Academy/Ethical AI for Designers/Bias, inclusion and accessibility
Practical exercise

Inclusion audit of a UX flow

Walk through a product flow as a marginalised user would and document every point of exclusion or unfair friction.

40–50 min3 materials

Materials

  • •A flow to audit (onboarding, ID verification, checkout, job application, healthcare booking)
  • •Edge personas: elderly user, non-native speaker, visually/motor impaired, low income, neurodivergent
  • •Basic WCAG checklist (contrast, labels, keyboard) and equity questions

Steps

  1. 1

    Choose a 5–8 step flow. It can be from your product or a public/private service you know.

  2. 2

    Walk through the flow four times, each time assuming a different person from the materials list. For each step note: what works, what blocks, what confuses, what excludes.

  3. 3

    Mark points where AI (or automation) amplifies exclusion: failed face recognition, incomprehensible generic copy, excluding recommendations, no human fallback.

  4. 4

    For the 3 most serious problems, propose a concrete fix: alternative message, manual path, plain language, metric to monitor.

  5. 5

    Optional: share with someone who fits one of the personas and ask for feedback — real validation beats any assumption.

Expected output

Audit table with 4 personas, at least 3 critical problems documented and proposed fixes for each.

Debrief

Which persona had the most friction? Which fix is implementable immediately without engineering? What would you ask the data/ML team?

Back to moduleStart the quiz