Case Studies

Margot Gersing, Jaclyn Saik, Sophia Fan

Accessible Solutions

Be My Eyes
Communications + Product + Service

Design Solution: An app that connects visually impaired users to sighted volunteers who help assist with everyday tasks through video calls.

Who: Hans Jørgen Wiberg

When: App launched in 2015

Context: App launched in 2015 but was started in 2012 by Hans Jørgen Wiberg, a visually impaired Danish furniture craftsman. From his own experience and his work with The Danish Association of the Blind, he recognized that blind or visually impaired people often need assistance with everyday tasks. Wiberg was inspired by a friend who was blind and used video calls to family members when he needed assistance. The app is targeted to blind or visually impaird people who live independently or do not want to have to always rely on friends and family for help.

How it works: A blind or visually impaired person will request help when they are in need of assistance. The app will then connect them through video call with one of the sighted volunteers that is available. A visually impaired user may need help with anything from checking expiry dates, distinguishing colors, reading instructions or navigating new surroundings. You can sign up to be a sighted volunteer and just answer video calls to help the visually impaired user. It is like you are lending your eyes to someone who needs them. In February 2018, the feature Specialized Help launched with Microsoft as the first partner company. Specialized Help enables blind and low-vision users to connect with official company representatives for accessible and efficient customer support.

Stakeholders: Microsoft, Google, Clearblue, P & G, Pantene, Herbal Essence, The Danish Association of the Blind, National Federation of the Blind, European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, Zendesk (customer support company), TravelEyes (inclusive travel app), Moovit (transit app), Latinlinguga (translation company)

Impact: Currently has 4,183,316 volunteers, 244,954 low vision or blind users, 150+ countries, 180+ Languages. Within 24 hours of launch the app had more than 10,000 users. In December 2017 Be My Eyes was chosen as Google Play Best Apps of 2017 in the categories; “Most Innovative”, “Best Daily Helper” and “Best Hidden Gem”, and in May 2018 the Google Play Award 2018 for “Best Accessibility Award”.

“Be My Eyes just has been a life changer for me. I don’t have to rely on my mom. For the longest time, I was frustrated about having to do that all the time and now I don’t have to.” Stephen, visually impaired user

Website: bemyeyes.com

IDEO Voting Booth
Communications + Product + Service

Design Solution: an inclusive voting experience with digital and physical touchpoints, designed for LA County

Context: Designed by IDEO in close collaboration with LA County and its disabled communities, the project has been in progress since 2015, and will be implemented in time for 2020’s election cycle. The county first approached IDEO to create a publicly-owned system, and one that would be more inclusive of its residents. Lead designer Matt Adams highlighted the three principles driving the design and research team — empathy and increased access for the disabled, scalability of a modular system, and constant prototyping and feedback cycles with the communities at the core of the project.

How it works: The voting booth itself is designed to accommodate users with various disabilities and their aids, including wheelchair users, deaf users, and the visually impaired. The process is digital and navigable by touchscreen, with additional assistance for those who are unfamiliar with technology or unable to interface with it in a traditional way. The ballot is available in all 11 languages supported by the county. Beyond the booth, the team at IDEO designed new elements to the service that increase convenience, expanding enfranchisement. Users can pre-mark their votes on their mobile devices before transferring them to a physical paper ballot at the polling station of their choice, streamlining the process.

Stakeholders: Primary collaborators include the IDEO design and research team, the county of LA and its staff, and the consulting groups Digital Foundry and Cambridge Consultants. They worked closely with and for secondary stakeholders within the community such as visually impaired residents and other disabled groups, with an eye towards eventually expanding the modular system into other jurisdictions.

Impact: While the project is reaching completion, metrics to judge it by will focus mainly on voting numbers for LA County this year, as well as user feedback on service success. If successful in LA county, the modular design can be adopted by other counties throughout the country, democratizing the voting process as a more inclusive one.

Lyft Colorbox.io
Communications + Product + Service

Design solution: Open-source mapping tool for creating accessible color systems at scale.

Who: Lyft Design Team

When: Spring 2018

Context: Colorbox.io is an opensource tool created by the Lyft design team. It was developed as an extension of the algorithm the team developed in order to establish a color system that met WPAC 2.0 standards for contrast at every step. This was part of an overarching redesign of the brand’s design system that placed accessibility as a cornerstone for cross-platform interactions.

How it works: The tool is built around an algorithm that map color based on two variables: hue, which is the space on the color wheel, and the modifier, which is the degree of lightness or darkness in the color. The tool takes input in the form of steps, which are the number of colors between two colors, as well as input into which two colors it will map between. Using hue and modifiers as the naming device (“red-10,” etc.) the tool automatically maps a sequence of colors that always have WPAC 2.0 standardized contrast. Additionally, every color 0–50 is accessible (4:5:1) on black, adn every color 60–100 is accessible (4:5:1) on white.

Stakeholders: The immediate stakeholders are the designers who are building and implementing an updated color system system-wide. Additionally, this tool is integral to cross-platform teams, as engineers and PMs can gain a transparent understanding of the color system. One issue that this algorithm sought to combat was the lack of standardization and accessibility practices that often occurred when the Lyft app grew to multiple devices/use cases, so an incremental approach to adding colors supports accessibility at any scale. Extending beyond this, users with disabilities are positively impacted by this change, especially since the first immediate change with this new color system was the adjustment of the iconic lyft pink to a more accessible purple shade.

Impact: As mentioned with the stakeholders, an immediate impact was the improvement of the color contrast within the entire application, especially the adjustment from pink to purple for action buttons. Lyft wanted to make sure they distinguished themselves from other rideshare apps (okay, Uber) and keep their iconic bubblegum color scheme, but make their user experience more accessible to visually impaired users. This algorithm also allowed for the design team to implement a universal naming system, which helped eliminate colors from the system that weren’t WPAC 2.0 compliant.
Looking beyond the internal company, Lyft’s decision to publish this as an open-source online tool generated a decent buzz in the interaction and web design world. A number of publications pointed out the prevalence of a tool that’s free and promoted designing for accessibility, a characteristic that isn’t generally exciting to report on. Colorbox.io set an example for creating tools that support scalable accessibility in UI design.

Website: https://www.colorbox.io/

Not Accessible

Us Treasury
Communications + Product

Design Solution: A rectangular bill that is deemed legal tender by the federal government of the United States, issued with multiple redesigns throughout history. The US currency system uses bills uniform in texture, size, and numerical design.

Who: US Treasury

When: Multiple redesigns throughout history, with the most recent in 2013

Context + History: Paper money in the U.S. dates back to the 1690s originally as bills of credit or IOU’s. In 1690 the colony of Massachusetts was the first to print paper money. The other colonies followed in Massachusetts’s footsteps. These “bills of credit” caused tensions between the colonies and Great Britain, which eventually led to the Currency Act of 1751 and 1764 which ended the “I.O.Us” as legal tender. In 1775 the Continental Congress issued the first colonial currency, known as Continentals. Our current bills still have similarities to this design. New currencies were introduced in the U.S. in 1861 to help finance the Civil War. The Union created “greenbacks” in response to the Confederacy’s “greybacks”. At this point in history with the collapse of the Continental Currency 1792 and then Civil War only private companies like banks could print money. Then in 1913, the Federal Reserve Act created the surviving modern form of currency. This law gave the Federal Government the authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes, commonly known as U.S. dollars, as legal tender. Since then the U.S. dollars have been redesigned several times with the most recent redesign in 2013.

How it works: The paper bills issued by the US exclude blind and visually impaired users because of their textural, shape, and design similarities. As a result, using them can be an incredibly challenging and vulnerable experience for those users, who often lack a sense of security in their transactions.

In another example of their lack of inclusivity, the people represented on the bills don’t reflect the diversity of America, its history, or the people who have contributed to it. Under Obama, the Treasury was set to design and issue a $10 bill with a woman by 2020, but the change has yet to materialize.

Impact: In 2008, the US Treasury was ruled to “discriminate against blind and visually impaired people” by a federal appeals court. In the time since, they have had to distribute currency readers to individuals at significant cost. The Federal Government now is required to pay for assistive technology, like iBill, that helps visually impaired people identify bills.

Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency,” Judge Robertson wrote in his decision a year and a half ago, “only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations.” — nytimes

Design Solution:

Who: Kodak

When: Mid-1950’s to today

Context + History:

For many years, this “Shirley” card — named for the original model, who was an employee of Kodak — was used by photo labs to calibrate skin tones, shadows and light during the printing process.

Shirley cards go back to the mid-1950s, a time when Kodak sold almost all of the color film used in the U.S. After a customer used the film, he or she would bring the roll to a Kodak store to be printed. In 1954, the federal government stepped in to break up Kodak’s monopoly.

How it works:

Lab technicians used to develop film by hand, and they would use the image of a white woman with brown hair named Shirley as a standard for which they calibrated the colors. This was a quality control technique that essentially calibrated all photos of humans against the test of whether or not Shirley looked good.

“She was the standard,” Garcia says, “so whenever we printed anything, we had to pull Shirley in. If Shirley looked good, everything else was OK. If Shirley didn’t look so hot that day, we had to tweak something — something was wrong.” — nytimes

Impact:

Because of the monopoly Kodak had over the photo printing business in the early 1900s, almost any possible way to take a photo was inherently calibrated to suite white subjects over people of color. When Kodak (and competing companies, such as Fujifilm) started to expand their techniques to accommodate darker skin tones, it was largely due to pressure from furniture and chocolate companies who complained that their shots for ad campaigns weren’t showing up.

Even today, there is an inherent bias built into digital imaging and photography, leftover from the precedent Kodak set. Recently there has been a huge issue with facial recognition technologies struggling to recognize or decipher darker skin tone.

Reflection

Ideas to Carry into Our Project

• Crowdsourcing
• Using simple technology, like be my eyes, instead of flashy tech, like AI
• Help visually impaired people be independent (to the degree they want to)
• Independence in general! ❤
• Something that can exist outside of Mercy Hospital
• Significance of creating a solution that can expand and change in different times/settings or for different users (ex. Modular system for voting booths)
• Inclusive design doesn’t have to be rooted in ‘innovative’ solutions; emphasis should be on understanding user groups and truly representing their needs