Designing for neurodivergent users and users with disabilities is good for all users
Importance of recruiting neurodivergent testers and users with disabilities for Universal Design
When we design something for people who have the most difficulty using a product due to disability or neurodivergence, then people without any disability or neurodivergence will also find it easier to use.
I have a son on autism spectrum. He is 19 years old. I get to observe and shadow him in using various products, websites and apps in daily life. As a user research subject, he is ideal precisely because his problem solving and inference skills are not well-developed, his reading level is that of a second grader, he takes everything literally, and he has very limited working memory and attention span. He also has fine-motor issues and cannot tie a shoelace or button anything. Putting on socks and shirts in the right direction is a struggle. Scissors are a struggle. Writing is a struggle. Abstract and arbitrary concepts like analog clocks and currency confuse him.
So when my son and I go out into the world, we encounter usability issues everywhere. Even things like slightly hard-to-open doors can make him get stuck.
Just the other day, an Uber we got was a Tesla and my son just stood in front of the door with a big question mark above his head. The handle on this Tesla was flush and embedded into the door. There is no affordance or signifier implying or communicating that you have to push it in, then pull out the handle that sticks out on one side.
After a while, I told him to push it in, which was my learned behavior from prior rides when drivers had to prompt me. Then he just kept clawing and scratching at the handle, still wanting to pull, not knowing where to push. Multiple verbal cues utterly failed at this point, so I had to demonstrate it to him.
No car doors ever open inwards, so it’s intuitively habitual, that any car handle needs to be either pulled or slid, never pushed. The handle ignores this natural, intuitive urge. We are accustomed to using our index, middle and ring fingers to pull out the door handle, so putting a thumb on it first to push, is a new behavior that needs to be learned.
Sure, it looks streamlined, but it is unusable unless someone or something prompts you to push it in first. It’s not even clear which side of the handle to push. Is it on the wider side or the narrower side? I can never remember because I intuit that I have to push the narrow side to pop up the wider, ‘grabby’ part, but that’s not the correct answer. It also seems that you can only open it with the left hand, on the left side, and the right hand on the right side, so it’s not suited for usage with either hands, and depending on which side you get on, you have to use the non-dominant hand. Two near-simultaneous steps (push in with thumb, while pulling out with other fingers) need to happen one after another, which may be challenging for people with low motor skills, sequencing issues, left-right confusion, missing digits, and/or weak grip.
These handles are so horribly designed on all levels, it frustrates me every time I encounter it. It is a great example of a “Norman Door”, a door design that confuses people due to various usability blunders, made famous by the book “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman.
On the other hand, Oxo, a line of popular kitchen utensils with chunky handles, is a textbook example of design that was specifically made for a disability, that became widely accepted by the general population. I heard this story directly from the founders of Smart Design, the firm that designs Oxo products, when we were working with them at Panasonic. Long story short, the can openers in the olden days had these skinny metallic handles, that were very difficult to use by the wife of one of the founders who had arthritis. So they made the handles much thicker and easier to grasp, with ridges and rubbery material. It became a huge hit in general, not just for people with arthritis.
At Panasonic Design Company, where I used to work, Universal Design was a big part of the appliance design process. We specifically recruited people with disabilities to test out the appliances like vacuums and washing machines, and many revolutionary ideas came out of these testing sessions. Read more about it on Panasonic’s Universal Design site.
I wish I could show the industrial designer who designed the Tesla handle, during the user testing phase, how my son could not get it at all and how frustrating it was for him. Then, perhaps, the handle design would have come out a little easier for the rest of humanity. I can also imagine a more ergonomic design proposal getting shot down by Elon because the current design ‘looked cooler’ or more ‘aerodynamic’— A whole another article has to be written on the “Dangers of Design by CEO”…
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Footnote: I’ve heard from various sources that making the design as aerodynamic as possible was the reason why the handle is flat, but I think it’s a crappy excuse. You can still make it a little easier without sacrificing the aerodynamic, low-drag design of the handle, by just adding signifiers like this sticker that someone went out of the way to make and sell.
In addition, the spring-back action of the handle can be much slower, so that the handle remains out long after you stop pushing. Obviously, it will have to automatically return to the original position by the time the door closes, but it should remain long enough after you let go of the thumb or whatever you used to push out the handle, so that the handle can then be pulled in a separate action.
