Brief Considerations on Design Topics: 14. Inclusive Products, Long Lasting Solutions and Tortuous Usage | by Pedro Canhenha | Dec, 2022

I’ve long been an advocate for building inclusive product solutions. One of the aspects I find the most rewarding about crafting solid product outputs, beyond the fact that it pierces through the needs of its users with quality and usability standards, is the fact that it does so in a democratic fashion. It reaches a wide array of users, across multiple demographics, ethnic backgrounds and hopefully cultures. Typically these are solutions which require a fair amount of iterative cycles, a robust amount of testing, in summary a considerable investment in research. And while I’ve noticed throughout the years a progressively more visible focus on Inclusivity (and accessibility), it wasn’t that long ago that many digital products and the teams behind them didn’t consider this to be a priority, which manifested itself in lackluster solutions on the market, with products which failed to meet minimum requirements of multiple platform usage, to name but one of the most obvious issues. Here’s some considerations that I’ve taken into account during my career when crafting inclusive products, which hopefully can generate some interesting reflection and conversations.