iGAME’s U*CD – Unique-Centered Design Toolkit
Designing for real people, with diverse identities, characteristics, abilities, situations and contexts.
The iGAME U*CD (Unique-Centered Design) Toolkit is a practical set of resources developed by Raising the Floor to help online game professionals, designers and developers bring human diversity, accessibility and inclusion into the project’s research, co-design and game-design activities.
U*CD builds on established user-centered design practices while encouraging teams to look beyond the idea of an “average” or fixed user. Every person brings a unique combination of characteristics, identities, abilities, experiences, preferences and needs. Some may be permanent or relatively stable, while others may change temporarily or over time. How a person participates and interacts is also shaped by their situation and context, including their physical, social, cultural and technological environment.
The toolkit helps online game professionals, designers and developers consider this diversity and variability throughout the design process, from understanding participants and their contexts, to co-creating ideas, making design decisions and evaluating concepts and solutions.
U*CD Toolkit Resources for iGAME
- U*CD Facilitation Guide – Start here. Provides a practical process for using the U*CD resources in online game design activities and explains how the Poster, Design Guide, Design Prompts and Quick Check can work together.
- U*CD Poster – Introduces the idea of designing for human uniqueness and helps teams consider diversity across people, situations, contexts and functional capabilities. It can be used to build awareness before or during online game co-design activities.
- U*CD Design Guide – Provides practical guidance for considering diverse people, abilities, contexts and technologies when developing digital experiences and game-related concepts, including visual, hearing, cognitive and motor accessibility.
- U*CD Design Prompts – Supports co-design and creative activities by helping participants and facilitators ask questions, uncover potential barriers, challenge assumptions and consider human diversity, accessibility, different contexts of use and changing situations.
- U*CD Quick Check – A short reflection and review tool for considering inclusion, accessibility, usability and resilience across different people, needs, situations and contexts.
The resources can be used together or individually, depending on the activity and stage of the online game design process.
U*CD is not about designing a separate solution for every type of user. It is about recognizing human diversity and variability and using that understanding to create game concepts and experiences that can better accommodate different people, needs, situations and contexts..
We invite you to also explore our Accessibility and Inclusion Toolkit , a collection of practical resources we make available to help our EU-funded project partners understand and address accessibility and inclusion in their work, including relevant European requirements, standards and good practices. Some resources are specifically intended for consortium partners.