Universal design is a design criteria that values its users and attempts to design products that are usable for every group of users. The basic idea is to provide environment to access information with equal relevance. It aims to study the interest of the end user from different age groups and also their abilities and eventually utilising knowledge about them to implement them in the design.
Universal design is also known as lifespan design or transgenerational design. It encompasses and extends the web accessibility, adaptability and barrier-free design concepts. Also, it eradicates any irrelevant design content that might annoy the end users in terms of website usability.
Principles Of Universal Design
- Unambiguous Design- When we talk of unbiased design, we mean that it should be understandable or equitable to be interpreted in the same way by different types of users. The same message should be conveyed to all the users. Apart from this, the design must comply with the interest of users based on different age groups.
- Flexibility- The basic idea behind flexibility in universal design is providing room for all the users to find whatever they are looking for. A flexible design incorporates the wide range of accessibility option at the same time, keeping it simple and productive. Under flexibility, functionalities of the design also count as it adversely affects the usability of the design.
- Perceivability- Until and unless the proposed design is very well accessible by every segment of people viz. Young, Old, Physically Disabled etc. one can’t attain universal design. By perceivability, to some extent, we mean web accessibility or the WCAG 2.0 design compliance. These are the guidelines to let every segment of people access the web and interact with it.
- Error Handling Capability- Whenever, an user visits a webpage, it is likely for them to encounter certain errors while accessing it. An universal design considers such slip-ups by taking care of small errors that are anticipated to occur during the web-accessibility. For example, we can undo any action that might add to the inconvenience of the accessibility.
- Effective and Extensible- Effective designs are comfortable to navigate, interact and interpret by the user. Also, the design should create a platform for users to contribute to the extensibility by taking part in it. Any user visiting on your website must feel that your website contains something that he has been looking for. That is how it can turn effective and extensible.
The primary goal of attaining universal design is to influence the web-accessibility. Most of the websites today fail to achieve universal design criteria and as a result, it costs them with reduced number of visitors on their website. Universal design is something that’s less specific yet effective. We, at Oodles Studio, follow universal design guidelines to serve our clients with ultimate design options to encourage a lot of visitors to discover a lot from their website.
