Building your inclusive design toolkit

Designing inclusively is more crucial now than ever.

Given the current state of tech -- the increasing pressure to speed up delivery, do more with data, harness more powerful tools, solve just about any problem with AI -- UX practitioners are poised to make impact on an immense scale. Reaching massive audiences more rapidly than ever, we can craft experiences that are simple, clear, usable.

We can also contribute to harming our users by not designing for their needs. And so we absolutely must account for the full breadth of human experience.

It can be daunting to think of expanding our scope from accessibility, which primarily accounts for disability, to consider other aspects of human diversity. With so many aspects to consider -- gender, sexuality, race, cultural heritage, language, geography, socioeconomics, literacy, trauma, and so much more -- where do we even begin?

In this talk, I'll cover foundations and tools to embed inclusive design into your work. I'll discuss key concepts like intersectionality and lived experience, share what approaches have worked for me, and get real about working within limited constraints.

The aim is not to get you thinking about taking an inclusive design course "sometime next year" or to give you a few books to add to your to-be-read list. The aim is to get you started on your toolkit now: with concrete actions and tools you can use in your current project, learning and iterating as you develop your own inclusive design practice.

We don't have to do everything all at once. But we must start now.