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Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design
How inclusive methods can build elegant design solutions that work for all. Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods--designing objects with rather than for excluded users--can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all.
Holmes tells stories of pioneers of inclusive design, many of whom were drawn to work on inclusion because of their own experiences of exclusion. A gamer and designer who depends on voice recognition shows Holmes his "Wall of Exclusion," which displays dozens of game controllers that require two hands to operate; an architect shares her firsthand knowledge of how design can fail communities, gleaned from growing up in Detroit's housing projects; an astronomer who began to lose her eyesight adapts a technique called "sonification" so she can "listen" to the stars.
Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.
Holmes tells stories of pioneers of inclusive design, many of whom were drawn to work on inclusion because of their own experiences of exclusion. A gamer and designer who depends on voice recognition shows Holmes his "Wall of Exclusion," which displays dozens of game controllers that require two hands to operate; an architect shares her firsthand knowledge of how design can fail communities, gleaned from growing up in Detroit's housing projects; an astronomer who began to lose her eyesight adapts a technique called "sonification" so she can "listen" to the stars.
Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published September 21, 2018
319 people are currently reading
4894 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 160 reviews
December 26, 2018
This book was so disappointing. I really want to read a practical, insightful book on inclusive design since it is such an important part of my next chapter of work. But this was not it. It had some great points. But it really should have been an article instead of a book. It was repetitive and rudimentary. It lacked depth and practical tips. Bummer. Recommendations welcomed on great books for putting inclusive design into practice!
January 19, 2019
It's a short book, and it often spins its wheels a bit, but the main premise and "Chapter 7: There is No Such Thing as Normal" make it worth the read.
February 5, 2019
Originally published at https://timkadlec.com/read/2019/mismatch
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Inclusion has become a borderline buzzword that many companies like to throw around but few know how to actually prioritize. Mismatch attempts to fix that by helping to provide a framework for how to design and build more inclusive experiences. At less than 200 pages, Mismatch is a brisk read and it's not going to cover everything you need to know. It does, however, do a very good job of tearing down the blinders we wear and helping to expose designers to the impact of what we create.
Much of the concepts of the book will be familiar if you've already read much about the topic, but Holmes' presentation of those concepts is often unique and, for me, made me consider familiar ideas in unfamiliar ways.
I absolutely loved her use of the term "mismatches" as a way to consider when an experience doesn't align with the reality of how a person needs to interact with that experience. An example she gives is trying to order from a menu written in a language you can't read. That's a mismatched experience. I've already started experimenting with using the term in my own work when I'm helping clients to identify audiences who are getting a subpar, or even unusable, experience from their sites. So far, it seems to be getting the point across better than terminology I've used in the past.
Some mismatches may seem minor (like, perhaps, ordering from the menu) but as Holmes points out, they add up fast and can lead to a significant feeling of not belonging:
Mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. They can feel like little moments of exasperation when a technology product doesn’t work the way we think it should. Or they can feel like running into a locked door marked with a big sign that says “keep out.” Both hurt.
The response to these mismatches may be emotional on the part of the person experiencing them, but Holmes is quick to point out that viewing "inclusion" as a "nice thing to do" does it a disservice.
Treating inclusion as a benevolent mission increases the separation between people. Believing that it should prevail simply because it’s the right thing to do is the fastest way to undermine its progress. To its own detriment, inclusion is often categorized as a feel-good activity.
So Holmes tries to be more concrete—both about how businesses benefit from building more inclusive experiences and about the first steps we can take to start improving the inclusivity of the things we create.
She does so with a practicality that is refreshing and encouraging. Trying to design more inclusively, or accessibly, can be intimidating. You want to do the right thing, but you're worried about messing up what you don't know. Given the nature of what it means to leave people out, when you _do_ mess up the blowback can be difficult to bear. Holmes advice for building a more inclusive vocabulary applies just as well to starting to design more inclusively in general:
Building a better vocabulary for inclusion starts with improving on the limited one that exists today. Sometimes we will use words that hurt people. What matters most is what we do next.
What happens next is the right question. Mismatch is an entry point, not a conclusion. If you're expecting something comprehensive, you will be disappointed—there's a lot more work ahead of you. Holmes doesn't set out to solve all the problems or give you some checklist to follow to suddenly be more inclusive (though she does give several tangible "to-do's" at the end of each chapter).
What she does is more important. She gives us a gentle nudge towards thinking more inclusively about what we design and build. More than any checklist, it's this way of thinking that stands to provide the most significant change in the way our experiences impact people. We'll never build a perfectly inclusive experience, but we can make changes to the method we use to create to help us eliminate those mismatched experiences one by one, allowing more people to benefit from what we build, and for us to benefit from their participation in the process.
January 27, 2021
I've both often thought about and read about the topics in this book, but the treatment given by Holmes is underwhelming to say the least. Her book is chock full of buzzwords, but there is precious little substance to be had. The entire thesis could be summarized by chapters 7 & 8, nearly everything else is filler.
Where to begin? I'll start with the positive: the cover design is elegant.
Other than that, everything was bad. There was a lot of unnecessary businessese, tons of empty or unsubstantiated phrases, and loads of ungrammatical sentence fragments throughout the book.
The "diagrams" (which are actually labelled "Figure 1.2, ...") are a joke. If they were included in a presentation, they wouldn't even be chartjunk, as they simply convey so little information it's ridiculous. One standout shows a woman in a wheelchair facing a stair to illustrate a mismatch between a person and an object (though the wheelchair, I assume, is fit for purpose). There wasn't a single diagram that added anything worthwhile to the text.
The actual thrust of the book, while worthwhile, could have been summarized in a few paragraphs. The author is mostly focused on digital design, but she spends nearly an entire chapter focused on Detroit housing and architecture, yet barely scratches beneath the surface. The "deepest" insight she has is the architect featured in that chapter realizing that one of her students was designing a shopping street filled with shops because she missed shopping with her mom.
... and? And nothing, the thought stops at "she had an emotional story to tell." Nothing about the process of how to translate that emotion into a more effective design.
The book often stops short of providing actual evidence or data to underpin its sweeping, sometimes grandiose assertions. The only cases where this did not hold true was with respect to pilot crashes and automobile accidents (the test dummies were based on "average" males).
Furthermore, the book not only stops short of delving into the specifics of good design time and again (achievements like the flexible straw, Finger Works, and Pill Pak are covered in a few, superficial paragraphs and are broadly attributed to "love"), but it also contradicts itself and misses obvious gaps in its propositions. Two examples.
Firstly, the author repeatedly states that the principles of inclusive design are mostly not taught in school. She then goes on to mention several institutes of higher education which have entire centers and departments dedicated to the very topics she says are neglected.
(personal note: I studied industrial engineering ~2 decades ago, and even then there was an entire sub-discipline around ergonomics and 'human factors' that covered the vast majority of her points)
Secondly, Holmes will point out that forcing users to only provide feedback online is an exclusive practice (p. 85), while seemingly oblivious to the fact that her former employer is moving its entire product offering *to the cloud.* Tell me again how that's inclusive for those without continuous access to the Internet?
If you really want to nit-pick: this book about inclusion is typeset in a TINY font. I have "normal" vision, and I had a very difficult time reading the superscripts for the endnotes. Talk about irony.
So yes, this book appears to have been a pet project by a venture capitalist, and I would trust neither of them to design a paper bag. Literally any other book on the topic will convey to you more "actionable" information than this paperweight.
I would give it 0/5 stars if Goodreads would let me. It is hands-down one of the worst 5 or 10 books I have ever read on any topic.
Where to begin? I'll start with the positive: the cover design is elegant.
Other than that, everything was bad. There was a lot of unnecessary businessese, tons of empty or unsubstantiated phrases, and loads of ungrammatical sentence fragments throughout the book.
The "diagrams" (which are actually labelled "Figure 1.2, ...") are a joke. If they were included in a presentation, they wouldn't even be chartjunk, as they simply convey so little information it's ridiculous. One standout shows a woman in a wheelchair facing a stair to illustrate a mismatch between a person and an object (though the wheelchair, I assume, is fit for purpose). There wasn't a single diagram that added anything worthwhile to the text.
The actual thrust of the book, while worthwhile, could have been summarized in a few paragraphs. The author is mostly focused on digital design, but she spends nearly an entire chapter focused on Detroit housing and architecture, yet barely scratches beneath the surface. The "deepest" insight she has is the architect featured in that chapter realizing that one of her students was designing a shopping street filled with shops because she missed shopping with her mom.
... and? And nothing, the thought stops at "she had an emotional story to tell." Nothing about the process of how to translate that emotion into a more effective design.
The book often stops short of providing actual evidence or data to underpin its sweeping, sometimes grandiose assertions. The only cases where this did not hold true was with respect to pilot crashes and automobile accidents (the test dummies were based on "average" males).
Furthermore, the book not only stops short of delving into the specifics of good design time and again (achievements like the flexible straw, Finger Works, and Pill Pak are covered in a few, superficial paragraphs and are broadly attributed to "love"), but it also contradicts itself and misses obvious gaps in its propositions. Two examples.
Firstly, the author repeatedly states that the principles of inclusive design are mostly not taught in school. She then goes on to mention several institutes of higher education which have entire centers and departments dedicated to the very topics she says are neglected.
(personal note: I studied industrial engineering ~2 decades ago, and even then there was an entire sub-discipline around ergonomics and 'human factors' that covered the vast majority of her points)
Secondly, Holmes will point out that forcing users to only provide feedback online is an exclusive practice (p. 85), while seemingly oblivious to the fact that her former employer is moving its entire product offering *to the cloud.* Tell me again how that's inclusive for those without continuous access to the Internet?
If you really want to nit-pick: this book about inclusion is typeset in a TINY font. I have "normal" vision, and I had a very difficult time reading the superscripts for the endnotes. Talk about irony.
So yes, this book appears to have been a pet project by a venture capitalist, and I would trust neither of them to design a paper bag. Literally any other book on the topic will convey to you more "actionable" information than this paperweight.
I would give it 0/5 stars if Goodreads would let me. It is hands-down one of the worst 5 or 10 books I have ever read on any topic.
May 10, 2020
Foucault would be into this
Rustin would also be into this
Steve Jobs would also probably be into this
The author's thesis fits very well with a lot of the ideas I've been coming across regarding the positive role of inclusion in designing technology and policy programs that promote the least-advantaged person in a way that propagates into improvements for the rest of society.
Rustin would also be into this
Steve Jobs would also probably be into this
The author's thesis fits very well with a lot of the ideas I've been coming across regarding the positive role of inclusion in designing technology and policy programs that promote the least-advantaged person in a way that propagates into improvements for the rest of society.
October 27, 2020
As a student studying special education and disability, I am well versed in the idea of inclusion. It’s a word I use nearly every day. While I have written entire essays on how to make early childhood classrooms more inclusive for those with special needs, I had never even thought about how the general population was being excluded in broader terms (i.e. mouses being designed specifically for those right-handed, studies on car crashes being done with the average male body even though females are more likely to die in a crash, racism and architecture). The moral of the story: don’t design something with someone in mind, design it with them. Quick, fantastic, eye opening read.
May 18, 2023
yeah finally
July 23, 2025
One of my fav tech books to date! I loved the way Holmes illustrates the conceptual intersection between human psychology and creative problem solving because she focuses on the human response to algorithmic/design failure. I learned so much about habitual exclusion and felt equipped with practical skills to bring into my upcoming projects. This book is for designers eager for an introductory understanding of inclusive design and for those that never had an issue consuming everyday technology.
April 3, 2020
Exclusion means rejection. And nobody likes to be rejected. Yet, millions of people are being rejected by everyday objects because they have been built in a way that mismatch with their abilities.
Kat Holmes provides a great shift in perspective on inclusive design and how it will benefit everyone in the long run.
Kat Holmes provides a great shift in perspective on inclusive design and how it will benefit everyone in the long run.
July 26, 2023
3.5 stars. A great, short and concise introduction to Inclusive Design. Probably could've been even shorter as it had some repetitive bits, but it was interesting to see how the concepts of AI have evolved since 2018. Notes to self:
February 13, 2021
Kat Holmes calls on all of us who make things (whether you call yourself a designer or something else) to recognize the power we have to determine who can participate in society and who’s left out. Focusing primarily on disability in her book, she suggests that disability is not a personal health condition but rather a mismatch between a person’s abilities and their environment. Doing something about this mismatch is not about “doing the right thing” or “being a good person”.
Holmes outlines the business case for inclusive design, but more importantly challenges the whole idea of the “average” and “edge case” user. She says that, “all people are variable over the course of their lives. What if our minds and bodies are simply unpredictable? Which human, exactly, should be at the centre of human-centred design?” This question highlights fundamental assumptions we make about who’s worth serving, considering, including, or selling to. Whose voice or participation is worth something? Clearly, our default ways of designing products, services, communities, businesses and so on are largely or entirely based on excluding some groups and including others.
As someone who’s pushing for inclusive design in my own organization, I appreciate Holmes’ advice that, “how an organization builds an inclusive design practice depends on too many factors to offer just one solution. So the answer is just to start.”
Holmes offers lots of great advice, examples and insights throughout her book to help us reflect and get started, which she summarizes in three principles of inclusive design:
1. Recognize exclusion (critically review what’s being made, how, by whom, for whom, and why)
2. Learn from diversity (co-design with exclusion experts, aka folks who experience exclusion)
3. Solve for one, extend to many (designing with and for exclusion experts to create solutions that can be adapted more broadly)
Like in any design practice, the most important element is getting input and feedback from the people we’re designing for, or ideally with. Inclusive design highlights just how important this is, because no matter what our abilities, disabilities, or context, our own biases will always be in our own way. If we care about the success of our businesses, or about who gets to contribute to and participate in society—including ourselves over time—we have to recognize that inclusive design is just good design.
Holmes outlines the business case for inclusive design, but more importantly challenges the whole idea of the “average” and “edge case” user. She says that, “all people are variable over the course of their lives. What if our minds and bodies are simply unpredictable? Which human, exactly, should be at the centre of human-centred design?” This question highlights fundamental assumptions we make about who’s worth serving, considering, including, or selling to. Whose voice or participation is worth something? Clearly, our default ways of designing products, services, communities, businesses and so on are largely or entirely based on excluding some groups and including others.
As someone who’s pushing for inclusive design in my own organization, I appreciate Holmes’ advice that, “how an organization builds an inclusive design practice depends on too many factors to offer just one solution. So the answer is just to start.”
Holmes offers lots of great advice, examples and insights throughout her book to help us reflect and get started, which she summarizes in three principles of inclusive design:
1. Recognize exclusion (critically review what’s being made, how, by whom, for whom, and why)
2. Learn from diversity (co-design with exclusion experts, aka folks who experience exclusion)
3. Solve for one, extend to many (designing with and for exclusion experts to create solutions that can be adapted more broadly)
Like in any design practice, the most important element is getting input and feedback from the people we’re designing for, or ideally with. Inclusive design highlights just how important this is, because no matter what our abilities, disabilities, or context, our own biases will always be in our own way. If we care about the success of our businesses, or about who gets to contribute to and participate in society—including ourselves over time—we have to recognize that inclusive design is just good design.
November 21, 2019
Dear Kat,
I will often write a brief review lauding the merits of a recently finished book, sharing thoughts and observations about its contents. However, in this case, I wanted to take a slightly different approach and write a note directly to you as the author. This 'review' is going to be a distillation of of your efforts have impacted me personally.
I stumbled on your book purely by chance. Lucky for me though that I opted to read it right away. I am currently pursuing some academic work in the field of health and rehabilitation leadership, and am enrolled in a course this semester on Diversity, Inclusion, and Accommodation. Further, I've spent my career supporting individuals with disabilities, and I also happen to live with my own disability. Your book's premise was quite attractive to me given what I was pursuing and its relevance to my life's work.
One of the issues that I've struggled with over the years is articulating and consolidating the sheer breadth of issues faced by the broad community of persons living with disabilities. How do we align the interests of people who have needs that may be at cross-purposes with each other? For example, what works for a person with a vision impairment might not be very supportive of someone living with a seizure disorder.
Kat - you offer a refreshing perspective on how we can collectively support each other. You don't simply talk about universal design; you don't lecture your reader about social justice; and you don't dwell on overly technical issues. Instead - you appeal to your reader to consider using the basis of inclusion as a driving force for creativity. You encourage your reader to take an expansive mindset that draws on the experiences of the excluded as a source of inspiration and continuous improvement. In your manner of writing and sharing, you effectively dismantle that sense of sheer overwhelm that we face when we feel like we want to make things right, but simply are paralyzed by uncertainty of where to start!
The answer has been in plain sight all along -- it's in the design! How we build the world that we live in dictates the experience that we create for ourselves and for others. While your expertise focused on the software experience and the digital infrastructure, a thoughtful reader is able to extrapolate meaningful insights into how we shape the physical stuff we use, the software we interact with, and the policies we live within. Everything we think, say, and do is a gesture of design. We craft our spoken word, aiming for explicit impact with careful selection of vocabulary -- this is design. We arrange our furniture for aesthetics and practicality -- this is design. We move in a certain direction toward a specific destination -- this is design!
Thank you Kat for sharing your experiences, your insights, and your wisdom. I am a better person for it.
Michael
I will often write a brief review lauding the merits of a recently finished book, sharing thoughts and observations about its contents. However, in this case, I wanted to take a slightly different approach and write a note directly to you as the author. This 'review' is going to be a distillation of of your efforts have impacted me personally.
I stumbled on your book purely by chance. Lucky for me though that I opted to read it right away. I am currently pursuing some academic work in the field of health and rehabilitation leadership, and am enrolled in a course this semester on Diversity, Inclusion, and Accommodation. Further, I've spent my career supporting individuals with disabilities, and I also happen to live with my own disability. Your book's premise was quite attractive to me given what I was pursuing and its relevance to my life's work.
One of the issues that I've struggled with over the years is articulating and consolidating the sheer breadth of issues faced by the broad community of persons living with disabilities. How do we align the interests of people who have needs that may be at cross-purposes with each other? For example, what works for a person with a vision impairment might not be very supportive of someone living with a seizure disorder.
Kat - you offer a refreshing perspective on how we can collectively support each other. You don't simply talk about universal design; you don't lecture your reader about social justice; and you don't dwell on overly technical issues. Instead - you appeal to your reader to consider using the basis of inclusion as a driving force for creativity. You encourage your reader to take an expansive mindset that draws on the experiences of the excluded as a source of inspiration and continuous improvement. In your manner of writing and sharing, you effectively dismantle that sense of sheer overwhelm that we face when we feel like we want to make things right, but simply are paralyzed by uncertainty of where to start!
The answer has been in plain sight all along -- it's in the design! How we build the world that we live in dictates the experience that we create for ourselves and for others. While your expertise focused on the software experience and the digital infrastructure, a thoughtful reader is able to extrapolate meaningful insights into how we shape the physical stuff we use, the software we interact with, and the policies we live within. Everything we think, say, and do is a gesture of design. We craft our spoken word, aiming for explicit impact with careful selection of vocabulary -- this is design. We arrange our furniture for aesthetics and practicality -- this is design. We move in a certain direction toward a specific destination -- this is design!
Thank you Kat for sharing your experiences, your insights, and your wisdom. I am a better person for it.
Michael
August 18, 2021
Mismatch marks my first formal exposure to inclusive design. It gives a basic account of what it is and why it matters, to be contrasted with designs that promote or worsen exclusion. It also serves as a reminder that is worth reiterating: theories can only take us so far, even when they're about individuality and uncertainty, and we need to get our hands dirty if we want our theories to have positive impact on others.
I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't say much about digital design, but I suppose that's why Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind will be my next read. It's also interesting to read it side-by-side with The Design of Everyday Things. The chapter on memory, especially, assumes normality of individuals -- an assumption that will be disputed by Holmes.
I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't say much about digital design, but I suppose that's why Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind will be my next read. It's also interesting to read it side-by-side with The Design of Everyday Things. The chapter on memory, especially, assumes normality of individuals -- an assumption that will be disputed by Holmes.
August 14, 2020
Excellent resource for anyone teaching engineering design (or any design). If we design solutions for the people old designs excluded, we will design solutions that fit more people and require less expensive retrofitting after release. COVID19 has created the dilemma for all of us that physical spaces don't work as intended. Inclusive design is a key tool to fixing our built environment to reopen schools and businesses.
December 12, 2018
An extremely motivating read, containing profound ideas that stuck with me.
I can't wait to put these into practice.
I can't wait to put these into practice.
November 4, 2023
3.5 rounded up! A little repetitive and not grounded enough in disability justice for my liking, but there are some cool takeaways, including:
▪ Ask a hundred people what inclusion means and you’ll get a hundred different answers. Ask them what it means to be excluded and the answer will be uniformly clear: It’s when you’re left out.
▪ Inclusion isn’t nice. It’s challenging the status quo and fighting for hard-won victories. The opportunity is to be clear and rigorously improve our lexicon for inclusion. We can work on clarifying what we mean and why we care. We can create better resources through education and awareness. Asking questions, and then simply listening, is often the most courageous way to start.
▪ As a result, the work of inclusion is never done. It’s like caring for your teeth. There is no finish line. No matter how well you clean your teeth today, over time they require more care. With inclusion, each time we create a new solution it requires careful attention in its initial design and maintenance over time.
▪ Designing for human diversity might be the key to our collective future. It’s going to take a great diversity of talent, working together, to address the challenges we face in the 21st century: climate change, urbanization, mass migration, increased longevity and aging populations, early childhood development, social isolation, education, and caring for the most vulnerable among us in an ever-widening gap of economic disparity. You never know where, or who, a great solution will come from.
▪ You can’t say “you can’t play.” Effective immediately, if anyone wants to participate in your project you must agree to let them join. Yes, you will still be held accountable for the success of your work.
How would you react? Although the exact results might vary, there’s a good chance that most adults might mirror the reactions you’d find with a group of young children: anger, defiance, and a few tears.
▪ When they could no longer exclude each other, they learned how to adapt their games. They also adapted the roles they were willing to play within a game. They tried on different identities. The kid who was always the villain could now be the newborn baby. The heroes could be the villains. The father could be the mother. Despite all initial concerns, their games were still fun to play.
These childhood fears ring true in our adult lives. We meet the same concerns when improving the inclusivity of our workplaces, products, and public environments. Paley’s classroom experiment illustrates that exclusion isn’t based on a fixed circle.
It’s a cycle of our own
▪ Some of these are modifications of existing solutions. Others were created by applying inclusive design in the early stages of a new business or product. We don’t need to tear down existing solutions to make inclusive ones. The cycle of exclusion is pervasive and ongoing. Similarly, a shift to inclusive design means we are constantly looking for and resolving mismatches through all stages of a development process
▪ Whether by lack of awareness, siloed decisions, or simple neglect, it can be difficult for organizations to drive toward inclusion if they don’t have a full picture of how their existing culture perpetuates exclusion. As a result, the default state for most organizations is a cycle of exclusion (this should go under every workspace benefits from DT)
▪ The power to change that cycle doesn’t just belong to the person who starts the game, but to all who participate in it.
▪ Grouping people based on oversimplified categories like “female” or “disabled” or “elderly” can seem like a helpful shorthand when making business or design decisions. But there’s one big problem:
Some categories of people are always last on the list of priorities, or wholly forgotten.
▪ If we could prove that exclusion causes physical pain, what would we change about the design of our classrooms? Our workplaces? Our technologies?
We have rules in schools and society against physically harming each other, but for some people being left out is treated as a fact of life. It’s just part of the way the game was designed. It’s fairly common for people to treat social rejection as a necessary part of learning to survive in the world of humans.
Yet multiple studies show that social rejection might manifest in our bodies in ways that approximate physical pain.
▪ Sometimes creating limited access can have positive benefits.
The problem comes when there’s a mismatch between the stated purpose of a design and the reality of who can use it.
When a solution is meant to serve any member of society and then doesn’t, the effects of exclusion can be negative. The experience can feel like rejection from society itself. Especially in the shared physical and digital spaces where we learn, work, share, heal, advocate, create, and communicate.
▪ An exclusion habit is the belief that whoever starts the game also sets the rules of the game. We think we don’t have power to change a game, so we abdicate our accountability. We keep repeating the same behaviors, over and over.
In short and simple games, it might be easy to call on the one who’s responsible for changing the rules to make it more inclusive. Over time, games get more complex, leaders change, and we can forget who authored the original rules. In some organizations, the cultural behaviors were set a long time ago and the founders of that culture are long gone. Or we believe it’s someone else’s job to rewrite the rules, maybe the leaders in our business or community.
We also forget that those rules were initially written by human beings and can be rewritten. Those of us who are now playing the game have a responsibility to adapt it as needed. If we don’t, we are accountable when someone’s left out—not some leader from the distant past. We can respect the intent of the game, but also adapt the rules to make it more inclusive.
▪ Deciding Who Designs
The power of shifting who makes has had a similar effect in industries beyond gaming. More designers are focused on how to adapt objects to make them work for a diversity of people. Open-source tools enable more people to contribute to the design of everything from education to artificial intelligence. The cycle of exclusion shifts toward inclusion when more people can openly participate as designers.
Anyone who has ever solved a problem is, in a certain sense, a designer. The only real difference comes in how much ownership you take over the identity of yourself as a designer. You might be a designer if you say that it’s not enough to design for yourself and you want to design experiences for other people too.
Consider the rigid ways that companies hire new employees. Many companies require candidates to complete an online application, an often-tedious process that requires specific language competencies, access to the Internet, and an ability to focus on detailed information for long periods of time. (add this to who is a designer?)
▪ Of all the biases that designers bring to their work, ability biases are the sneakiest (I disagree... we're acting like this is the most changing and independent identity but I'd argue racism and misogyny are really close up there too)
▪ Ideally it would be difficult, if not impossible, to produce an inaccessible product
▪ The traditional design professions are rapidly changing, especially in areas of technology where the required skills change so quickly that many universities are struggling to maintain a relevant curriculum. Much of today’s design work isn’t limited to people with the word “design” in their professional titles. Among those evolving design roles there is a new category of skills in inclusive design.
▪ In addition to business criteria and technical requirements, a design is shaped by the history of events that precede it. This means that shifting a cycle of exclusion toward inclusion isn’t simply a matter of designing an object in new ways. We also need to disrupt the momentum of how things have been done for a long, long time
▪ But credentialing matters, because critical decisions about the future of our cities are often made from positions of seniority and power. And these leadership positions are heavily gated by required credentials.
▪ There was a student who was struggling in one of our architecture workshops. The task was to create a city block, using Lego pieces. She didn’t have a logic behind why she’d laid out her city block in a particular way. As designers we try to have some kind of reason for what we did and some kind concept that we start with. Rather than jumping to a design and then rationalizing why we did it. You get to a design because something led you there.
I asked her to think back to something that was emotional for her. She had placed a lot of stores along the front of the city. She explained that shopping was something she did with her mom when she was alive.
I knew right then that she had an emotional story to tell. We talked as she created this block filled with things that she liked to do with her mom. She didn’t have to understand design thinking. She just needed to take a step back and clarify the reason why she was making certain choices. Why is this needed? Why is this important?
▪ There’s a rise in interest in designs that have a positive social impact. A number of projects are focused on “designing for” a community of people that’s presumed to be disadvantaged. New technologies for students in developing countries. Design contests to create solutions for elderly people or people with disabilities.
While these are often well-intentioned, there are some potential pitfalls to designing for people with this superhero-victim or benefactor-beneficiary mindset. It can lead to specialized solutions that cater to stereotypes about people.
▪ Many of these demographic categories have more to do with business or social power structures than with how people actually interact with the world. It’s unclear why a software designer needs to know the gender identity of a customer, or whether or not they have two X chromosomes, in order to create a better way to organize photos. Unchecked assumptions about any group of people, especially when treated as a monolithic group, might misdirect us toward ineffective, even offensive, solutions
▪ Make promises that you can keep. Acknowledge the current state of inclusion in your organization and address fundamental issues of access before moving on to other areas of inclusion. Greater damage to inclusion comes from declaring it a promise while having no plan for how to implement the change. Or building new innovations on top of systems that lack basic accessibility. A broken promise is more detrimental than making no promise in the first place.
▪ Set an expectation that inclusion is a long game. Balance the cultural history that led us to where we are today with the reasons why inclusion matters to the future of an organization. Have measured plans for how to address entrenched exclusion habits. These have to account for the tradeoffs in resources that need to be made in order to build inclusive solutions. Specific people need to be accountable for completing the work. The work is hard and the road is long. But, as progress begins to happen, inclusion can be one of the strongest ways to mobilize people around a shared purpose.
▪ If investments in inclusion, like accessibility, are treated as an added tax, paying that tax will always be deferred in favor of other business priorities. What we measure shows what we value.
▪ It isn’t organic. It doesn’t happen purely through goodwill. It takes intention, planning, and stamina.
▪ Taking time to qualify human depth and complexity, even with a relatively small number of people, can help balance the shortcomings of “big data.” “Thick data” is gathered information that explains human behavior and the context of that behavior. It was first described as “thick description” by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures. Thick data is a way of understanding how people feel, think, and react and their underlying motivations
▪ Balance big data with thick data. Use big data as a heat map to reveal key mismatches between people and your solution. Use thick data to investigate the reasons behind these mismatches and gain insight into better solutions
▪ The same is often true in the creation of digital products. When a solution is treated as “for disability” or “for accessibility,” there’s often little or no attention paid to the design. A solution might meet all of its functional requirements but still lead to emotional or aesthetic mismatches that can be equally alienating.
▪ Many of these examples are love stories. In fact, love is a common trait in the creation of inclusive solutions. Some stories center around a person who was personally affected by a mismatched design. Their love for a profession or lifelong passion for an activity put a sharp focus on how it could be improved. Then they worked directly on building a better solution.
Other stories come from a mismatch that loved ones faced when something interrupted their connection to each other.
In all cases, people worked with their intimate understanding of exclusion, and with the participation of excluded communities, to design a solution that went on to benefit a wider group of people.
▪ Conversely, they will assume that demographically underrepresented groups of people, like people with disabilities, are edge cases, a small percentage of the population that doesn’t represent large opportunities for revenue. This is simply a myth. The myth of the minority user
▪ Now, can we again ask ourselves, why do we make?
Why would we sign up for the hard work of building inclusion without the guarantee of success? Why would we fight the inertia of a cycle of exclusion that’s been spinning for generations?
Certainly, there are business justifications like gaining new market share, creating better customer experiences, and operating in more efficient ways. There are opportunities to connect teams to a meaningful purpose for their work and a new way of thinking about the people who interact with their solutions.
There are professional reasons why inclusion matters. It expands our own thinking about problems that are worth solving. It sparks our creativity to think in new ways, in partnership with new people.
And there’s our collective future. A future that is built on the choices that we make today, to create great solutions that connect people to each other and to opportunities in the places where they live. Some designers will make choices that reach millions of people and will endure for many years. If nothing else, I hope this book illustrates the weight of that privilege and opportunity.
▪ Ask a hundred people what inclusion means and you’ll get a hundred different answers. Ask them what it means to be excluded and the answer will be uniformly clear: It’s when you’re left out.
▪ Inclusion isn’t nice. It’s challenging the status quo and fighting for hard-won victories. The opportunity is to be clear and rigorously improve our lexicon for inclusion. We can work on clarifying what we mean and why we care. We can create better resources through education and awareness. Asking questions, and then simply listening, is often the most courageous way to start.
▪ As a result, the work of inclusion is never done. It’s like caring for your teeth. There is no finish line. No matter how well you clean your teeth today, over time they require more care. With inclusion, each time we create a new solution it requires careful attention in its initial design and maintenance over time.
▪ Designing for human diversity might be the key to our collective future. It’s going to take a great diversity of talent, working together, to address the challenges we face in the 21st century: climate change, urbanization, mass migration, increased longevity and aging populations, early childhood development, social isolation, education, and caring for the most vulnerable among us in an ever-widening gap of economic disparity. You never know where, or who, a great solution will come from.
▪ You can’t say “you can’t play.” Effective immediately, if anyone wants to participate in your project you must agree to let them join. Yes, you will still be held accountable for the success of your work.
How would you react? Although the exact results might vary, there’s a good chance that most adults might mirror the reactions you’d find with a group of young children: anger, defiance, and a few tears.
▪ When they could no longer exclude each other, they learned how to adapt their games. They also adapted the roles they were willing to play within a game. They tried on different identities. The kid who was always the villain could now be the newborn baby. The heroes could be the villains. The father could be the mother. Despite all initial concerns, their games were still fun to play.
These childhood fears ring true in our adult lives. We meet the same concerns when improving the inclusivity of our workplaces, products, and public environments. Paley’s classroom experiment illustrates that exclusion isn’t based on a fixed circle.
It’s a cycle of our own
▪ Some of these are modifications of existing solutions. Others were created by applying inclusive design in the early stages of a new business or product. We don’t need to tear down existing solutions to make inclusive ones. The cycle of exclusion is pervasive and ongoing. Similarly, a shift to inclusive design means we are constantly looking for and resolving mismatches through all stages of a development process
▪ Whether by lack of awareness, siloed decisions, or simple neglect, it can be difficult for organizations to drive toward inclusion if they don’t have a full picture of how their existing culture perpetuates exclusion. As a result, the default state for most organizations is a cycle of exclusion (this should go under every workspace benefits from DT)
▪ The power to change that cycle doesn’t just belong to the person who starts the game, but to all who participate in it.
▪ Grouping people based on oversimplified categories like “female” or “disabled” or “elderly” can seem like a helpful shorthand when making business or design decisions. But there’s one big problem:
Some categories of people are always last on the list of priorities, or wholly forgotten.
▪ If we could prove that exclusion causes physical pain, what would we change about the design of our classrooms? Our workplaces? Our technologies?
We have rules in schools and society against physically harming each other, but for some people being left out is treated as a fact of life. It’s just part of the way the game was designed. It’s fairly common for people to treat social rejection as a necessary part of learning to survive in the world of humans.
Yet multiple studies show that social rejection might manifest in our bodies in ways that approximate physical pain.
▪ Sometimes creating limited access can have positive benefits.
The problem comes when there’s a mismatch between the stated purpose of a design and the reality of who can use it.
When a solution is meant to serve any member of society and then doesn’t, the effects of exclusion can be negative. The experience can feel like rejection from society itself. Especially in the shared physical and digital spaces where we learn, work, share, heal, advocate, create, and communicate.
▪ An exclusion habit is the belief that whoever starts the game also sets the rules of the game. We think we don’t have power to change a game, so we abdicate our accountability. We keep repeating the same behaviors, over and over.
In short and simple games, it might be easy to call on the one who’s responsible for changing the rules to make it more inclusive. Over time, games get more complex, leaders change, and we can forget who authored the original rules. In some organizations, the cultural behaviors were set a long time ago and the founders of that culture are long gone. Or we believe it’s someone else’s job to rewrite the rules, maybe the leaders in our business or community.
We also forget that those rules were initially written by human beings and can be rewritten. Those of us who are now playing the game have a responsibility to adapt it as needed. If we don’t, we are accountable when someone’s left out—not some leader from the distant past. We can respect the intent of the game, but also adapt the rules to make it more inclusive.
▪ Deciding Who Designs
The power of shifting who makes has had a similar effect in industries beyond gaming. More designers are focused on how to adapt objects to make them work for a diversity of people. Open-source tools enable more people to contribute to the design of everything from education to artificial intelligence. The cycle of exclusion shifts toward inclusion when more people can openly participate as designers.
Anyone who has ever solved a problem is, in a certain sense, a designer. The only real difference comes in how much ownership you take over the identity of yourself as a designer. You might be a designer if you say that it’s not enough to design for yourself and you want to design experiences for other people too.
Consider the rigid ways that companies hire new employees. Many companies require candidates to complete an online application, an often-tedious process that requires specific language competencies, access to the Internet, and an ability to focus on detailed information for long periods of time. (add this to who is a designer?)
▪ Of all the biases that designers bring to their work, ability biases are the sneakiest (I disagree... we're acting like this is the most changing and independent identity but I'd argue racism and misogyny are really close up there too)
▪ Ideally it would be difficult, if not impossible, to produce an inaccessible product
▪ The traditional design professions are rapidly changing, especially in areas of technology where the required skills change so quickly that many universities are struggling to maintain a relevant curriculum. Much of today’s design work isn’t limited to people with the word “design” in their professional titles. Among those evolving design roles there is a new category of skills in inclusive design.
▪ In addition to business criteria and technical requirements, a design is shaped by the history of events that precede it. This means that shifting a cycle of exclusion toward inclusion isn’t simply a matter of designing an object in new ways. We also need to disrupt the momentum of how things have been done for a long, long time
▪ But credentialing matters, because critical decisions about the future of our cities are often made from positions of seniority and power. And these leadership positions are heavily gated by required credentials.
▪ There was a student who was struggling in one of our architecture workshops. The task was to create a city block, using Lego pieces. She didn’t have a logic behind why she’d laid out her city block in a particular way. As designers we try to have some kind of reason for what we did and some kind concept that we start with. Rather than jumping to a design and then rationalizing why we did it. You get to a design because something led you there.
I asked her to think back to something that was emotional for her. She had placed a lot of stores along the front of the city. She explained that shopping was something she did with her mom when she was alive.
I knew right then that she had an emotional story to tell. We talked as she created this block filled with things that she liked to do with her mom. She didn’t have to understand design thinking. She just needed to take a step back and clarify the reason why she was making certain choices. Why is this needed? Why is this important?
▪ There’s a rise in interest in designs that have a positive social impact. A number of projects are focused on “designing for” a community of people that’s presumed to be disadvantaged. New technologies for students in developing countries. Design contests to create solutions for elderly people or people with disabilities.
While these are often well-intentioned, there are some potential pitfalls to designing for people with this superhero-victim or benefactor-beneficiary mindset. It can lead to specialized solutions that cater to stereotypes about people.
▪ Many of these demographic categories have more to do with business or social power structures than with how people actually interact with the world. It’s unclear why a software designer needs to know the gender identity of a customer, or whether or not they have two X chromosomes, in order to create a better way to organize photos. Unchecked assumptions about any group of people, especially when treated as a monolithic group, might misdirect us toward ineffective, even offensive, solutions
▪ Make promises that you can keep. Acknowledge the current state of inclusion in your organization and address fundamental issues of access before moving on to other areas of inclusion. Greater damage to inclusion comes from declaring it a promise while having no plan for how to implement the change. Or building new innovations on top of systems that lack basic accessibility. A broken promise is more detrimental than making no promise in the first place.
▪ Set an expectation that inclusion is a long game. Balance the cultural history that led us to where we are today with the reasons why inclusion matters to the future of an organization. Have measured plans for how to address entrenched exclusion habits. These have to account for the tradeoffs in resources that need to be made in order to build inclusive solutions. Specific people need to be accountable for completing the work. The work is hard and the road is long. But, as progress begins to happen, inclusion can be one of the strongest ways to mobilize people around a shared purpose.
▪ If investments in inclusion, like accessibility, are treated as an added tax, paying that tax will always be deferred in favor of other business priorities. What we measure shows what we value.
▪ It isn’t organic. It doesn’t happen purely through goodwill. It takes intention, planning, and stamina.
▪ Taking time to qualify human depth and complexity, even with a relatively small number of people, can help balance the shortcomings of “big data.” “Thick data” is gathered information that explains human behavior and the context of that behavior. It was first described as “thick description” by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures. Thick data is a way of understanding how people feel, think, and react and their underlying motivations
▪ Balance big data with thick data. Use big data as a heat map to reveal key mismatches between people and your solution. Use thick data to investigate the reasons behind these mismatches and gain insight into better solutions
▪ The same is often true in the creation of digital products. When a solution is treated as “for disability” or “for accessibility,” there’s often little or no attention paid to the design. A solution might meet all of its functional requirements but still lead to emotional or aesthetic mismatches that can be equally alienating.
▪ Many of these examples are love stories. In fact, love is a common trait in the creation of inclusive solutions. Some stories center around a person who was personally affected by a mismatched design. Their love for a profession or lifelong passion for an activity put a sharp focus on how it could be improved. Then they worked directly on building a better solution.
Other stories come from a mismatch that loved ones faced when something interrupted their connection to each other.
In all cases, people worked with their intimate understanding of exclusion, and with the participation of excluded communities, to design a solution that went on to benefit a wider group of people.
▪ Conversely, they will assume that demographically underrepresented groups of people, like people with disabilities, are edge cases, a small percentage of the population that doesn’t represent large opportunities for revenue. This is simply a myth. The myth of the minority user
▪ Now, can we again ask ourselves, why do we make?
Why would we sign up for the hard work of building inclusion without the guarantee of success? Why would we fight the inertia of a cycle of exclusion that’s been spinning for generations?
Certainly, there are business justifications like gaining new market share, creating better customer experiences, and operating in more efficient ways. There are opportunities to connect teams to a meaningful purpose for their work and a new way of thinking about the people who interact with their solutions.
There are professional reasons why inclusion matters. It expands our own thinking about problems that are worth solving. It sparks our creativity to think in new ways, in partnership with new people.
And there’s our collective future. A future that is built on the choices that we make today, to create great solutions that connect people to each other and to opportunities in the places where they live. Some designers will make choices that reach millions of people and will endure for many years. If nothing else, I hope this book illustrates the weight of that privilege and opportunity.
December 26, 2024
Really shifted my perspective and gave some helpful tools for designing inclusively!
October 30, 2023
Homes isn't specific about actionable steps to be taken towards a more inclusive design process, but this book nonetheless offers some great insight and reminds the reader to question our preconceived notions about how and for whom we are designing.
July 4, 2019
Strong words, great input on the topic...but in the end I kind of asked myself if the key messages of this book is really just that inclusion should be a early part of product development? Because if so I am sad, that we need in 2019 a book to say something like that. I would recommend the book for inclusion newbies and as I would not consider myself a newbie I sometimes find the contet a bit too much strong words and less solid indications. However it is well written and therefore 4 star worthy!
April 1, 2021
First can we talk about the irony that this book was published in a serif font? The cover art and chapter titles used a san serif font but not the main text.
That annoyance aside, this book is a basic introduction to inclusive design. As a designer for 20 years, I didn’t find much that was earth shattering. How inclusive design expands beyond architecture was probably was the most beneficial. The diagrams are rudimentary, seem like filler and don’t offer much to the discussion. I kept waiting for the author to dive deeper into the details but as soon as a topic was brought up, she quickly moved on. The book got repetitive but it is a quick read and a worthwhile topic to explore.
That annoyance aside, this book is a basic introduction to inclusive design. As a designer for 20 years, I didn’t find much that was earth shattering. How inclusive design expands beyond architecture was probably was the most beneficial. The diagrams are rudimentary, seem like filler and don’t offer much to the discussion. I kept waiting for the author to dive deeper into the details but as soon as a topic was brought up, she quickly moved on. The book got repetitive but it is a quick read and a worthwhile topic to explore.
July 2, 2020
This is a short book (the audio is 3h 47m; paper is 176 pp) and while semi-repetitive, it has a message that needs to be heard. My biggest takeaway is that we are all designers and for successful design we need to listen to a diversity of voices. Overall it provides a summary of what makes a design inclusive, what exclusionary traps many design teams fall into, and thoughts on how to improve the future.
I wrote a little more -- https://www.pennywiseconsulting.com/2...
I wrote a little more -- https://www.pennywiseconsulting.com/2...
March 5, 2021
Extremely repetitive. All of the useful concepts covered in this book could have been summarized in one or two chapters.
December 14, 2021
Where did you love to play as a child?
With this question I started, Mismatch, my first reading on inclusive design.
Kat, with her book, gives us a slight nudge towards thinking more inclusively about what we design. The way of thinking stands to provide the most significant change in the way our experiences impact people.
My favorite takeaways from this book involve the notions of how inclusive solutions can connect people, whether they are in a neighborhood or somewhere on the internet.
The solutions that we build can be economic catalysts for excluded communities. Design influences how people view themselves and their community. The key to success is matching great design challenges with great guidance from exclusion experts. Design with, not for.
Additionally, I appreciated the notion of how important is to make a personal connection, by opening up the ways that people can contribute to the design process itself. People create emotional connections to a design that makes a place, or a product, feel like their own.
Lastly, a takeaway I had was the importance of building new habits.
For example, learning a new language can take planning, training, and determination, it means engaging with people who are native in the new language you want to learn. The same is true for building skills for inclusion, and these skills can be learned from people with unwelcoming designs every day of their lives. We have the power to disrupt the cycle of exclusion and stop contributing to the social invisibility of certain groups.
I want point out that Chapter 8: love stories was truly beautiful. Here she wants us to remember the most important ingredient: love. She shows us some examples of inclusive design and the stories behind it. In all cases, people worked with their understanding of exclusion and with the participation of excluded communities, to design a solution that went on to benefit a wider group of people.
With this question I started, Mismatch, my first reading on inclusive design.
Kat, with her book, gives us a slight nudge towards thinking more inclusively about what we design. The way of thinking stands to provide the most significant change in the way our experiences impact people.
My favorite takeaways from this book involve the notions of how inclusive solutions can connect people, whether they are in a neighborhood or somewhere on the internet.
The solutions that we build can be economic catalysts for excluded communities. Design influences how people view themselves and their community. The key to success is matching great design challenges with great guidance from exclusion experts. Design with, not for.
Additionally, I appreciated the notion of how important is to make a personal connection, by opening up the ways that people can contribute to the design process itself. People create emotional connections to a design that makes a place, or a product, feel like their own.
Lastly, a takeaway I had was the importance of building new habits.
For example, learning a new language can take planning, training, and determination, it means engaging with people who are native in the new language you want to learn. The same is true for building skills for inclusion, and these skills can be learned from people with unwelcoming designs every day of their lives. We have the power to disrupt the cycle of exclusion and stop contributing to the social invisibility of certain groups.
I want point out that Chapter 8: love stories was truly beautiful. Here she wants us to remember the most important ingredient: love. She shows us some examples of inclusive design and the stories behind it. In all cases, people worked with their understanding of exclusion and with the participation of excluded communities, to design a solution that went on to benefit a wider group of people.
December 1, 2021
Overall very informative and interesting to read about how the self perpetuating cycle of exclusion in design can and needs to be combatted.
My favorite takeaways from this book involve the notions of how inclusive design can expand well beyond the narrow interpretation of creating a unique solution for an individual. When we consider inclusion in design it can expand to assist millions of individuals worldwide. These designs, which normally are produced with extreme empathy and love, have historically produced mass innovation in the way the world operates. From the bendy straw to the typewriter, inclusive thinking has solved problems for a targeted few that ultimately influence the world and help billions.
Additionally, I appreciated the notion of how important the uses of design is and how important their input is. From housing projects to mobile applications, there is no better knowledge to be obtained than ground level research of individuals with on a daily basis interact with our designs. There is no getting around the fact that the best way to combat inherent biases in design and any other practice of work, is understanding who the end-user is and their daily interactions with the product.
Lastly, I walk away from this book considering how inclusive design is nothing more than consideration for our future selves. The human body and its abilities are fleeting, it is easy to further exclusion in usability when we are young and able, but inevitably, memory, hearing, strength, and more fade with time. If we establish a mission of inclusion today, it sets a precedent for inclusion for future designers and benefits anyone who interacts with our designs.
In sum, there is no average user, there is no end-user, there are only individual humans. Billions and billions of individual humans need to be understood and cared for.
My favorite takeaways from this book involve the notions of how inclusive design can expand well beyond the narrow interpretation of creating a unique solution for an individual. When we consider inclusion in design it can expand to assist millions of individuals worldwide. These designs, which normally are produced with extreme empathy and love, have historically produced mass innovation in the way the world operates. From the bendy straw to the typewriter, inclusive thinking has solved problems for a targeted few that ultimately influence the world and help billions.
Additionally, I appreciated the notion of how important the uses of design is and how important their input is. From housing projects to mobile applications, there is no better knowledge to be obtained than ground level research of individuals with on a daily basis interact with our designs. There is no getting around the fact that the best way to combat inherent biases in design and any other practice of work, is understanding who the end-user is and their daily interactions with the product.
Lastly, I walk away from this book considering how inclusive design is nothing more than consideration for our future selves. The human body and its abilities are fleeting, it is easy to further exclusion in usability when we are young and able, but inevitably, memory, hearing, strength, and more fade with time. If we establish a mission of inclusion today, it sets a precedent for inclusion for future designers and benefits anyone who interacts with our designs.
In sum, there is no average user, there is no end-user, there are only individual humans. Billions and billions of individual humans need to be understood and cared for.
January 1, 2019
Starting off this year with a 5 star book!
To be honest, I haven't read many design books or articles that really introduced something that changes my mind. Sure, I've read things that added to my knowledge, but Holmes here has flipped what I know and presented it in an articulate way what I thought was incorrect and actionable items to do instead.
A big tldr; currently a lot of people/companies throw around the world inclusion but very few people actually design with inclusion in mind, and for the right reasons in the right way. Instead of thinking about those who are mismatched with the existing system, many of us (me included) think about the majority instead. The one that fits our 'user personas' and the ones that are our target user base. But, what Holmes proposes here instead is to instead design for the mismatched individuals first. This includes not only stop thinking about people with the bell curve in mind (you know, the one that groups people into 'edge cases' and considering those people last) and instead to create diverse ways to so that everyone can participate in the experience.
Easy and short read. Love how the book is organized as well with bullet point takeaways at the end to summarize each chapter. One of my favorite chapters is the 'Love Stories' one where Holmes outlines a few seemingly everyday products (email, flexible straw, keyboards) were actually designed initially for someone who could not comfortably use what was the available. Highly recommend this book! Definitely geared towards designers but also interesting for anyone who wants to think about how products decisions are made.
To be honest, I haven't read many design books or articles that really introduced something that changes my mind. Sure, I've read things that added to my knowledge, but Holmes here has flipped what I know and presented it in an articulate way what I thought was incorrect and actionable items to do instead.
A big tldr; currently a lot of people/companies throw around the world inclusion but very few people actually design with inclusion in mind, and for the right reasons in the right way. Instead of thinking about those who are mismatched with the existing system, many of us (me included) think about the majority instead. The one that fits our 'user personas' and the ones that are our target user base. But, what Holmes proposes here instead is to instead design for the mismatched individuals first. This includes not only stop thinking about people with the bell curve in mind (you know, the one that groups people into 'edge cases' and considering those people last) and instead to create diverse ways to so that everyone can participate in the experience.
Easy and short read. Love how the book is organized as well with bullet point takeaways at the end to summarize each chapter. One of my favorite chapters is the 'Love Stories' one where Holmes outlines a few seemingly everyday products (email, flexible straw, keyboards) were actually designed initially for someone who could not comfortably use what was the available. Highly recommend this book! Definitely geared towards designers but also interesting for anyone who wants to think about how products decisions are made.
October 11, 2021
"Designing for inclusion starts with recognizing exclusion."
Loved this quick read about how mismatches between designs and their intended users can lead to (typically) unintended poor experiences. Holmes breaks down the point that we (as a human society) tend to default to exclusionary behaviors by nature (e.g. designing for ourselves, etc), so recognizing that and countering it where possible makes for better designs in the long run. She also makes the point that inclusive design programs need to be built-in from the top-down (i.e. leadership down) and from the beginning onwards.
Some more fave quotes:
"Exclusion isn't inherently negative, but it should be an intentional choice as opposed to an accidental harm."
"[re: Cyberball experiment] Anger increased when they learned the two other players [who had been ignoring them] were controlled by a computer. 'You know that people will let you down, but computers aren't supposed to. We expect people to be unfair; people are fallible and prone to faults. Yet we expect technology to be impartial. Maybe it doesn't always work the ways it's supposed to, but we tend to believe that inanimate objects are largely unbiased."
"Exclusion habits stem from a belief that we can't change aspects of society that were originally set into motion by someone other than ourselves."
"Leaders can be powerful advocates for creating inclusion. Although leadership can come from anyone on a team, there is a unique responsibility for people at the most senior levels of an organization. They must be willing to do the personal work of understanding inclusive design."
Loved this quick read about how mismatches between designs and their intended users can lead to (typically) unintended poor experiences. Holmes breaks down the point that we (as a human society) tend to default to exclusionary behaviors by nature (e.g. designing for ourselves, etc), so recognizing that and countering it where possible makes for better designs in the long run. She also makes the point that inclusive design programs need to be built-in from the top-down (i.e. leadership down) and from the beginning onwards.
Some more fave quotes:
"Exclusion isn't inherently negative, but it should be an intentional choice as opposed to an accidental harm."
"[re: Cyberball experiment] Anger increased when they learned the two other players [who had been ignoring them] were controlled by a computer. 'You know that people will let you down, but computers aren't supposed to. We expect people to be unfair; people are fallible and prone to faults. Yet we expect technology to be impartial. Maybe it doesn't always work the ways it's supposed to, but we tend to believe that inanimate objects are largely unbiased."
"Exclusion habits stem from a belief that we can't change aspects of society that were originally set into motion by someone other than ourselves."
"Leaders can be powerful advocates for creating inclusion. Although leadership can come from anyone on a team, there is a unique responsibility for people at the most senior levels of an organization. They must be willing to do the personal work of understanding inclusive design."
August 11, 2023
Bạn đã bao giờ tự hỏi tại sao một số sản phẩm, dịch vụ hoặc công nghệ lại trở nên vô cùng phổ biến và dễ sử dụng, trong khi những cái khác lại gặp nhiều hạn chế và khó tiếp cận? Câu trả lời nằm trong cuốn sách hấp dẫn và đầy cảm hứng này: 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩: 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘴 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 của tác giả Kat Holmes.
Cuốn sách đưa độc giả vào một hành trình đầy màu sắc và phong phú, khám phá những "mismatch" (sự không phù hợp) trong thiết kế và cách mà chúng ảnh hưởng đến việc sử dụng sản phẩm của chúng ta. Đồng thời, sách cũng giới thiệu về "thiết k��� bao trọn" - một phương pháp giúp giải quyết vấn đề "mismatch" và đưa ra những sản phẩm, dịch vụ, công nghệ phù hợp với mọi người.
Thông qua những câu chuyện hấp dẫn, minh họa nhiều ví dụ thực tế, từ chiếc bàn chải đánh răng cho người khiếm thị đến những ứng dụng công nghệ giúp người khuyết tật tự do di chuyển, Kat Holmes đã mở rộng tầm nhìn của chúng ta về thiết kế bao trọn. Đây không chỉ là một cuốn sách dành cho các chuyên gia thiết kế, mà còn là nguồn cảm hứng cho tất cả những ai mong muốn tạo ra một thế giới công bằng và bao trọn hơn.
𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩: 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘴 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 sẽ thách thức tư duy của bạn về thiết kế, mời gọi bạn tham gia vào cuộc đối thoại về sự bao trọn và truyền cảm hứng để bạn áp dụng những nguyên tắc thiết kế bao trọn trong công việc và cuộc sống hàng ngày. Hãy để cuốn sách này dẫn dắt bạn khám phá thế giới kỳ diệu của thiết kế bao trọn - nơi mọi sản phẩm, dịch vụ, công nghệ đều có thể đáp ứng nhu cầu đa dạng của con người và tạo nên một tương lai rực rỡ hơn!
Ở Việt Nam, Bookee bán cuốn này giá khá là tốt, bạn tham khảo ở đây nhé: https://bookee.store
Cuốn sách đưa độc giả vào một hành trình đầy màu sắc và phong phú, khám phá những "mismatch" (sự không phù hợp) trong thiết kế và cách mà chúng ảnh hưởng đến việc sử dụng sản phẩm của chúng ta. Đồng thời, sách cũng giới thiệu về "thiết k��� bao trọn" - một phương pháp giúp giải quyết vấn đề "mismatch" và đưa ra những sản phẩm, dịch vụ, công nghệ phù hợp với mọi người.
Thông qua những câu chuyện hấp dẫn, minh họa nhiều ví dụ thực tế, từ chiếc bàn chải đánh răng cho người khiếm thị đến những ứng dụng công nghệ giúp người khuyết tật tự do di chuyển, Kat Holmes đã mở rộng tầm nhìn của chúng ta về thiết kế bao trọn. Đây không chỉ là một cuốn sách dành cho các chuyên gia thiết kế, mà còn là nguồn cảm hứng cho tất cả những ai mong muốn tạo ra một thế giới công bằng và bao trọn hơn.
𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩: 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘐𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘴 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 sẽ thách thức tư duy của bạn về thiết kế, mời gọi bạn tham gia vào cuộc đối thoại về sự bao trọn và truyền cảm hứng để bạn áp dụng những nguyên tắc thiết kế bao trọn trong công việc và cuộc sống hàng ngày. Hãy để cuốn sách này dẫn dắt bạn khám phá thế giới kỳ diệu của thiết kế bao trọn - nơi mọi sản phẩm, dịch vụ, công nghệ đều có thể đáp ứng nhu cầu đa dạng của con người và tạo nên một tương lai rực rỡ hơn!
Ở Việt Nam, Bookee bán cuốn này giá khá là tốt, bạn tham khảo ở đây nhé: https://bookee.store
September 7, 2025
мене цікавить тема інклюзії, як архітектора, що хоче зробити українські міста більш доступними для будь-якого її громадянина ( і це не тільки про людей на кріслах колісних). тому я сподівалась, що в цій книзі буде більше просто практичних методів застосування інклюзивних рішень, натомість я отримала ширше розуміння того, як впливає відсутність доступності і методи, які допоможуть скерувати своє прагнення зробити світ доступнішим так, щоб мої рішення дійсно відповідали запитам тих, хто цього потребує.
ця книга відкрила для мене нове бачення інклюзії, спростувала поняття універсального дизайну і дала розуміння того, що інклюзивність це не додатковий захід.
також, я була щиро вражена тим, що багато сучасних технологій, що ми щодень використовуємо спочатку призначались для людей з інвалідністю. також мені дуже сподобалась теза про те, що інклюзивність це досить обширне поняття, натомість значення відчуження ми одразу розуміємо, тут людей з інвалідністю визначають як тих, хто відчужений від певної діяльності та процесів, тому і намагаються розробити рішення, які допоможуть їх включити.
я б хотіла щоб цю книгу прочитав кожен не залежно від професії, адже інклюзивні рішення є не тільки в архітектурі та дизайні. ця книга допомагає зрозуміти проблему інклюзивності і відкриває її нові, невідані до того, грані, принаймні для мене, бо я тільки нещодавно почала поглиблюватись цю тему) щиро рекомендую кожному до прочитання)
October 26, 2021
This book has opened my eyes to the importance of inclusive design in ways I never thought of before.
It made me realize that accessibility is a term that often makes my Interior Designer self think of ADA code requirements- which is wrong. Making things code-compliant is not the same thing as making them accessible. As those codes often provide band-aid solutions that only include certain groups of people with certain disabilities. Accessibility is so much more than that. It is about including different demographics of people and communities via access of public transportation and including persons of varying disabilities and need levels throughout the entire design process- making sure their needs are specifically addressed.
The biggest take-away I had was the importance of ADJUSTABILITY. We are so used to designing for the average that we end up designing for no one. Designing things to be adjustable changes everything for each and every end-user, as they can customize an experience to fit them personally. We need to stop designing for everyone and start designing for billions of individual people with billions of individual needs and experiences.
I look forward to how this book will influence my future work and hope that it has strengthened my empathy as an advocate.
It made me realize that accessibility is a term that often makes my Interior Designer self think of ADA code requirements- which is wrong. Making things code-compliant is not the same thing as making them accessible. As those codes often provide band-aid solutions that only include certain groups of people with certain disabilities. Accessibility is so much more than that. It is about including different demographics of people and communities via access of public transportation and including persons of varying disabilities and need levels throughout the entire design process- making sure their needs are specifically addressed.
The biggest take-away I had was the importance of ADJUSTABILITY. We are so used to designing for the average that we end up designing for no one. Designing things to be adjustable changes everything for each and every end-user, as they can customize an experience to fit them personally. We need to stop designing for everyone and start designing for billions of individual people with billions of individual needs and experiences.
I look forward to how this book will influence my future work and hope that it has strengthened my empathy as an advocate.
December 7, 2022
On the #InternationalDayofPersonsWithDisabilities, I chanced upon this beautiful book by Kat Holmes. Luckily, I found the audio version by the author herself, and that was even better to hear her narration. Among several takeaways, I liked this as the most profound one: "According to the World Bank, one billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience disability. To put it another way, there are over 6.4 billion people who are temporarily able-bodied.” I have never come across such a powerful reframing that we are not #normal (which she also discusses at length in her book), but given the natural process of aging and other ailments and conditions that happen throughout life, this "normalness" of being able-bodied is rather temporary. I am sure, if nothing else, that realization alone is enough to make people stop in their tracks and think again about the impact of how most of the #designers take their #abilitybias for granted and design lousy products and services that are largely unfit for the real world. If only we would see ourselves as "one of them" and design "with them" rather than "for them", I am sure the world would be a much better place! The same goes for #leaders designing organizations - the same basic principles still apply! As for the book, a little dated but still largely mint-fresh in terms of the issues it brings out. Highly recommend.
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