Rockwell Automation is proactively addressing the evolving landscape of industrial operations by embedding inclusive design principles across its hardware, software, and corporate communications, as detailed in the second installment of its comprehensive series on the subject, published on March 4, 2024. This strategic initiative reflects a growing industry recognition that designing for diverse human factors is not merely a matter of compliance but a critical driver of efficiency, safety, and innovation in the complex world of industrial automation. Building upon the foundational definitions and challenges outlined in Part 1, this segment delves into specific design solutions, underscoring the company’s commitment to creating universally accessible industrial environments. The series is now slated to extend to a third part, promising further insights into additional activities and solutions that merit dedicated exploration.
The Imperative of Inclusive Design in a Modern Industrial Context
The industrial automation sector, traditionally characterized by robust machinery and specialized interfaces, is undergoing a profound transformation driven by a diversifying global workforce and the increasing sophistication of human-machine interaction. Inclusive design, by systematically considering the full spectrum of human diversity in terms of ability, language, culture, gender, and age, offers a powerful framework for addressing these shifts. For Rockwell Automation, a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation, this means re-evaluating every facet of product development—from the tactile feel of hardware components to the linguistic nuances of software interfaces. The economic implications are significant: a 2023 report by MarketsandMarkets projected the industrial automation market to reach USD 302.2 billion by 2028, underscoring the vast ecosystem where inclusive design can yield tangible benefits, including enhanced operational uptime, reduced training costs, and a broader talent pool. Furthermore, with an estimated 15% of the world’s population experiencing some form of disability, according to the World Health Organization, ignoring accessibility in design excludes a substantial segment of potential users and employees.
The unique demands of industrial environments—often unpredictable, rugged, and requiring precision under pressure—amplify the need for robust and intuitive solutions. Any failure in design, whether hardware or software, can have severe consequences, ranging from operational inefficiencies to safety hazards. Thus, the "anywhere, anytime, all the time" mantra articulated by Rockwell Automation is not just a performance goal but a foundational requirement for inclusivity.
Designing Industrial Hardware for Diverse Human Factors
At the heart of industrial automation lies the physical equipment, which must perform flawlessly under rigorous conditions. Ensuring these hardware solutions support the needs of diverse users equally requires a meticulous approach to industrial design. Alex Mummert, a Senior Industrial Designer at Rockwell Automation, highlights several key areas of focus in this endeavor.
Strategic Placement and Ergonomic Optimization: Mummert emphasizes that industrial hardware is deployed in a wide variety of settings, primarily categorized as on-machine or in-cabinet placements. This variability necessitates standardized information display and physical configurations that remain optimal across different use cases, avoiding bespoke solutions that might excel in one scenario but hinder another. To maximize access, designs minimize interface obstructions and optimize viewing angles—both vertical and horizontal—to ensure legibility.
Ergonomics plays a pivotal role in this. Mummert advocates for designing for the 99th percentile, meaning solutions should comfortably accommodate 99% of the population without significant impediments. This involves standardizing grip points, pull forces, and spatial affordances. This rigorous approach is validated through low-fidelity ergonomic studies, such as the one conducted by Mummert’s team to assess an I/O module’s door-opening mechanism relative to nearby cabling (Figure 1), ensuring that physical interactions are intuitive and comfortable for a broad range of users. These studies are crucial in an industry where operators may spend hours interacting with machinery, and even minor ergonomic flaws can lead to fatigue or injury over time.
Navigating Challenging Physical Environments: Unlike consumer electronics, industrial products rarely operate in pristine conditions. They are often confined to cramped, poorly lit, and dirty environments, surrounded by other equipment and cabling. Rockwell Automation’s design philosophy accounts for these realities by adjusting cabling directions, maximizing interface legibility, and establishing a clear hierarchy for both static and dynamic information displays, such as indicator lights. These modifications are critical for maintaining operational clarity and reducing cognitive load in high-stress situations.
Enhanced Indicators and Lights for Universal Comprehension: The legibility of status indicators is paramount for safety and operational efficiency. Mummert explains the importance of ensuring that users progressively understand module status through interaction, with critical information prioritized visually. To address vision impairments, including color blindness (which affects approximately 8% of males of Northern European descent), Rockwell Automation has developed updated wavelength guidance for LEDs. This initiative was born from the observation that previously, green and yellow LEDs had overlapping color specifications, potentially causing confusion. By standardizing blue-green and yellow-green indicators, the company ensures more accurate identification of automation device statuses.
Furthermore, increasing the physical spacing between color LEDs enhances legibility in poor visibility conditions, accounting for both environmental factors and human vision impairments. This intentional spacing allows users to distinguish individual indicators, preventing them from perceiving a cluster of lights as a single, continuous color. Thoughtful LED placement also considers the surrounding environment, including cables and other modules, to maximize visibility and ensure that critical alerts are never obscured, thereby preventing frustration and ensuring rapid response in urgent scenarios.
Responsive User Interfaces and Durability: User interface responsiveness in hardware involves clear visual or physical feedback confirming task completion. Mummert cites the example of a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) locking feature, where a quarter-turn mechanism must provide distinct and consistent tactile feedback to confirm successful locking or unlocking. This is particularly vital in industrial settings where users often wear protective gear like gloves, which reduce dexterity and tactile sensation. Rigorous testing with such gear in simulated environments helps validate these solutions, ensuring usability under real-world conditions.
Beyond immediate interaction, Rockwell Automation considers the entire product lifecycle for its extensive portfolio of over 400,000 unique stock-keeping units (SKUs). Each product must not only perform reliably but also align with a cohesive brand perception, maintaining a consistent look and feel. The design process factors in unpacking, commissioning, daily use, maintenance, and eventual replacement, ensuring that inclusive principles are integrated throughout the product’s lifespan. This holistic approach ensures that the products are not only robust and functional but also intuitively usable for a diverse global customer base over the long term.
Evolving Terminology for an Inclusive Culture
Beyond physical hardware, the language used in industrial automation, both internally and externally, significantly impacts user experience and corporate culture. The technology industry, historically, has perpetuated non-inclusive terms that can alienate users. Rockwell Automation has embarked on a multi-year initiative to modernize its terminology, spearheaded by Elena Dunne, Senior Manager of Industry Insights and a former terminologist. This effort acknowledges that terminology is a key aspect of any user interface and crucial for effective communication, especially with an increasingly diverse user base and employee population.
External Engagement and Communication Strategy: Dunne’s involvement with "TerminOrgs," a consortium of terminologists from large organizations, provided a crucial foundation for this initiative. This collaboration facilitated the identification of potential alternatives to non-inclusive terms. Rockwell Automation then actively engaged with external parties, including standards organizations, partners, and customers, to foster broader acceptance of these changes.
To disseminate its new terminology strategy, the company launched a blog and a dedicated webpage (Figure 2) that lists preferred alternatives for outdated terms across various subdomains like cybersecurity, motion control, and software programming. This list is continually evolving, reflecting the dynamic nature of language and inclusion. Furthermore, Rockwell Automation has integrated inclusive terminology discussions into its "Bold Conversations" roundtable talks at its annual Automation Fair® tradeshow event for two consecutive years, most recently in Boston, raising awareness and soliciting feedback from the broader industry community.
Internal Communication and Implementation: Internally, proactive and transparent communication has been paramount. The Terminology Review Board utilizes various tactics to keep employees informed, including regular updates, dedicated internal communication channels, and training programs. This comprehensive internal strategy ensures that the updated terminology is consistently applied across all internal software, documentation, and communications.
A cross-functional working group, comprising representatives from various departments, leads five distinct workstreams to execute this initiative. These workstreams typically encompass: 1) Auditing existing content for non-inclusive terms; 2) Developing comprehensive guidelines and policies for new terminology; 3) Providing training and resources to employees; 4) Implementing changes in product documentation, software, and marketing materials; and 5) Monitoring progress and gathering feedback. This structured approach ensures that the terminology changes are systematically integrated into the company’s operational fabric.
Building Inclusive Practices into the Productization Pipeline: The ultimate goal is to embed these inclusive terminology practices directly into the product development lifecycle. With the newly formed Inclusive Design and Accessibility function, led by Amber (as inferred from the article’s broader context), Rockwell Automation is focusing on proactive measures. This includes building checks into the development process to prevent inclusive-design and accessibility issues from arising in the first place, ensuring that new products and updates adhere to the latest terminology standards. This forward-looking strategy aims to make inclusive language an intrinsic part of Rockwell Automation’s product identity.
Weaving Accessibility into the Common Design System: Flourish
The challenge of retroactively updating decades-old industrial software solutions that were not originally designed with accessibility in mind is significant. To overcome this, Rockwell Automation is prioritizing the integration of rigorous accessibility best practices into its internal Flourish Design System (Figure 3). A design system serves as a single source of truth for design principles, patterns, and components, ensuring consistency and efficiency across all products. By embedding accessibility here, Rockwell Automation ensures that all new software development adheres to inclusive standards from the outset.
Jonathon Gulbrandsen, Design System Leader at Rockwell Automation, explains the strategic prioritization within Flourish. The initial focus has been on ensuring proper contrast ratios within all common components and then addressing keyboard accessibility. Contrast ratio, crucial for readability, is a straightforward win for accessibility and overall usability. The team has built into its component-design process a requirement to test and ensure that the ratio meets at least AA WCAG 2.1 standards for graphics and UI components, striving for AAA standards for text. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are internationally recognized benchmarks for web accessibility, and adherence signals a strong commitment to inclusive design.
Keyboard Accessibility and the Power User Advantage: Keyboard accessibility, while essential for users with motor impairments, also offers significant benefits for "power users" in immersive, integrated design environments (IDEs) like Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk® Design Studio. Automation engineers and system designers often prefer keyboard navigation for its speed and efficiency, reducing the physical and cognitive load associated with constant mouse usage during long workdays. This dual benefit—serving both accessibility needs and enhancing productivity for a core user base—made keyboard accessibility an "easy sell" to business leaders, demonstrating that inclusive design can directly translate into improved operational efficiency and user satisfaction.
Future-Proofing with Themeable Design Systems: Rockwell Automation’s commitment extends to future enhancements, with every component in the Flourish Design System featuring an accessibility section for ongoing expansion. The team is actively working on making the design system "themeable," enabling products to offer various visual presentations such as dark or high-contrast themes. These options cater to diverse user preferences and environmental conditions, further broadening the accessibility and usability of Rockwell Automation’s software portfolio. Dark themes, for example, can reduce eye strain in low-light environments, while high-contrast themes are vital for users with specific visual impairments. This forward-thinking approach ensures that accessibility is not a static feature but an evolving capability integrated into the core of their design philosophy.
Conclusion and Future Outlook
Rockwell Automation’s multi-faceted approach to inclusive design—encompassing hardware innovation, terminology modernization, and systemic integration into design systems—marks a significant commitment to its diverse global user base and employee population. By establishing robust hardware design best practices, evolving language to foster inclusivity, and embedding accessibility into its Flourish Design System, the company is laying durable foundations for sustained progress.
This ongoing effort reflects a deeper understanding that inclusive design is not a peripheral concern but a strategic imperative that drives competitive advantage, enhances safety, improves efficiency, and fosters a more welcoming and productive environment. As the industrial automation landscape continues to evolve, these initiatives will be crucial in attracting and retaining talent, meeting customer needs, and anticipating future regulatory landscapes. The journey, as highlighted by Rockwell Automation, is continuous, with further insights into external Web presence, localization efforts, and other software standards slated for discussion in Part 3 of this series, underscoring a comprehensive and sustained commitment to a truly inclusive industrial future.
