inclusive design

Perspectives

“Every project is an opportunity to advocate for spatial justice and equitable design” – a conversation with Paola Aguirre Serrano

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Paola Aguirre Serrano Q&A graphic
We can't wait to welcome Paola Aguirre Serrano, EPIC2023 keynote speaker, and hear her talk "Designing With: Collaboration Frameworks for Spatial Justice & Equitable Design." To get ready to engage with this crucial topic, we talked with Paola about the challenges and rewards of multidisciplinary work, ethnographic perspectives and practices that have been important to her, how she thinks about friction, and what she's most looking forward to at EPIC2023. You’re the founder of Borderless Studio, an urban design and research studio focused on approaches and collaboration frameworks addressing spatial justice and equitable design while cultivating collaborative design agency. What do borders and the concept of “borderless” mean to you? Borderless for me is a practice of resistance against fragmentation, silos and compartmentalized perspectives. Borderless is an invitation to collaborate, grounded in values of openness, civicness and publicness – and to use design as a tool to practice generosity, empathy and service...

Perspectives

Making Tech More Accessible: An Ethnographic Lens on Ability and Disability

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Mural on a street in Croydon, London in blue, light brown, black and cyan colors. A busy image with many different figures that are both humanoid and rectangular/robotic. A central image has three large eyes arranged vertically.
"An ethnographic lens influences us to define ability and disability in a way that is maximally inclusive...many different abilities are present in our world, and each deserves to be taken as its own reality and respected as such." —RICHARD BECKWITH (Research Psychologist, Intelligent Systems Research Lab) & SUSAN FAULKNER, (Research Director, Research and Experience Definition), Intel Corporation EPIC Members Richard Beckwith and Susan Faulkner (Intel) have assembled a panel of luminaries in accessible tech research, design, and engineering for our January 26 event, Seeing Ability: Research and Development for Making Tech More Accessible. In anticipation, we asked them a few questions about their approach to accessibility and key first steps all of us can take to do more inclusive work. How do you define ability and accessibility? How does an ethnographic lens influence your definitions? Ability has to do with what an individual is capable of perceiving or physically doing with their body; accessibility has to do with...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Research for Accessible and Inclusive Design

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Tutorial: Research for Accessible and Inclusive Design
Learn tools and strategies for integrating people with disabilities into your research and driving inclusive design. Instructors: GREGORY WEINSTEIN, Senior Accessibility Designer, CVS & ERICA MCCOY, Senior Accessibility Designer, CVS [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Become an EPIC Member to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Overview This video has been edited to protect the privacy of participants in the live tutorial. Including people with disabilities in user research is fundamentally the right thing to do, because their experiences matter just as much as those of the non-disabled users that are typically represented in research. In addition, including people with disabilities in research makes good business sense, because it leads to products that are more inclusive and generally more accessible, usable, and delightful...

Intelligences

The Next Billion Creatives

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Presentation slide: three photos of people doing flips. Three clips of overlain text: "Aspirational influencers". "Indian flippers." "Best tiktok flips."
Keynote Speaker: PAYAL ARORA, Erasmus University Rotterdam & FemLab [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] To access this video: JOIN EPIC or LOG IN [/s2If] Payal Arora is a digital anthropologist, a TEDx speaker, and an author of award-winning books, including ‘The Next Billion Users’ with Harvard Press. Her expertise lies in user experience in the global south, digital inequality, and inclusive design. Forbes named her the “next billion champion” and the “right kind of person to reform tech.” She is a Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Co-Founder of FemLab, a future of work initiative. Payal’s work explores key issues in designing for, with, and in the Global South. Design has long been dictated by the aesthetic taste, values, needs, concerns, and aspirations of consumers in the West—but the “next billion users” are pioneering creative ways to repurpose design in ways that we are currently failing to capture. Does...

Intelligences

Designing and Conducting Inclusive Research: How a Global Technology Company and an Online Research Platform Partnered to Explore the Technology Experiences of Users who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing

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Presentation slide projected on stage: title, "Benefits of Remote Technology". text: "My phone I use for basically everything. I use it to have..." On the right is a photo of what appears to be a desk with a computer monitor (unclear)
DANA C. GIERDOWSKI Lenovo KAREN EISENHAUER dscout PEGGY HE Lenovo [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] This case study examines how researchers at Lenovo and dscout partnered to conduct a mobile ethnographic study on the technology experiences of individuals who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing, with the goal of making their products and research practices more accessible and inclusive. The study revealed common frustrations and pain points people experience when using their every-day technology. The researchers also learned valuable research design and operations lessons related to recruiting participants who are d/Deaf and hard of hearing, providing accommodations, and establishing an accessible research environment. This case explores the benefits of mobile-forward research design, and the additional considerations and adaptations necessary for collecting both asynchronous and synchronous data from individuals who have hearing loss and who have different...

Intelligences

Tutorial: Research for Accessible and Inclusive Design

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Research for Accessible and Inclusive Design
Instructors: GREGORY WEINSTEIN (Senior Accessibility Designer, CVS) & ERICA MCCOY (Senior Accessibility Designer, CVS) Gain tools and strategies for integrating people with disabilities into your research and driving inclusive design. [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Please sign in or become an EPIC Member to access video. [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Become an EPIC Member to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Overview This tutorial was conducted at EPIC2021. Exercises and discussions have been omitted to protect the privacy of participants. Including people with disabilities in user research is fundamentally the right thing to do, because their experiences matter just as much as those of the non-disabled users that are typically represented in research. In addition, including people with disabilities in research makes good business sense, because it leads to products that are more inclusive and generally...

Intelligences

Hearing Through Their Ears: Developing Inclusive Research Methods to Co-Create with Blind Participants

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GREGORY WEINSTEIN [s2If is_user_logged_in()] DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] This paper recounts research into the orientation and mobility experiences of people who are blind or visually impaired, and describes the novel sonic research method I developed for this purpose. “Participant Phonography,” as I call the method, aims to empower research participants with low or no vision through the self-guided creation of sound recordings that represent their experiences of the world in a first-person perspective. More broadly, the paper highlights the inadequate efforts of ethnographers in industry to tackle challenges of disability and reflects on the ethical challenges that face researchers who want to include disabled people in research. Inclusive methods like participant phonography have great potential to break down traditional power structures that have rendered non-normative groups marginal in user research, but these methods also come with substantial barriers to their implementation...

Intelligences

Shared Ethnography of Shared Cities

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ROBERT POTTS HighWire Centre for Doctorial Training, Lancaster University DHRUV SHARMA HighWire Centre for Doctorial Training, Lancaster University JOSEPH LINDLEY HighWire Centre for Doctorial Training, Lancaster University [s2If is_user_logged_in()]Download PDF[/s2If][s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] This paper aims to foreground issues for design ethnographers working in urban contexts within the smart-city discourse. It highlights ethnography's role in a shared urban future by exploring how ethnographers might pave the way for envisioning digital infrastructure at the core of Smart City programs. This paper begins by asking whether urban development practitioners can design for inclusive interaction with Smart Urban Infrastructure. The research suggests how ethnographers can work with ‘cities’ to rapidly develop diagnostic tools and capture insights that inform design processes with both utility and inclusive interaction as their key values. This involves rethinking how we consider places where space...