“Make the brand feel more inclusive” is a generous intention and a difficult assignment. It leaves a creative team searching for the right image, adjective, or casting choice before anyone has identified what should become easier for another person.
The 2019 IKEA ThisAbles project began with a more concrete problem. In a Design Museum interview, the project team credited the original idea to McCann Tel Aviv copywriter Eldar Yusupov, who has cerebral palsy. The account describes working with IKEA Israel, Milbat, Access Israel, engineers, and people with disabilities to understand difficulties using furniture and develop adaptations. The project team’s interview
This is a historical design case and a first-person account, not an independent assessment of every adaptation. Its useful lesson for creative work is where the question began: with an action a person wanted to perform, rather than a reputation a brand wanted to acquire.
Replace the aspiration with an observed task
A good brief can hold a broad purpose, but it also needs a small enough problem to work on. Who is trying to do what? What interrupts them? Under which conditions does the difficulty appear? What would a meaningful improvement look like to that person?
Those questions do not belong only to product design. An educational creator can ask where a learner loses the thread. A local service can ask which part of booking makes a customer give up. A campaign team can ask what prevents someone from understanding the next step after watching a video.
The point is to avoid substituting the team's imagined experience for the person's actual one. An interview, observation, or appropriate user-testing session may be necessary. Name what has been learned and what is still an assumption. A persuasive brief should not make an untested guess sound like a universal need.
Invite expertise before the idea is precious
The ThisAbles team's account places people with disabilities and product specialists inside the development process. It describes an in-store workshop and an invitation for further problems and ideas. Those details matter more to this reading than the project's awards. How the team describes development
For a creative team, the equivalent is involving relevant experience before the treatment is finished. Asking someone to bless an almost-complete concept gives them far less influence than asking what the concept has misunderstood at the start.
Be clear about the role and compensate people appropriately for the work requested. One participant cannot represent every disability, every customer, or every use context. A useful brief records the limits of the research alongside the insights. That makes the next question easier to ask instead of pretending the team has completed the subject.
Make the constraint productive
Constraints can give a story its form. A demonstration must show an action clearly. A service page must explain the next step without requiring a phone call. A tutorial must remain understandable at the point a beginner gets stuck. Such requirements narrow the field, which can make the creative choices more purposeful.
For a hypothetical furniture demonstration, the brief might ask the creator to show the original difficulty, the adaptation, and the resulting action in one understandable sequence. The participant's own explanation should guide what matters. Do not stage a struggle merely because it makes the transformation look more dramatic.
The same principle applies to other subjects. Show the real obstacle at an appropriate level of detail, and let the solution answer it. The before-and-after structure becomes more credible when the audience can recognize the relationship between the two states.
Let usefulness shape the story's ending
An appealing film is only one possible outcome. A reader may also need instructions, specifications, a contact route, or a way to learn whether the idea fits their situation. If the communication inspires action but withholds the information needed to act, the audience is left doing the hardest part alone.
The ThisAbles interview describes downloadable models for independent 3D printing. That was part of the project's intended access, according to its makers; this article has not tested those files or established current availability. The relevant creative question is what practical handoff belongs beside the story in the work being commissioned now.
Write that handoff into the brief. Identify the information a person needs after the emotional moment, who maintains it, and what to do when a question falls outside the material. Avoid promising that one small intervention solves an entire category of need.
The next time a brief asks for a more inclusive story, ask what someone should be able to do differently after encountering it. A specific answer gives the writer, designer, and participant something useful to make together. The aspiration can remain large. The first creative responsibility should be concrete enough to hold in a person's hand.
Sources and limitations
- Design Museum: Q&A with the IKEA ThisAbles project team: Checked October 15, 2026. First-person historical project account of origin, collaborators, development, and intended distribution. Not independent efficacy or current file availability evidence.