Designing for difference: Are you failing at the most important desig…

, Civic design | UX Research | Storytelling | Accessibility

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Ask:
- Do usability testing or other research?
- Think about your last event – who did you work with?

Let’s think about how diverse that was.
Shout outs

Let’s explore this and think about the kinds of differences that they honor.

Which ones get a mention?
Are they phrased as personal characteristics or behavioral characteristics
Which can we design for

A few years ago, I wrote a book called A Web for Everyone with Sarah Horton. We wanted to look at accessibility from the perspective of designers.
We organized the book around a series of principles building from structure to presentation. We’ll take a look at some of the details later, but I want to start at the beginning. Because we realized that the most important thing is that we start from people.

We also realized that we had to think about the full range of people.
That meant not naming people by their disability, but thinking about their attitudes, and behaviors, not just ability
We could have written the obligatory chapter about the physical and cognitive dimensions of disability, but we wanted to put a human face on it.
So we created these personas. They are online and available to everyone at the Rosenfeld Media web site.

To start, let’s think about how many types of difference they represent?

Ask: what are you seeing?
Ask: what are you not seeing?

These personas they are just a starting point, not . The goal isn’t for you to take these personas and drop them into your own persona set. They are an invitation for you to use them to launch your own investigations. To find the Trevors and Leas and Vishnus who are in your audience and get to know them

In the past 10 years, my research practice has migrated out of the lab and the business office and out to farmer’s markets and libraries, and shopping centers, and well. Street corners. And workshop rooms.
That came about because of the work we do at CCD. We were looking for everyday people. People who are not deeply engaged, who don’t show up at focus groups, who might not speak English well, and almost certainly would fail the screener filter for being articulate.
I am NOT saying you have to do your UX research the same way.
But you do have to think – hard – about how the way you engage your audience might be blinding you to differences in perspective and needs and behaviors.

For those of you who do formal recruiting, I want to encourage you to think about communities and how you reach out to many of them. In a study in California, we managed differences by where we went

The last principle in A Web for Everyone tries to bring it all together. I’ve fought hard for the word “delight” – and it is usually an argument that delight is a soft, emotional word.

So let me give you an example.
Do you have a favorite seat on an airplane? I do. It’s seat 21C or 21D on almost any United flight, with 21 A or F as a backup. So I always want to pick my seat.
These days, being able to pick a seat isn’t such a big deal… When a friend called – just a little surprised.
Until I remember that she uses the web through a screen reader.

People want feel as if they are being paid attention to and that their needs were anticipated.

Bad expectations met – the black hole we are in today
High expectations met – the goal – what we hope not to notice one day
High expectations dashed – the danger – anti-patterns and bad design
Low expectations exceeded – the moments of delight

Accessibility flips this – too often, looking for Not A Bad One
Living in that bad lower left corner of poor expectations met.

This is about how we change this!

And because too often we have things that are Accessible? Usable? Universal?

Structure isn’t just hidden things, though much of the structure of an experience is hidden.
Shape, material, relationships, color, and craftsmanship are both structure and design
Have to start with goal of delightful experience.

Android touch dialer app

“ And I'm a good servant; I'm better than good, I'm the best; I'm the perfect servant. I know when they'll be hungry, and the food is ready. I know when they'll be tired, and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves.”

“ And you know, the fact is, nobody knew that they were prosthetic legs. They were the star of the show—these wooden boots peeking out from under this raffia dress—but in fact, they were actually legs made for me.”

Designing for difference: Are you failing at the most important design challenge

Whitney Quesenbery

Designing for difference: Are you failing at the most important design challenge