A presentation delivered at CSUN 2017 on how inclusive research in emerging technologies can shorten the time to innovation and value.

1. Prepared for CSUN 17
2 March 2017
How to shorten the time to innovation & value
Inclusive research for new user interfaces

2. open inclusion
@openforaccess
We provide:
• User input & insights from people with
disabilities & older consumers
• Authentic & expert audits
• Innovation & universal design thinking
• Inclusion solutions, tools & training
• Governance support & value analysis
Open Inclusion is an accessibility and
innovation consultancy.

3. Open’s essence
We identify and remove hurdles between
customer and product or service providers
so that both can achieve to the
fullest of their ambitions.

4. Open helps businesses understand & embed inclusion
Creating value for customers, staff & brands
Authentic
insight
Simply
better
Innovation
catalyst
Measure
value
Embed
competence
Usability +

5. Authentic insight
Guidelines are not sufficient guides
Ask your users. Gain real insights
We have a user panel of +300 people who
- Have sensory impairments
- Have mobility/dexterity impairments
- Are cognitively diverse
- Have complex (mixed) conditions
- Are over 65 years old
We do mainly qualitative user research,
both behavioral and attitudinal. In physical,
digital and hybrid environments.

6. Innovation catalyst
It’s amazing what you find
when you take a different perspective.
We have have designed and created
innovative products
• for PWD and
• with universal design differences
identified through research and
understanding of specific access needs
Some examples include:
• Sonification of graphs
• Personalisation tools
• Gamified sign language learning system

7. New insights for the new things
• Digital interfaces are everywhere
• Embedded into everything
• Options are rapidly expanding beyond
keyboard in and visual out for
communication
- us to the device
- the device to us
There has been an explosion
in the capability and omnipresence
of digital technology

8. Technology is here to solve people’s problems

9. It has escaped the study and is now in the hand, eye,
stove, lights, car, train station…
Individual
Technology
Smart
Homes
Smart
Cities

10. New technology is arriving at speed in 3 forms at once
New Devices
New User Interactions
New Solutions

11. It’s hard to keep up. New, ever faster and more
powerful solutions can resolve queries and needs
New
Solutions
Artificial intelligence
Big data
Crowdsourcing (eg TED translations)

12. New devices are arriving with faster, more powerful
capacity, embedded more ubiquitously in everything.
New
Devices
Wearables – on/in the body
Smart homes – embedded in personal things
Autonomous cars and smart transport solutions
Smart cities – embedded in communal things
Faster, more powerful inter-connected digital tools

13. New interaction alternatives are allowing people to
communicate in the style they prefer or need.
New User
Interactions
New input and output communication options
Passive input alternatives: monitoring (body, engines…)
Bots: Robots, Chatbots, Minibots, Megabots
Voice and sound interfaces in / out
Touch outputs haptics / heat / vibrations
Gesture and movement based inputs
Virtual reality, holograms and 3D printing

14. But they are not yet fulfilling
their problem-solving potential
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=KjOEokudZs4

15. People with disabilities have strong unmet needs that
new technologies could help resolve

16. Understanding extreme needs
shortens time to innovation
Problems are like caterpillars
They are just waiting for the right
environment to transform into solutions
NASA moonshot created 6,300 new
technologies.
F1 racing has gifted us with tyres, seat belts
and on board engine monitoring systems.

17. People with disabilities have
more extreme needs
Great for some, good for many.
Breakthroughs that are transformational
to people with disabilities, often have value
to a broad community
More extreme needs require different thinking and
radically better solutions.
PWD often look beyond what something is
positioned as, and consider what it could be.

18. We have more “inclusive moments”
requiring more inclusive solutions
We are all either
• people with a / some current impairments
• people who are temporarily unimpaired
Increased mobility and ubiquity of digital is increasing
temporary and situational impairments.
An ageing global population is increasing gradual and
permanent impairments.

19. It’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble.
It’s what you know that just ain’t so.
Mark Twain
“
Learning or unlearning

20. Requirements for great research
Research outcomes reflect the combined quality of the
• sample group
• method chosen
• stimulus
• problem definition, and
• delivery

21. So, you need to ask the right people,
the right questions, in the right way

22. Our research was to better understand how new devices
with new UIs might benefit PWD with broader applicability

23. Just in case you are not a
new technical junkie – Apple Watch
• Category: Wearables
• Underlying good tech
– Haptics “taptics”
– Siri
– Bluetooth connectivity
– Apps: ever improving app store concepts
• Core use case:
– Phone calls, messages, alerts/notification
– Maps and directions
– Sports tracking
– Payments with Apple Pay
– Keeping your phone out of sight. More subtly connected
“the most personal device we’ve ever made”

24. • Category: Smart home communication
• Underlying good tech
– Alexa
– Bluetooth connectivity
• Core use case:
– Playing music
– Turning home devices on and off
– Querying the web – weather, transport
“a new conduit to connectivity”
Just in case you are not a
new technical junkie – Amazon Echo

25. Just in case you are not a
new technical junkie – Aftershokx
• Category: Personal listening devices
• Underlying good tech
– Bone conducting auditory input
• Core use case:
– For people when ambient noise access is essential in
conjunction with digital audio input
• Cycle couriers
• Visually impaired: wayfinding
• Drivers
Allows auditory access to ambient noise in
conjunction with digitized sound input

26. Different research types provide different insights
User testing
• Simple accessibility and usability test. May assess initial setup and
expected use cases
Focus group
• Reframes perspectives. Fires users’ imagination to examine broader
needs they have that the technology could solve.
Diary study
• Gets into the emotional response to the technology once
initial setup is complete and learning curve is under way
• Assesses real life improvements and impacts

27. Who, what, which and when
7 participants, 8 diary studies
3 interfaces using new technologies
• Wearables
• Voice interfaces
• Alternative sound input
Diary study
Period of research:
• 3 months
• individual diary studies, 1 week – 3 months

28. The participants
Participant Gender/
Age
Impairment Tech
experience
Tested Period
tested
Prior similar
experience
Cassie F
TBC
Manual dexterity
(hands and fingers)
Medium Apple Watch 24 days None
Sam F
mid 30s
Dyslexia, dyspraxia Expert Apple Watch 21 days FitBit
Molly F
20s
Deaf / Blind
(Usher’s Significant)
Expert Apple Watch Already had
an Apple Watch
Lynn F
early 50s
VI / Blind Medium Apple Watch
Amazon Echo
26 days
52 days
FitBit, Garmin 235
Sky audio pyramid
Apple Siri
Jo F
TBC
Balance, memory
(Multiple Sclerosis),
non-tech savvy
Novice Amazon Echo 30 days None
Toby M
mid 30s
Mobility, dexterity
(Spinal Muscular
Atrophy)
Expert Amazon Echo 10 days
Mark M
Late 60s
Auditory nerve
deafness
Medium Aftershokz 7 days Only earbuds. Not
very satisfactory

29. Key insights
Overall
These devices seem more powerful than they are useful
So much
functionality
Not so easy to find,
access or use

30. Key insights
• Setup process is difficult and not very accessible
• Usability is variable
• Discovery is too hard. Learning functionality is hard
– users don’t know what it can do and what needs it may solve
• Personal connection to the device is essential
• Contextual use is coming, but not quite resolving user needs yet
• Full potential is greater than that functionality found and used

31. Setup process
The two ways of setting up the Watch are visual. Someone
could have helped me in store if I had bought the watch myself.
I’m notoriously bad at reading manuals. That’s not me. I do
listen for advice on groups but have to try and work out what is
worth listening/reading.
So much for being independent…
Lynn (Blind user)
Apple Watch
“

32. Usability
Controls on the Apple Watch and AfterShokz were very small
and difficult to use. Sometimes the headphones would slide out
of place on my head - unpleasant vibrations.
Mark (deaf user)
AfterShokz
“

33. Discovery
I couldn’t find a way to ask (Alexa) to find TV show times and
what films are playing in the cinema.
I don't have the energy for things that are difficult.
Jo (MS user with memory loss)
Amazon Echo
“

34. Discovery
Apple Watch without Siri is all fiddly controls and a screen with
a tapping area that’s too small.
With Siri, it’s a revelation!
So why don’t they tell you you can do that?
Sam (Dyslexic)
Apple Watch
“

35. Personification and psychological connection
I love [Alexa’s] voice. Can’t get enough of it…
She is becoming part of the family…
Alexa is so easy just to ask that I think I’m getting to rely on her!
Lynn (Blind user)
Amazon Echo
“

36. Mood maps are great to track attitudinal response
Making and breaking connection to the Amazon Echo

37. Changing attitudes: from a frustration to a friend
Feeling attached to Alexa and the Amazon Echo

38. Contextual support
Customising the watch face to tell me the weather, time, and
heartbeat was cool. But I can’t get all the things I want on
there. I’ve got to remember how to get the things another way.
If it could change to show me different things at different times
of the day, or because of where I was, or if I was exercising,
that would be really useful.
Lynn (Blind user)
Apple Watch
“

39. Full potential is elusive
I don’t think I’m using it to its full potential.
Sam (Dyslexic user)
Amazon Echo
The best things are the control of lights and heating.
But I can’t afford them.
Cassie (Dexterity user)
Amazon Echo
“

40. Apple watch
• Usability/Accessibility is good
• Trendy and huge interest at launch but
quickly waned due to lack of real life
improvement
• Killer app solutions may have been
brainstormed but haven't yet arrived
It’s cool, just not life changing•
Lack of great apps is part of the
problem

41. Molly, a deaf-blind user,
has a very different perspective
https://youtu.be/bnZlgITClXw?t=12m11s

42. Google glass
• Initial Usability/Accessibility was
poor
• Initial trials thoughtfully done,
but given to geeks not users, so
some creation of solutions looking
for problems and PR challenges
• Killer app solutions may have been
brainstormed but tech not ready
• So prototype production was
stopped
• However, some useful uses are here
at CSUN

43. Focus groups can identify far more innovative directions

44. Alexa is blind and motor impaired.
You understand these. Help her find her way.

45. The design principles are very similar to accessibility
http://alistapart.com/article/designing-the-conversational-ui
• Ask series of questions with hints
• Acknowledge answers
• Explain what went wrong
• cf. forms on WCAG

46. Seize the limitations!
Limitations provide insight

47. Find something remarkable. Something that will empower,
excite and enable people to live a better life
Che Guevara
By Phil Hansen
Words that do not match
deeds are unimportant.“

48. Better for all
christine@openinclusion.com
inclusion