Inclusive Product Development

 Inclusive Product Development

To build a successful product, collaboration, and communication are essential among user researchers, designers, engineers, and product managers throughout the entire design and development process. And from the initial days are most crucial to make that product inclusive.

Include all approaches from the beginning 

To achieve a comprehensive understanding of the needs and motivations of the end-users, it is crucial to involve every team member from the outset. This entails facilitating collaboration among user researchers, designers, engineers, and product managers throughout the entire end-to-end process. Additionally, each team member must participate in the research to ensure their involvement in the process. Considering Inclusive user research give a wide range of information to start with and as all team members are connected from the beginning, the prototype will be the Most Desired Product (MDP) rather than Minimum Viable Product(MVP).

How & Where tasks are carried out 

For active collaboration to take place effectively, it is imperative to have the appropriate infrastructure in place. This infrastructure should ensure that designers, researchers, engineers, product managers, and other essential roles continuously share their work, receive feedback, and resolve issues together as part of their day-to-day process. Collaboration rituals should be intentionally designed and inclusive of all team members. By actively collaborating and communicating throughout the process, the team can proactively identify and address potential accessibility and usability barriers.

Inclusive team 

It is often overlooked, but promoting diversity within the team plays a critical role in creating inclusive outcomes. It involves being intentional about the diversity of team members, as diverse perspectives lead to better products. By having a team that includes individuals from different backgrounds and experiences, a range of perspectives and insights can be brought to the design and development process, resulting in more innovative solutions that cater to a wider range of users.

Mindset - Inquisitive and Innovative

To find solutions, it is essential to first understand the problem. When creating products for a diverse global population, it is crucial to proactively identify gaps in the current experience. Identifying these issues early on should be celebrated as an opportunity to improve the experience before launching it to customers.

The team must have an open mindset, willing to challenge their own assumptions and biases and seek to understand how to create accessible and usable experiences for everyone. It is vital to continuously remind ourselves that we are not our users and, therefore, need to maintain an unwavering focus on understanding the users and aligning as a team on the problem we are trying to solve.