Why You Choose a Product/App Over Another
What differentiates the application you use the most from the one you use the least?
The usability or the ease of use of that particular application plays a huge role in this answer. Getting a design to that stage is a long and iterative process.
I have much to see and much more to learn, but here are a few snippets of what I have learned from working on this project.
Design is simple logical solutions backed by research and contextual understanding.
Design without research is not design, but plain imagination. Conducting extensive research and delving into the context in question are essential to rightly identifying the need gap. Once the need gap is identified, a large chunk of the research can be narrowed down. Focus can then be directed at the solution itself. Most importantly, we need to be open to letting the design in question take its course.
APIO is an app-product integrated system I designed that consists of a mobile application and a braille device, essentially, A Twitter for the Visually Challenged.
We took a look at the problem at hand, i.e., looking at how technological and systemic interventions might improve education for persons with disabilities. Mr. Subaraju, a visually impaired Veena player, spoke of how he could not use Facebook or any social media platform without the assistance of his wife. Having looked at the existing braille devices, we realized that we were looking at the wrong problem. It took extensive research and multiple interviews with people who were familiar with this context to understand that the issue at hand was with regards to accessibility and not education itself. Hence the idea of a braille device with an app that would create a Twitter for the visually impaired emerged.
Without consideration for the system that it must exist in, no design can succeed.
Every design needs to exist in a system, be it a bottle of water or the machinery that produces the bottle that contains the water. It is essential to consider every aspect and every touchpoint in the lifecycle of that bottle. Careful thought must go into every stage of this lifecycle. Right from the materials that need to be sourced, to the factory that the bottles need to be manufactured in, to the ease of shipping, all the way up to what happens to the used bottle once it has served its intended purpose. Where does it go? Is it reused? Is it recycled? If these questions cannot be answered, the world is probably better off without the said product.
The vision for APIO was to fit into a system of social media platforms, to create a niche space to enable the visually impaired to microblog. We also had to consider what was available and the system that is already in place for them.
Talkback is a feature that reads the text on the screen aloud, depending on which part of the screen is touched. This feature enables the visually impaired and makes the phone more accessible. However, on trying to use this feature with our eyes shut, we heard information that one would not want to pay attention to, especially since our sense of hearing does not enable sifting through pieces of information in the same way that sight does. Visual hierarchy and auditory hierarchy work very differently.
Having looked at existing braille devices, we concluded that the system in place is outdated. Their best mode to communicate in writing was still through paper. The iPhone allows them to type using braille, but what use is that if it is not tactile? Touchscreens are heavily sight-centered. I wonder how the visually impaired have come this far considering the inaccessibility they face on every platform. This led us to come up with a device that can type in braille using butterfly braille keys and do a lot more with the help of the inbuilt voice assistant. The braille device along with the mobile application for partially visually impaired and visually abled individuals comprises our microblogging platform.
Collaborative efforts can do wonders.
Not letting our own biases into the solution is the hardest part of designing, but effective user testing helps overcome this hurdle. I am familiar with the feeling of envisioning a solution well before the research stage has reached anywhere, but many a time, it is proved unnecessary by the research. We get so attached to our idea that we do not want to let it go.
Being open to the directions that a particular design can take is crucial to designing well. More importantly, an insight we gain today might come to use in a project we take on a couple of years down the line. Being open to learning and absorbing more and more of what is around can go a long way.
A team with multiple mindsets, multiple skill sets, and multiple perspectives working together towards a common goal makes working towards the goal itself a pleasure. A varied group has always excited me. Unlike most people, I rather enjoy working in groups. Some of my best ideas have sprung from collaborative briefs. It is simply the perspective of more than one individual and the empathy that arises from listening to these new perspectives that makes me want to think out of the box, to think in a way that my personal experiences alone would never have led me.
Our team that worked on APIO consisted of students from varied majors like Human Centred Design, Industrial Design, and Business and Service Design. It was this varied set of eyes, skills, and interests that helped us come up with a mobile application, a braille device, and a system that it could function within. The Industrial design student could not have designed the braille device without an ergonomic point of view, and the Human Centred Design students could not have put together the application without understanding the scope of the braille device. The similarity in functionality across the braille device and the application was essential to creating a seamless experience.