by UX design is often confused with UI, and this can lead to the misconception that it’s mostly about aesthetics. But UX design is about people, and people are all different. There are many ways that one person’s experience with a product can differ from another. And that means UX designers need to consider diversity to provide a good experience for users.
Factors like race, gender, sexual orientation, and disabilities all need to be considered in UX design. Here, experts in the field share their views and advice on how to improve diversity in UX. To learn more about UX and UI design, sign up for our UX Design Fundamentals online course (opens in new tab). You’ll learn from experts in the field, including some of those who contributed to this article.
01. Start with a diverse team
Content designer Jacquelyn Iyamah suggests that having a diverse team on board can be helpful. “When you have a diverse team of designers, and I mean diverse in every sense of the word, there’s going to be more advocates who can advocate for the obliteration of the products you design,” she says.
She adds: “If you think of AI and a lot of products that are coming out that can’t recognize dark skin, it tells you that throughout the design thinking process, there’s probably no UX researcher, no UX Designer or strategist that could do that was a person of color who thought we should test people of color to see how they would interact with this product.”
02. Think about who you are designing for
It may sound obvious, but diversity in UX design means knowing who you’re designing for. “There was a time when designers designed for a very specific, elite audience — that’s not the case anymore,” says interaction designer and Parsons School of Design assistant professor, Harpreet Sareen. “We design for millions of people around the world.”
Visual preferences and interpretations may vary by culture and geography – including interpretation of color and shape. There aren’t any specific right answers other than the fact that you have to put yourself in the shoes of the users you’re designing for. Sareen provides a simple example of forward direction, which can vary in different parts of the world – quite important for the design of say a remote control.
“How to keep people from getting frustrated using the system is an important aspect and probably the most important for a designer,” says Sareen. “When you design systems that require a lot of knowledge to use, you are missing out on billions of people. And that’s why it’s important to find out who is using your product.”
Designing for everyone also means considering intersectional identities, including age, race and gender.
03. Think about the pictures
If you’re even designing a website, think about the imagery and branding,” says Iyamah. “Often we go to a website for fellowships of color and we don’t see each other on that website at all. There is no one who thought we should diversify our imagery so that people would find themselves in this product. And that can be alienating, too.”
She recommends doing background research on historical context, institutional or interpersonal practices, and policies that have impacted specific communities by consulting journals. She also stressed the need to always question one’s own prejudices.
“I remember in 2012 I just couldn’t use emoji that matched my skin color,” she says. “And that was just the norm. A really big thing in design itself is something I call the white standard, which is essentially the norm that is considered white. And so you end up with these products like emojis, like band aids, like self-driving cars, like soap dispensers, that just don’t speak to communities of color.”
04. Adjust your research strategy
Research is essential to get to know the user, but the research approaches themselves can also change depending on the user. Luke Cooley, a human-centric researcher at Google, says, “There’s really no shortcut to really investing in your users and understanding who they are. Often this means adjusting your research strategy.”
As an example, he cites a group of researchers doing research in Africa. They wanted to study how people would spend $100 given a variety of choices, but found that this was not a culture-sensitive exercise. “Because they lived in a poorer community, it wasn’t a culturally sensitive thing. Instead of using money, they used a variety of tokens and objects to associate with the various objects they previously referred to.” He recommends UX design students explore anthropology, sociology, and economics from macro to Micro deal to inform their strategy as a researcher or designer.
05. Consider accessibility
Another aspect of designing for diversity in UX is accessibility. “We have accessibility codes for the disabled to go through our cities — ramps, sidewalks,” says Sareen. “But we don’t have such accessible code in the digital world — it’s not enforced. What that means doesn’t include a large part of society.”
Many designers point out that designing accessible interfaces often not only improves the experience for people with a specific disability, but actually improves it for everyone. Vee Rogacheva, director of product design at Fure, advocates involving the engineering team in these decisions as soon as possible, as they should have expertise and knowledge that can enrich prototypes and design solutions.
Cooley says, “Often that means considering things like, is there enough contrast between the text and its background? How big is the text we use ourselves? Are buttons clickable? How big are the buttons?”
He emphasizes that many of these questions can only be answered on site. “We can read books about the needs of specific users, but we cannot fully understand and capture all needs, especially in terms of accessibility, unless we actually go into the field and talk to those users ourselves,” he says.
06. Pay attention to every detail
Even something as simple as an icon can affect people in different ways. Symbols can be used to simply communicate the concept of an idea, action or activity, but it must not become so abstract that people are trying to understand what it means, but how do you create a symbol for a gender blur in in a way that feels right?
“These things can really have an impact and make people who don’t identify with a single gender or who are gender neutral feel alienated,” says John Bricker, founder of Gensler’s Retail and Branding Studios. His team has built a huge library of symbols to help them choose.
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