Please watch modules 11-15 and comment with your responses to any of Nick’s ‘Write on the class blog’ prompts. Be sure to include your name in your comment.
Human Computer Interaction
Please watch modules 11-15 and comment with your responses to any of Nick’s ‘Write on the class blog’ prompts. Be sure to include your name in your comment.
Module 11: Encouraging UD –
I think there should be certain rules about UD like research ethics that are listed out. Because I think people should think about other people when they design something and I think, if there is a rule about it, designers are forced to do it the right way even though they don’t consider thinking about other people in the first place. This can further be enhanced by the marketing ideas of companies as that is a powerful source to get people’s attention. Marketing still will play a huge role but basic rules need to be laid out so that if there is no marketing backup, the basic idea of UD will still be in the design because of the rule.
Module 12: Shared UD interface – One shared UD I could think of is a Microsoft pro or the 2-1 laptops which can be used either as a computer or a tab whenever needed. Another shared UD is the idea of a autoclave which sterilizes things with high pressure and temperature. This concept is used in retort processing where food is treated with high temperature and pressure and it shelf-life increases to a year without the requirement of refrigeration.
Module 11:
What are your idea/thought on universal design? When/why would someone choose to not universally design a product or interface?
Within my own experience I know how hard it is to work within the confines of programs that are not universally designed. Users that have the capacity are able to use it without constraint, but unfortunately we have a limited pool of those particular users. One of the systems is actually so specific that the users it was designed for need to have coding background to be able to use the full functionality, and I can assure you that only 20 maybe 30% of the users have any coding experience.
I do have a hard time agreeing that there is any reason someone should choose not to universally design a system. I have four systems that prove it causes more issues then it is worth. Even when the program was meant specifically for nurses, the programming failed to encompass the intake workers that would have to support the nurses. Some form of cross design has to occur for the users to be able to use the system adequately.
That being said, I do believe there are times that not developing for certain demographics would be acceptable. In our new system we are not designing for young children or older adults (retirement and older). As these user would not be accessing this system. We also made the decision to only design for English users, though this one has been argued to have Spanish and French added. It all goes to how much more money we want to put into the design and what we want to put into the features.
Do you think accessibility should be legislated or market-driven?
This is a difficult question. The market will only drive this in the correct direction if people buy only the products that are more accessible. Unfortunately, the market may not always be large enough for some of the products that we need for some of the disabled. On the other side of this, legislating it may also take just as long if not longer. Without a strong advocate in a high seat in office, it can take a long time for any legislation to pass for something that could affect economy.
Module 12:
Can you think of any examples of shared purpose UD in interfaces or products you use?
Within my house I have five lights and two outlets that are automated. I also have two tvs that are voice activated. These devices were initially created for ease of use, with the ability for me to program them to turn on at certain time in the day or even to turn on when my phone connects to the home wifi. The outlet in my room turns on my heater or air conditioner depending on the season right before bed so I have a comfy room to sleep in.
The best part about these devices is that they are all voice activated. With confirmation from Google or Alex when the task is complete. Thus these devices provide a great strive forward for those with disabilities. My house has no switches in the lower section. All the lights require you to be at least 5 feet tall to turn on, this included the bathroom. To make my house accessible for the child that was here on occasion, these lights came in handy. You can also buy them with remote control switches that don’t require any wiring.
The only down side to these devices is that they require wifi to work. If the internet goes down then you will need to use the manual switch. Which to me is not horrible. At least the device is not completely out of commission, just back to being a normal light. Oh, and if you loss power, all of them default to on. So that can be annoying at 2am when you have to be up at 5am for work.
Module 11
What are your ideas/thoughts on universal design? When/why would someone choose not to universally design a product or interface?
I think universal design and when to apply it or not apply it is heavily influenced by the product. Take, for example, a vehicle. Most vehicles employ a standard interface, with the majority of differentiation being in accessory controls. This interface does work for most people, as most people are able to see, and have control of all their limbs. So a paraplegic person could not drive a normal vehicle, as operation of the pedals require use of the legs, requiring a special modification of the interface to accommodate them. One could say that the interface of a vehicle could be made more universal by not requiring feet at all, and making all controls hand accessible. This would have problems for people who have the opposite problem, if they were missing fingers, hands or just had poor dexterity for some reason.
My point is that sometimes rather than having a universal design, it makes more sense to make a good interface that works for most people, and have specialized interfaces for those who require it. There are also reasons why it might not even make sense for something to be universally designed. Most vehicles have their buttons labeled with text. This means they must have different buttons for each language in which they wish to distribute their vehicle, so why don’t they design these to be pictorial, removing the need for different buttons? Likely because it makes more sense to not do that. It costs the same to make the same button with different labels, and there are many other localization differences between models of vehicle, some required by law, others done to better appeal to that population. It is more economical to make many variations of a vehicle than it is to make one that works for all.
Do you think accessibility should be legislated or marken driven?
I think accessibility should be largely market driven. I think it makes very little sense to force product manufacturers to develop a product for an audience other than the one they intend to target. If ~10% of the population is vision impaired and growing, then manufacturers will either cater to that accessibility need, or suffer the market consequences: no need for regulation to get involved. This also enables companies who specialize in accessibility needs to better capitalize on these populations, which would hopefully create competition to create better solutions.
Other thoughts:
Proprietary ports are not always bad. Apple’s Lightning port is widely used (for a fee) by third parties for all sorts of accessories. Just because something is proprietary does not make it a restriction on universal design. The real problem is when those proprietary solutions are locked down and unavailable to or prohibitively expensive for third parties to utilize.
Other other thoughts:
Language localization is an obvious starting point when making a computer interface more universal, but even this is a hugely complex problem. It is extremely alien for native English speakers to deal with asian languages since the fundamental rules they follow are different. Ask me about it.
Module 12
Can you think of any examples of shared purpose UD in interfaces or products you use?
A lightswitch. They are easy to use by almost anyone, and have the dual function of actually switching the thing they are connected to, while also showing you what state that thing might be in. This is in contrast to a button, which might also be easy to use, but gives no information about whether the button is active.
11.a. The main thing that comes to mind is when there is some outside limiting factor that automatically prevents certain user groups from accessing or benefitting from your interface or product. An example might be that you will probably not need to make accommodations for the visually impaired to drive a motorcycle, nor would you make beer bottles easier for kids to open. Alternatively, maybe you are designing specifically for a specialized task or specialized user group, in a proprietary or confidential setting, or where otherwise limiting use by unintended users is one of the design goals.
11.b. I think there should probably continue to be a bare minimum of mandates, such as what the ADA has accomplished, and these requirements should continue to improve with additional research. But in a more general way, I think we will have to rely on market-driven improvements. If everything is mandated, you will see lots of money and time spent to lobby and sue for exceptions, and lots of money and time to implement workarounds, and lots of money and time to do half-assed accommodations because they are compulsory – but very little money or time spent on enforcement. However, market-driven changes are where you will see innovative solutions and motivated designers and a focus on the things that have the highest demand first. So, it’s not that nothing should be legislated, but I think you will not get breakthrough results through legislation.
12. ATMs or ticket vending machines – usually have multiple languages available, touch screen and physical buttons with braille, voice feedback, lights and beeping prompts.
Mike Cressey
What your ideas/thoughts on Universal Design? When would someone choose to not universally design a product or interface?
I think it is very useful to have a framework and guidelines from which to follow when designing user interfaces. It’s a noble goal to design a product for the broadest groups of users, especially when we have seen that the unintended benefits from UD are sometime significant? The principles of UD, e.g., simplicity, customization, adaptability, etc., make sound sense and hopefully produce the best product in the end. Someone might choose not to use UD if the cost was prohibitive or if they only needed to design it for a very specific group of people, e.g., nuclear physicists?
Do you think accessibility should be legislated or market-driven (what is the best way to encourage UD)?
In a perfect world, everything including accessibility, should be market-driven but we don’t live in a ideal world. So I believe accessibility for people with disabilities needs to be legislated, at least for products purchased for use by the government, federal or state. This is the only way to assure that special needs are considered and met. Product developers should advertise that their products are designed for all types of people and hopefully that will boost sales.
Can you think of any examples of shared purpose UD in interfaces or products that you use?
I mention the use of more and better audio in the example of the ADT security system that I discuss in Task #2. The system uses some audio quite effectively but it needs much more for both users who can see and ones who can’t.
Not sure is this is an example or not, because there’s a thing in web development called “responsiveness”. The idea is that you can build a wet site that will work for a full-screen or one that works on smaller devices such as cell phones.
What are your ideas/thoughts on Universal Design?
I think that the principles of UD are solid and the advice that lies behind them strong. As an Instructional Designer by trade I find that using UD as I am working on a project do indeed save time at the conclusion of the project. What I find the most challenging and at times frustrating was attempting to think of every possible short-coming, stumbling block, broken link, or interaction that has to take place during the training. This is however, a necessary step in order to complete designs that are robust and so well formatted that when they are rolled out they are practically error-free. Even with saying all that I freely admit to not being the most adherent to this premise when devising training. I strive to follow the principles of UD however, I find that sometimes I just take the quick (lazy) way out and work to complete the project in the shortest span of time and then work on the corrections after.
Module 11:
What are your idea/thought on universal design? When/why would someone choose to not universally design a product or interface?
I think universal design is very good at the basic level and should be implemented in every UI design. An example being touchscreen interfaces on radios in a car, such as controlling volume with a icon rather than physical knob. Generally, vision impaired people will not be driving, but it is still very important for a driver to be able to manipulate the radio in a simplistic way without removing their eyes from the road. This has the added benefit of a vision impaired passenger still being able to manipulate the radio. So with this simple implementation of universal design the radio becomes much more accessible to a larger set of people.
Universal design can have drawbacks in the sense of additional design time, and can limit cosmetic device design and usability for a targeted group. For example, many of Apple’s design decisions are very anti Universal Design. Choices such as removing the headphone jack, releasing a new Mac that has only USB-C, and releasing OS’s that are hard to load custom software on. These design decisions can have huge benefits for certain sets of users, but can limit a much larger set. The fact that Apple is generally praised for UI and device design shows that these benefits can outweigh the benefits of better universal design in some cases.
It seems that the general choice for limiting universal design would be when the implementation of universal design limits the enjoyment of the product by the targeted group significantly without providing a benefit to significantly more users.
Do you think accessibility should be legislated or market-driven?
I think that due to economics, accessibility needs to be largely legislated. If something is simple and effects a large group of people, then we could likely see it implemented with no legislation because the economic benefit of opening the product up to more users outweighs the cost of implementation. There are many things humans face that require accessibility concessions that are not economically beneficial that businesses would not choose to do. For example, if a restaurant has a very small percentage of customers that were wheelchair bound, they may forego the costs of putting in expensive ramp system.
Luckily, technology is helping make many accessibility options much cheaper, such as voice activated home devices, or Youtube’s auto captioning. This will hopefully cause less legislation to be needed in the future.
Module 12
Can you think of any examples of shared purpose UD in interfaces or products you use?
Captioning on Youtube or movies was not developed for my needs, but is extremely helpful. I find it difficult to process what characters are saying, especially when they have accents. Captioning greatly helps my understanding.
There are also many more subtle implementations that we run into every day. For example, if houses were designed for the generic user or the very specific user. For generic, every doorway and ceiling would be high and wide enough to accommodate the tallest and widest people on Earth, making them generically way over sized. If they were designed very specifically, they would be as tall and wide as the family that lived there, and wouldn’t accommodate for guests. Universal design instead has them at reasonable heights, and with generally reasonable accommodations such as being wide enough for the average wheelchair.