The Inclusive Design Cube
The different approaches to designing for the whole population fall into three fundamental categories as shown by the user pyramid:
- user-aware design: pushing the boundaries of 'mainstream' products to include as many people as possible;
- customisable/modular design: design to minimise the difficulties of adaptation to particular users;
- special purpose design: design for specific users with very particular needs.
The Inclusive Design Cube (IDC)
Click on the image.
The same design approaches can be more usefully mapped onto a cube, with the most functionally capable members of the population at the lower, front right corner, and the least capable at the top, back left corner. The cube representation of the whole population will be used throughout the rest of this resource, and will be referred to as the Inclusive Design Cube (IDC).