Inclusion by design — the soup-spoon test

The spoon that started it all

I carry a travel thermos with a collapsible spoon. The spoon has a locking mechanism so it does not fall open in your bag. Except — it only locks if you are right-handed. As I said when I first noticed it:

"This soup flask was designed by a right-handed person. So if I'm right-handed, the spoon locks. No one ever went, hang on a minute, it doesn't work if you're left-handed."

It is a tiny thing. Nobody was trying to exclude left-handed people. The designer simply never thought about them — because the designer was right-handed, and so was everyone else in the room when the spoon was made. That is the soup-spoon test: the moment you realise a design was built around one kind of person and everyone else just has to make do.

The spoon matters because it is relatable and concrete. But the same logic applies to every process in your organisation: your recruitment system, your appraisal framework, your office layout, your communication style, your event format, your onboarding pack. All of them were designed by someone, for someone. The question is whether that "someone" was broad enough.

Unconscious exclusion is still exclusion

One of the most important shifts in diversity and inclusion thinking is moving from "we didn't mean to exclude anyone" to "we need to actively check that we haven't." Intent does not change the impact on the person who cannot use the spoon.

As I put it: "If we're not consciously inclusive, we are likely to be unconsciously inclusive in excluding somebody." The word "inclusive" there is doing deliberate work. Being unconsciously exclusive is the default state. Conscious inclusion requires effort, attention, and — crucially — the right people in the room.

This is not about blame. The designer of the spoon was not a bad person. But organisations that wait to be told about a problem before fixing it will always be playing catch-up. Inclusion by design moves the work upstream.

The one design question that changes everything

The practical output of the soup-spoon test is a single question you can build into any design process:

• Who are we not thinking of?

Simple. Uncomfortable. Transformative. You can ask it at the start of a project brief, in a policy review meeting, before a product ships, after a recruitment round, or whenever a process is being redesigned. It does not require a specialist. It requires the habit.

A follow-up question that gives it teeth: "How can we bring that voice into our design process?" Not just identify the gap — close it. Co-design with the people who would otherwise be designed around. Invite them into the room before the decision is made, not afterwards to rubber-stamp what has already been decided.

Where inclusion by design shows up

Once you start looking for it, you see the soup-spoon problem everywhere:

• Recruitment. A job description written in highly specific corporate language by someone who already works there will attract people who already sound like the team. See the guide on inclusive recruitment for practical fixes.
• Meetings and events. An all-day in-person event with a fixed agenda and no dietary options listed was designed around someone with full mobility, no caring responsibilities, and no access needs.
• Communications. An email written assuming a particular cultural frame of reference, sent without a plain-English option, excludes people with lower literacy or a different first language.
• Performance processes. An appraisal system that rewards visibility and self-promotion will systematically disadvantage people from cultures or backgrounds where that behaviour is discouraged.
• Digital products. A user interface that has never been tested with assistive technology was designed by people who do not use it.

None of these failures require bad intentions. They all require the same fix: asking, at design time, who is not represented by the people making the decisions.

How inclusive leaders make it stick

Inclusion by design is not a one-off audit — it is a cultural habit. Leaders on The Inclusive Leader's Journey build it in by making "Who are we not thinking of?" a standard agenda item in design meetings, not an afterthought. They make it safe to raise, so that junior team members feel as empowered to ask the question as senior ones.

The discipline also sits alongside active diversity work: if the people in the room are more varied to begin with, the soup-spoon problem is less likely to arise, because the left-handed person is already there. But representation alone is not enough — you still need the culture and the habit.

Hear more of these ideas explored on the Inclusion Bites podcast, or browse the full guides library for related reading.