On Universal Design

Universal Design as a concept was first proposed by Ronald Mace and recommends that all products and the built environment be designed to be aesthetic and usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone. There is a certain egalitarianism to the idea, and as the drive towards greater inclusion accelerated, so did the belief that UD could be the panacea to solve such issues. If only the designers would think of everyone as they design products, all would be well. This led to UD being prescribed broadly, either in conjunction with, or instead of, accessibility in the design of products and environments.

From a preliminary analysis, the “universal” part of universal design is almost always never achievable, without making the design so general that it works well for no one. Further, designers or the businesses that employ them are anyway incentivized by market forces to solve a problem such that they capture the largest market size. The challenges in

The premise that trying to make products that work amazingly well for people with differing faculties or faculty-sets is even feasible challenges common sense. In conclusion, in a large majority of design problems, universal design is not applicable, because the least common denominator design has little chance of success.

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