01: Case Study
This past week, I worked together with Jenni Lee to dive into three case studies of communications and products throughout history that champion and fail at inclusive design. Through this exercise, I was able to reflect on how my takeaways from these designs could inspire our semester long inclusive design project direction.
iOS Accessibility
The first example we looked into was iOS accessibility features. For many years now, Apple has been working on a spectrum of features to accommodate towards it’s diverse user base, including but not limited to guided access, type to Siri, VoiceOver, larger text, reduce motion, and larger text.
Given the ubiquitous use of technology, I believe studying these accessibility features was helpful in allowing me to think about how all kinds of users could be supported not only through their interactions with personal devices, but ones that live in communal spaces as well. In a hospital setting, the types of interfaces that users encounter are far and wide — patients interact with self check-in machines, patient schedule displays, receipt signing machines and customer experience survey kiosks. While some accessibility measures are in place, such as wheelchair accessible kiosk heights, I’ve encountered displays that use red and green colored cells, which are difficult for many color blind people to see, and noticed a lack of speech-to-text options when patients are asked to use the touchscreen to input check in information. Looking into ways to streamline digital touch points and make them more accessible could be an interesting project consideration.
2. UNO ColorADD
The second example of inclusive design that we looked into was UNO ColorAdd, a new version of UNO that uses graphic symbols and a corresponding index to help color blind players differentiate between and recognize colors.
When researching the communication design solution, I was surprised by how understated the solution was. Other than the addition of two guidance cards in the deck and small symbols in the corner of each playing card, the deck of cards was almost identical. I found it commendable that Mattel, UNO’s parent company, consulted ColorADD, a global organization for color blind accessibility and education, and integrated an established and widely used graphic system into their card deck for less of a learning curve. In the case of this project, I wonder what kinds of existing patterns libraries can be leveraged and applied to communications. If communications that must use color blind sensitive colors like red and green for symbolic reasons (e.g. red as a warning color), I wonder if similar icons could be applied.
3. Algorithmic Bias in Computer Vision
The final example we looked into was algorithmic bias in computer vision; specifically, the 2015 Google Photos incident where individuals with darker skin tones were labelled by the system as ‘gorillas’ as a result of their mainly white training image data set.
This case highlights how the lack of diversity in design teams and in training data can have deleterious effects. Computer vision’s uses and proposed uses in hospitals are comprehensive, but are mainly focused on helping medical staff detect abnormalities, medical imaging, measuring blood pressure etc. While training the data set to be more inclusive is not really in the scope of what we can do for this project, I had two main takeaways from looking into this case study.
Integration of Computer Vision in Patient Facing Interfaces
In a waiting room or examination room, patients can feel anxiety when waiting for results or nervous thinking about complicated or painful procedures. I wonder if computer vision based entertainment could be used to reduce anxiety in the waiting room experience. Perhaps computer vision could also be used to streamline processes at the hospital, such as as an identity check for self service kiosks or medication dispensaries.
Inclusive Representation
In a different vein, diverse and inclusive representation is important to include in communications. When design solutions ostracize populations like the Gorilla incident did, it comes off as insensitive, and makes entire populations feel neglected. Hospital visitors come from all walks of life, and oftentimes are thought of as minorities for the types of visible or invisible disabilities they have. Making sure their stories and experiences have visibility in the safe and inclusive hospital setting is important, be it through representation in communications such as posters, pamphlets or displays.
