What do you mean when you say that exclusion is designed?Īfter I left Microsoft and started working with a much broader group of companies, I realized that even though we were all talking about inclusion, we each had a different understanding of that word. When you describe inclusive design, you start by talking about exclusion. The responsibility, then, is squarely placed on those of us who make decisions about products or experiences to understand that each choice either increases or decreases those mismatches. This is also known as the social definition of disability.

The word is pulled from the World Health Organization, which defines a disability as 'a mismatched interaction between the features of a person’s body and the features of the environment in which they live'. What is the concept behind the term and how has it guided your book and work? We spoke to Holmes to find out more about her approach to the field – and her thoughts about its future.

Holmes served as the Principal Director of Inclusive Design at Microsoft from 2014-2017 and led a multidisciplinary team in the development of the Microsoft Inclusive Design toolkit, described by Fast Company as a radical evolution of design thinking and practices. Her book on the subject, Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design (available from The MIT Press in September 2018), sets the foundation for why designing with excluded communities results in better results for everyone. When it comes to inclusive design, few people have as much hands-on experience as Kat Holmes, founder of Kata.

Mismatch book kat holmes