In a recent paper “Universal Design in the Product Development Process,” Paul Fearis, Sagentia president, and Kay Sinclair, a senior consultant with Sagentia, expound on the growing awareness of universal design and usability without exclusivity.
Sinclair and Fearis declare that “If product designers don’t take the issue of usability seriously, they will see their products shunned by an ever greater proportion of the market (especially the growing but aging ‘baby-boomer’ group) – whereas products which meet a wider range of needs will be welcomed with open arms.”
The authors use the lack of “real user awareness” when it comes to technological products as part of an ongoing argument of functionality and capability trumping usability when it comes to product design and development. “Technology products increasingly limit usability by the overuse of features which are rarely understood or needed by the majority of consumers,” the authors state. “These products are typically created by young, healthy, male, tehno-oriented designers, often to meet the commercial challenge of another brand. As a result, technology spirals out of control, and users can be left trailing in its wake.”
Citing 2003 Microsoft market research and the 2004 Philips index study, Sinclair and Fearis write “Microsoft asked users of Word to list the ten new features they most wanted – and the results revealed that nine of these features were already there, in the software. Users had simply not found them. Even more interesting, the Philips Index study found that on 13 percent of consumers found technology ‘easy to use.”
Technology was not the authors’ “only area of concern.” They note that everyday packaging is driven by the sole and essential aim of reducing cost. This, they claim, presents an opportunity. “Designers may think that a one-handed user is in the minority, but what about the parent holding the baby, the person on the phone, or the cook stirring the sauce wanting to open the milk?”
In their findings, they state that reduced capability can be temporary as well as permanent, and that products are best designed when they are easy to use regardless of the user’s state or environment.
Sagentia has been working with organizations that represent world expertise in universal design and disability and, along with the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art and the Engineering Design Centre at Cambridge University, conducted a survey of thirty or so companies of varying sizes from different market sectors. They also held a series of workshops to look deeper into universal design issues.
According to Sinclair and Fearis, the “results revealed that important barriers to universal design [included] the lack of a justifiable business case and a lack of knowledge and tools.” The companies involved with the survey do not, however, believe that universal design is unachievable or irrelevant to end users.
The initial research perked the interest of one of the companies involved. That interest led to the funding of an online toolkit that has been developed to establish best practice for universal design and is due to launch sometime in the summer of 2007.
“The aim is not to hamper innovation with strict guidelines,” Sinclair and Fearis say, “but rather to create an approach using reference points including workshops, training courses and literature that will raise awareness of the key issues and help change the mindset of product managers and their designers.”
An “exclusion audit”—the mapping of products or technologies against the population to reveal who is excluded, where and why—could be a potential management tool of high value, according to the authors. They say that while tangible strategies for universal design are still far from the majority, there is an opportunity for design teams to bring it into the process.
Sinclair and Fearis realize that with “design cycles getting shorter and shorter, there is little time to start pondering new philosophies. But by the same token, if the resulting products are ignored by a growing percentage of the market, spending time on a new approach may yield great rewards.”
They note that the design group must find a diverse user group represented by varying lifestyles, genders, ages and experiences and then undertake a “usability breakdown.” They say to perform a breakdown on a new product in development or an existing product with the focus group and analyze the results under different user viewpoints.
The larger issue is educating both the designers and the design buyers say Sinclair and Fearis. They state that “often the product buyer doesn’t always understand design, let alone universal design [and] other commercial requirements can dominate, constraining the opportunity from the designer to generate good user-aware designs.”
The authors found that “[Universal design] has the potential to deliver the competitive advantage which opens up new markets. Consumers … are looking for brands which have taken the time to really understand their needs. Designers must access the growing body of universal design expertise beginning to emerge in order to change their established mindset, before their competitors do so first.”
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