Maximizing Positive User Experience at a career-coaching program – A focus on the perspective of Universal Design

Abstract: Universal Design is a design principle that has been in recent years gaining growing prevalence in the design of physical and social environments and product innovation. Universal Design is referred to as the process of creating products, services, and environments for people with a wide range of (dis)abilities and other characteristics, without special adaptation ‘to the greatest extent possible. The principle also has the ambitious goal to include ‘everyone’ by considering different parameters and conditions in life. Despite the ambitious and idealistic design underpinning, how could we use Universal Design contextually to promote a positive user experience? What does it mean when ‘disability’ – a way of categorizing and evaluating abilities, changes given a different context? This thesis aims to discuss and elaborate approaches to maximizing the positive user experience of participants in a career coaching program. The first objective is to study how Universal Design can be applied more generally to improve users’ participation and experience. In this study, the career coaching program is a public service available to unemployed persons and job seekers in Sweden. The second objective is to make use of this case example to expand the ideas of Universal Design as a whole with the help of anthropological and sociological theories. With data collection carried out in two and a half months, a mix of ethnographic methods, such as autoethnography, semi-structured interviews, casual chats, and netnography, are used to inform the analysis.