The UX of Not Belonging: Designing for the Margins, the Gaps, and the Ghosts
If someone feels invisible in your product, it’s not their fault. It’s your roadmap’s.
Designing great user experiences isn’t just about serving the average user. True UX leadership is about acknowledging who gets overlooked, left out, or actively excluded.
Think about the marginalized users, the edge cases, or the "ghosts" of your product. The people who don’t fit neatly into personas. The ones whose use cases fall between the cracks.
Why does this matter?
Because when you design for the margins and the gaps, you create products that are more inclusive, resilient, and innovative.
✅ Inclusive UX drives business outcomes. Inclusion = growth, not just accessibility checkboxes.
✅ Designing for edge cases mitigates risks. Ignored use cases often become sources of friction, failure, or lost opportunity.
✅ Products built with accessibility strategy and digital equity in mind perform better—for everyone.
When we design for those who "don’t belong," we create something extraordinary.
How do you approach serving the people on your product’s edges? What’s been your experience designing for resilience and innovation through inclusion?
Drop your thoughts below—I’d love to hear about your strategies and successes. And if this sparks something, I’m always open to connecting with leaders who see inclusion as a product advantage.
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