who rely on their sight and hearing to communicate.

Then as we build more versions of a product,

we design for additional excluded groups,

like those with physical or cognitive disabilities.

Designing products, devices, services,

or environments for people with

disabilities is called accessibility.

Accessibility is just one aspect of inclusive design.

We'll explore accessibility in more detail later.

But keep in mind that the idea of "solve for one,

extend to many," only benefits the group

the design was created for and existing users.

Many groups are still left out.

Over time UX designers

realized that inclusive design wasn't always enough,

and that's where we find ourselves today as

equity-focused design becomes a new industry goal.

Equity-focused design takes the idea

of inclusive design one step further.

It asks designers to focus

on designing for groups that have

been historically underrepresented or

ignored when building products.

The goal of equity-focused design is

to uplift groups that have been excluded historically.

In order to design with equity as a goal,

we first need to know the difference

between equality and equity.

The two words sound similar,

but they're actually two different concepts.

Equality means providing the same amount

of opportunity and support to all segments of society.

In other words, everyone gets the same thing.

Equity means providing

different levels of opportunity and

support for each person in

order to achieve fair outcomes.

To better understand the difference

between equality and equity,

check out this illustration.

The illustration on the left represents equality

because every person gets the same box to stand on,

but because each person has

a different height the tallest person has a better view.

The illustration on the right represents equity,

because each person is

given what they need.

The shortest person is given

the tallest stack of boxes

to stand on.

Let's explore how this

relates to design.

Equity-focused design is a newer concept in UX,

and one that we often discuss at Google.

Instead of building products for groups of people who are

currently being excluded,

which is the goal of inclusive design,

equity-focused design seeks to build products that meet

the needs of specific individuals in groups

who have been excluded in the past.

So what does this look like in the real world?

Start by identifying a product you want to build.

Then, think about the groups that have

not been served by this type of product in the past.

Finally, build your design while keeping the groups who

identified as underrepresented front and center.

It's important to keep in mind that

equity-focused design doesn't solve all problems,

just like inclusive design and

universal design don't either.

The key point is that

these are all different approaches to solving

issues of underrepresentation and

designing for a more equitable future.

These issues are massive, but vitally important.

Often, schools and companies

consider accessibility, inclusive design,

and equity-focused design as

methods to consider during the design process,

but not as a requirement.

But I'm a firm believer that

every designer should know the basics of

accessibility and why creating products for those

who are underrepresented and excluded is a must.

As you continue through your career,

you'll gain more practice and

understanding on how to implement these ideas.

We'll get to some more applications of this soon.