Diversity design: How inclusive design brings more diversity into everyday life

2024 | 7 min reading time

Prejudices, accessibility and participatory processes.

Diversity is on everyone's lips. Many companies are already employing diversity managers to create a diverse working environment. Design should not be neglected as an integral part of this process. After all, inclusive and diverse design makes the concept of diversity more tangible, visible and all-encompassing. But what does diversity design actually mean? Let's explain it using a simple approach: Diversity Design in easy language.

What does diversity design mean?

Diversity design means that the needs and wishes of all people are taken into account when designing products, websites, spaces or graphics. Whether young or old, with or without a disability, regardless of skin color or culture - everyone should feel addressed and be able to interact easily with the designs.

5 core principles of diversity design:

We rely on the interplay of 5 core principles to find the most comprehensive approach to inclusive design. Depending on the requirements and project, however, individual principles can also be applied separately and already bring great added value for more diversity.

Visual design

We pay attention to inclusive design. When selecting images and graphics, we pay attention to diversity and representation. A good example is our AI-generated image campaign for the FH Erfurt, which depicts cultural diversity within a given age group. Neutral characters, such as those in our Diversity Calendar, which are not assigned to any gender, culture or age, also show how diversity can be implemented without using clichés

Language

We use understandable and always respectful language wherever possible. In German in particular, we often tend to use complex sentences. Plain language makes content understandable for everyone. Depending on the context, multilingualism or gender-neutral language is also an important tool for reaching more people. For us as a creative agency, it's not always easier to do without a cool play on words and sometimes write in a drier but simpler way. That's why it's important here, as in all areas, to go our own way that fits in with the company's values as well as its purpose.

Digitality

User-friendliness and accessibility are key issues today, especially since the Accessibility Ordinance. Nevertheless, accessibility is often treated as a "special case". In fact, accessibility improves the experience for all users, not just people with special needs, and thus offers enormous potential for brands to expand their target groups. And who wouldn't want to reach more people with their own products?

However, the following still often applies here too: patience, the journey is the reward. That's why we want to encourage everyone to get started and implement and guarantee accessibility step by step.

Bias and prejudices

Unconscious biases are deeply rooted in our society. We explicitly address existing preconceptions and biases. In this way, we become aware of them ourselves and can then overcome them in our work or use them in a targeted manner. Design should be as free of stereotypes and clichés as possible. Testing with relevant users helps to identify and eliminate these biases

Participation

The key to a truly inclusive design is the involvement of users through workshops and discussions with target groups and stakeholders. And diverse teams develop more diverse ideas - a measure that takes time but should be taken into account in the long term when building a team. It is essential for our work to understand what people really need. A/B testing is also a valuable tool for making data-based decisions and achieving the best results. The last point also prevents a company from engaging in tokenism. That is, when people from marginalized groups, such as BIPoC, are represented in a tokenistic way to create the appearance of diversity without actually taking substantive action to promote inclusion and equality.

Conclusion:

Diversity design is not a one-off process, but a dynamic concept that needs to be continuously adapted and developed. At ZENTRALNORDEN, we live this approach to create designs that are not only inclusive, but also forward-looking.

Sound interesting to you? Arrange a free initial consultation with Julika: jz@zentralnorden.com

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Tags: Diversity Design, UX UI, Easy Language, Diversity Illustration, Strategy, Participation, Development

Leonie Holkenbrink

Strategy | ZENTRALNORDEN

As an experienced communications strategist on both the agency and NGO side, Leonie has already mastered many communicative challenges. No matter what it's about, she has to get to the heart of the matter. Leonie loves organising creative workshops and is perhaps the only person who loves meeting marathons. In addition to her work at ZENTRALNORDEN, she works as a mediator where she promotes a positive culture of conflict.