Design for Dog First

So you just designed an interface for your product or client. You send it to production. You validate the experience as good as you can along the way.

But let’s back up a bit, did you also design the experience for users who are colour blind?

Often this is answer is simply: No.

That’s why we want to introduce you to what we call Design for Dog First. We could have called it Design for visually impaired people first, but that wouldn’t catch your attention as good, would it?

So, whats up with dogs?

Dogs have a different vision than most of us humans do. Say for example, that green button you have that must be the perfect CTA? Yes, could be. But keep in mind that both dogs and certain colour-blind people can perceive this as a yellow button.

Where to start

There is a lot of different things you can do to get started designing for color-blind people.

But the first thing you can do, is acknowledge the elephant in the room. That this issue actually exist.

The second thing you can do, is keep reminding yourself that contrast is a good thing. Not only for a user who are colour blind, but one can have a crappy computer screen or using a mobile phone in complete sunlight.

The third thing you can do is to once in a while use the great tools at your disposal. If you’re using Photoshop for example, in View > Proof Setup you can simulate certain types of colour blindness.

Whats next?

There’s a lot of more things you can do. If you know someone suffering from colour blindness, let them try out your design and do user testing with them. In that way, you better get an understanding of something you might not see for yourself.

And when you feel you’ve mastered designing for dogs first, then imagine how your product would work for blind people.

But more on that, in a story later on…