Designing for Disability

A refreshable Braille display attached to a laptop computer, being used by a blind person.
Photo credit: Sebastien.delorme, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I recently watched several Ted Talks from the Designing for Disability playlist. Although I have had and still have many people in my life with disabilities ranging from visual or auditory impairments to ALS and autism, these videos reminded me anew of the extent to which people with disabilities can experience the world differently from those without them.

These differences include online experiences like accessing social media, reading blogs or watching video, as well as using digital apps or filling out forms. For example, content like this blog entry can present challenges to the visually impaired unless steps are taken to make the material compatible with readers who have low vision or who use a screen reader to convert visual content to an auditory or tactile format.

Similarly, a hearing-impaired person watching a video will benefit from the addition of captioning. And people with cognitive, neurological or processing disabilities like dyslexia, autism, or ADHD may find certain styles of presentation overwhelming or confusing and others much easier to deal with. (Web Accessibility Initiative) Users with motor issues may face barriers related to using a mouse or touchpad to interact with content or on-screen controls. (WebAIM)

Web Accessibility Perspectives: Clear Layout and Design – W3C Web Accessibility Initiative

Designing with all of these factors in mind can be a challenge, but it’s necessary in order to create an inclusive environment for audiences of varying ability. Even something as simple as adding alt text or a caption to an image so screen reading technology can render a description is a step in the right direction. Likewise, choosing a simple design with a sans-serif font in black on a white or light background and limiting the intrusion of unnecessary decorative elements can help those with low vision or processing challenges to read what’s on the screen.

Taken together, these guidelines can help with designing a more inclusive and accessible website for users who might otherwise face barriers to its use.

Works Cited:

Introduction to Web Accessibility. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). (2016, May 18). Web Accessibility Perspectives: Clear Layout and Design [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfkzj5VC9P8

WebAIM: Introduction to Web Accessibility. (2020, April 14). https://webaim.org/intro/

Analyzing Infographics

Infographics is the name given to a form of visual display that harnesses the power of graphical elements such as diagrams, maps, charts, or symbols together with the written word to convey information that would be difficult or even impossible to communicate effectively through other means. Infographics take many forms, from botanical illustrations and family trees to transit maps and pie charts representing economic data. Most of us encounter infographics on a daily basis in our media and as we navigate the physical world.

One interesting infographic I’ve seen recently involves a personal interest of mine. I am a craft beer enthusiast and a home brewer, and I was curious to learn how the American palate is currently trending in terms of beer style preferences, especially in comparison with my own tastes. I am a heavy user of the information site Statista.com, which is chock-full of infographics on nearly every topic imaginable. I found the infographic below on that site, and it is a very effective and informative example of the art:

https://www.statista.com/chart/28572/popularity-of-beer-styles-in-the-us/

Without getting into minutiae regarding sample sizes, etc. let us take a look at the information covered in this example. Perhaps the most effective thing about this infographic is its use of color and shape. The format is a bar chart, and the individual bars are rendered as beer glasses, complete with a foamy head and colored in a way that represents the common colors of the individual beer styles considered. It’s clever, eye-catching, and likely to provoke a smile from any decent connoisseur of craft beer. I can’t really find anything lacking in this presentation. It’s simple, to the point, and contains just enough detail to get the job done.

By contrast, Dan Roam’s “Make Meetings Matter” infographic on his Showcase is, not to put too fine a point on it, ineffective and confusing. I find the symbology opaque, as there isn’t really any sort of key to what exactly the symbols are intended to mean. I grasp that he intends some process to act as a sort of lens to focus input and improve the efficacy of meetings and the utility of information either related to them or resulting from them, but the overall effect of Roam’s infographic in this instance is to leave me with more questions than conclusions.

Or maybe I’d just rather have a beer than a meeting. Wouldn’t you?

Works Cited:

Meirelles, Isabel. Design for Information: An Introduction to the Histories, Theories, and Best Practices Behind Effective Information Visualizations. Illustrated, Rockport Publishers, 2013.

“Showcase.” DIGITAL ROAM INC, www.danroam.com/showcase. Accessed 31 Oct. 2022.

The Information Design Process

When tackling an information design project, it helps to have a clear process in mind. Just as my previous post characterized a clear wayfinding system as a necessary tool for helping you figure out how to get where you want to go, a clear process map for the design and execution of your project is essential to help you achieve your objective. Having a roadmap of what you need to accomplish and how you plan to do so is key to getting anything done at all. In Signage and Wayfinding Design : A Complete Guide to Creating Environmental Graphic Design Systems, Chris Calori and David Vanden-Eynden have mapped out a clear process that involves the following:

Image by K. Grant, created using GIMP

Calori and Vanden-Eynden view the design process as an evolutionary one, moving from generalities to more specific steps, with occasional recursions and loops as necessary to achieve the desired result.

I would add here a step that specifically addresses identifying the intended end user of the design. While that is certainly part of assessing the client’s problem, it is such an important part that it bears setting apart as a crucial step in and of itself.

Let’s say I am tasked with designing the wayfinding system for a new international airport. Following closely with the methods of Calori and Vanden-Eynden, my process would look something like this:

Image by K. Grant, created using GIMP

In general, however, my view of the overall process tracks with the one outlined by Calori and Vanden-Eynden.

Works Cited:

Calori, Chris, and David Vanden-Eynden. Signage and Wayfinding Design: A Complete Guide to Creating Environmental Graphic Design Systems. 2nd ed., Wiley, 2015.

Wayfinding: Pros and Cons

Image: A hand pointing to a spot on a transit map. Photo by Enric Cruz López: Pexels.com

Wayfinding is a user-centered theory of information design most associated with navigating physical spaces. (Passini) Airport signage, subway maps, and even the aisle markers in your local supermarket all function as aids to wayfinding.

Most of us interact with wayfinding systems of one sort or another on a daily basis and scarcely realize we are doing so. If you live and work in a major population center, your daily commute may involve navigating multiple interconnecting highways and a collection of surface streets. Once inside your workplace, you very well might encounter a maze of corridors and offices, perhaps with interior space further divided into different departments and areas of cubicles. If you’ve been making that same commute for months or years and working in the same physical space, you likely don’t think too much about the route you drive or the way the office is laid out. But to anyone who is perhaps visiting your workplace for the first time, everything from highway markers to interior office signage would be very important to ensure they arrive where they need to go at the time they need to be there.

As users of wayfinding systems, we rarely consider what goes into creating them or keeping them current. But designing one involves many factors. Detailed knowledge of the physical space to which it pertains is the first ingredient, and it is joined by an understanding of the people who will need to navigate that space and for what purposes. Does a variety of purposes for being in a particular space create more than one distinct population of users, for example patients and hospital personnel, or airline passengers and airport employees? If so, there will need to be a hierarchy of these groups, and the designer will need to understand whose needs to prioritize in what ways and in which areas when creating a system. (Wayfinding Is Where Place Meets Information Design | SEGD)

Knowledge of how the various user groups are most likely to best receive information and use it to make decisions is also crucial. Especially in a situation where there may be language barriers, it may be necessary to rely on imagery and symbols in addition to or in place of words. The goal is to make the system universally accessible.

Gathering all the appropriate data may be an enormous task, but a thorough understanding of the space and its users will allow the design of a better wayfinding system.

Works Cited

Wayfinding Is Where Place Meets Information Design | SEGD. segd.org/wayfinding-where-place-meets-information-design. Accessed 12 Oct. 2022.

Passini, Romedi. “Wayfinding Design: Logic, Application and Some Thoughts on Universality.” Design Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, Elsevier BV, July 1996, pp. 319–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/0142-694x(96)00001-4.

What is Information Design?

^{Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com}

We are bombarded by data in every waking hour. Everything our senses convey to us is data of some sort. Because human beings are primarily visual creatures, we pay perhaps the most attention to visual stimuli. As visual beings, we also use images as a tool for making sense of the data we collect, even when that data may not be inherently visual. To put it simply, humans tend to think in pictures. Charts, graphs, maps, and even cave art represent the human urge to share information using visual means.

Information design, at its core, is the process of distilling and organizing data so that it may be presented coherently and in a way that renders it accessible to a target audience using visual imagery. Data is the raw input; information is what we get when we sift through that data to find the important elements and then organize them into a form that tells us what we need to know. Information design, then, involves deciding on the best way to share that information with others.

Dan Roam’s Digital Roam website offers several examples of visual imagery designed to tell a story to a target audience. One of these, 10 Steps To Becoming A Customer-Centric Enterprise, appears to be a slide from a larger presentation of that name. This slide gives a clear visualization of different ways a company might conduct business with its clients. In the first and largest set of illustrations we are shown two people inside a cube, peering out of it presumably on the search for customers or collaborators. Interestingly, the area around them is blank; no one is in sight. This image bears the title “Inside-Out”. To the right of this image appears another titled “Outside-In”. In it, the same cube is shown with no one inside, but it is surrounded by people approaching it. This pair of illustrations is given the number 1, indicating it is probably the first of the ten steps in the title. A pair of smaller boxes below, labeled 2, again presents two illustrations per box, contrasting labeled ways of doing business.

The illustrations are simplistic, rendered in shades of blue and white, with simplistic drawings that bring to mind the sort of sketches that appear on whiteboards during brainstorming sessions. The design features minimal text but lets the images tell the story effectively. On the whole, it conveys the information well which makes it a perfect example of the power of information design.

Works cited:

Coates, Kathryn and Ellison, Andy. An Introduction to Information Design. Laurence King Publishing, 2014.

Roam, Dan. “10 Steps To Becoming A Customer-Centric Enterprise.” Showcase, Digital Roam Inc., https://www.danroam.com/showcase