This article, written by Rosie Willoughby, summarises the content of Nicolle Figueroa Rosado’s NextGen Showcase presentation on IDEA in Design for themed entertainment. Nicolle is the manager of Education and Strategy at Big Break Foundation, a non-profit organisation which empowers the Location-Based Experience industry to create workplaces and visitor experiences that are welcoming and equitable to all.

In this education session, Nicolle introduces Participants to IDEA; Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility in Design. By understanding the needs of our visitors, we can design universal and inclusive experiences for all.

What is IDEA?

First up, Nicolle introduces Participants to IDEA. It stands for:

Inclusion - ensuring that all feel welcomed, valued, respected, represented and supported in being able to fully participate in a location-based experience.

Diversity - encompasses all the different characteristics that make an individual or group differ from others.

Equity - all have the opportunity to fully participate. This can sometimes be confused for equality, where everyone has been treated the same. However, this does not result in equal outcomes. Nicolle uses the example of visiting a zoo attraction to illustrate the difference. When everyone is treated equally, some visitors cannot participate in the experience. In an equitable scenario, people’s differing needs have been catered to to ensure everyone can participate. In the justice scenario, the roots of the inequity have been addressed, and the attraction has been designed with accessibility and equity in mind.

Equity is when all have the opportunity to fully participate. This image illustrates the example of visitors with different needs visiting a zoo.

Accessibility - giving equitable access to everyone along the continuum of human ability and experience. For example, ensuring that someone with a disability is afforded the opportunity to engage with the same services, interactions and attractions as a person without a disability.

Nicolle then presents the Intersectionality Wheel of Privilege. Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights scholar, intersectionality is the notion that social categorisations, such as race, class and gender, intersect to create overlapping systems of discrimination or dis/advantage. When our unique characteristics interact, unique barriers and privileges will arise in our experience of the world.

Intersectionality Wheel of Privilege, adapted from Tessa Watkins.

In the diagram, characteristics that are placed closest to the centre are identities that, in the US, afford the most privilege or power. As you move towards the middle and outer rings, these characteristics move from affording power, to being erased or ignored, towards outward marginalisation and discrimination. As everyone comprises many unique identities, you can have characteristics that appear in multiple rings.

Nicolle invited participants to think about how their identities have impacted their experiences in the location-based experience industry. By thinking about how it has affected us in our own lives, we can think about how we can design attractions in a more inclusive and accessible way which will cater to the diverse needs and identities of visitors.

Who are our visitors?

Here, Nicolle uses a snapshot of the audience data from English museums and galleries from a UK government survey in 2023. The results illustrate the diversity of backgrounds of visitors’ ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, sexualities and disability statuses, and how different identity categories may be more or less likely to visit these attractions.

When it comes to US audiences, Nicolle uses data from the annual PGAV Voice of the Visitor report. This research showed that a significant proportion of visitors to US attractions had a form of disability or accessibility need. Of those respondents, only 55% were satisfied with the accessibility and accommodations on offer, with 34% of people with a disability reporting that they experienced discrimination based on ability.

Data from PGAV Voice of the Visitor report 2024

The report found that People of Colour (POC) were underrepresented as a proportion of attraction visitors. Where they make up 40% of the US population, only 27% of attraction visitors identified as POC. Of this, nearly half of POC visitors reported being treated differently than other visitors, such as through microaggressions.

Tomorrow’s audience

It is important to understand the trends in the data. As experience designers, it is up to us to respond to demographic shifts by ensuring attractions are inclusive and accessible. For example, the World Health Organisation predicts that by 2050, the proportion of the global population who are over 60 years old will rise from the current 12% to 22%, with 3.5 billion people needing assistive technologies like prosthetics, wheelchairs or captioning software.

“The decisions that we make as experience creators today will impact visitors both today and tomorrow.” - Nicolle Figueroa Rosado

IDEA in Design

Every design has an impact on equity, inclusivity and accessibility. It’s the responsibility for us as designers to create experiences that eliminate barriers. For example, Nicolle discusses research into autonomous vehicles, which found that their systems had higher error rates for detecting persons with darker skin tones, with the algorithm putting a proportion of the population at higher risk of traffic accidents.

When designing algorithms and experiences, it is important to ensure that no groups are being overlooked or barred from access.

Universal Design

Universal Design is defined by the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design as:

“The design and composition of an environment, product, or service that can be accessed, understood, and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size, ability or disability.”

At the centre of this, we need to think about the key principles of Universal Design. Nicolle takes us through the seven principles that were established at North Carolina State University in 1997:

Equitable use: the design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.
Flexibility in Use: accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.
Simple and Intuitive to Use: regardless of user’s experience, knowledge, language skills or current concentration levels.
Tolerance for Error: minimises hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
Perceptible Information: information is communicated effectively regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities.
Size and Space for Approach & Use: appropriate space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation and use regardless of body size, posture or mobility.
Low Physical Effort: can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.

As she went through these principles, Nicolle challenged Participants to think about the designs, experiences and locations in their own lives which could be improved by implementing more Universal Design techniques. For example, the Nanakuma subway line in Japan, which contains tactile floors, braille maps, accessible ticket barriers and simple colours and icons to lower barriers of access for its passengers. In everyday life, we can also think about keyless fobs, curb cuts and automatic doors. These were designs which were created with accessibility needs at the forefront, but which have additional value to the broader public.

Inclusive Design

In Microsoft’s 2016 Inclusive Design toolkit, this is defined as:

“A methodology that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity. Designing inclusively means identifying exclusions, solving for them, and extending the benefits to many.”

As designers, we need to recognise exclusion. Inclusive Design is a people-centred process where we learn from the diversity of those around us. It meets diverse needs and expectations, and is accessible, usable, equitable and ethical.

By thinking inclusively, we can create design solutions for specific needs, which can result in serving many more people in other situations. For example, voice control can be used with a variety of needs, from situational, temporary to permanent basis.

Design Justice

The last approach Nicolle took Participants through is Design Justice. This centres people who are usually marginalised by design, and uses collaborative creative practices to address challenges. It involves analysing how design distributes benefits and burdens to, and what impact this has. Through understanding this, we can account for diversity in our processes by shifting our role from designer to facilitator, ensuring that communities can come forward with their knowledge and access needs.

Established by the Design Justice Network, they suggest ten principles which will improve the design process.

Using design to sustain, heal, and empower communities, seeking liberation from exploitative and oppressive systems.
Centering the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes of the design process.
Prioritising the design’s impact on the community over the intentions of the designer.
Viewing change as emerging from an accountable, accessible and collaborative process, rather than simply an end point of a process.
Seeing the role of designer as more of a facilitator than an expert.
Believing that everyone is an expert on their own lived experience; we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to the design process.
Sharing design knowledge and tools within our communities.
Working towards sustainable, community-led and controlled outcomes.
Working towards non-exploitative solutions that reconnect us to the earth and to each other.
Looking for what is already working at the community level. Honouring and uplifting community knowledge and practices.

As Nicolle completed her talk, she challenged Participants to think about IDEA in practice by going into breakout discussions and taking questions relating to the themed entertainment sphere.

We at NextGen Showcase would like to express our gratitude to Nicolle Figueroa Rosado for her contribution to our Educational Program as a Speaker. Thank you! For more information on the NextGen Showcase Educational Program, go to: NextGenShowcase.com.

We are proud to be partnered with Big Break Foundation. For more information, head to: Big Break Foundation | Entertainment Nonprofit.

This article was written by our Editor, Rosie Willoughby.

IDEA in Design with Big Break Foundation