What is Inclusive design?
Inclusive design is a methodology that draws on the full range of human diversity as a resource for better design solutions, ensuring that products work for people across differences in ability, language, culture, gender, and age.
How it works
Inclusive design, championed by Microsoft’s inclusive design toolkit, begins by designing for users at the margins of ability and context. The insight is that designing for extremes benefits everyone: curb cuts designed for wheelchair users help parents with strollers, travelers with suitcases, and delivery workers with carts. Inclusive design recognizes three types of exclusion: permanent (one arm), temporary (arm in a sling), and situational (holding a baby). By addressing permanent exclusion first, inclusive design generates solutions that cascade to serve temporary and situational cases. It differs from accessibility compliance in being a generative design methodology rather than a checklist.
Applied example
Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller was designed with gamers who have limited mobility. The resulting modular, customizable controller also benefits gamers with temporary injuries, young children, and elderly users, demonstrating how designing for exclusion at the margins creates broadly useful innovation.
Why it matters
Inclusive design transforms disability from a constraint to a creative catalyst, producing solutions that serve a wider range of human needs than mainstream design approaches that assume a narrow ‘average’ user.
