Designing With Intent

I recently had an annoying experience with the target.com app. I was looking to buy Christmas stockings or something but I was struggling to find the “add to cart” button. It turns out there are 2 buttons for purchasing items but they work differently. One called “Deliver it” means it will be delivered to your closest Target store for you to pick it up at. The other button “ship it” is how you buy something to get sent to your home. First of all, changing the add to cart button/ wording made this experience so confusing and I spent a lot longer trying to figure out how to add things to my cart than actually shopping. Secondly, this made me think of a recent app I made that I had user-tested with someone. They noted how having pages with lots of English words makes it more confusing for them to navigate certain apps or pages. My app had large buttons and easy to understand words so they felt comfortable using the app even though their English wasn’t as strong. My intention was to make it easy to know what to do without much instruction not designing for a specific accessibility. I got somewhat lucky in my design but now I know a good technique to use in the future.

I would redesign the target app to include the regular “Add to cart” button which I would think would be much easier for a lot of people. I could think of a way to redesign this app for someone blind. I could easily say that Target can include an audio description tool (I’m sure there is already one installed on iPhones). For someone physically disabled maybe a voice control/command option would be beneficial. If someone has hearing issues then they are in luck since they don’t need to hear, to buy something online. BUT after watching the videos I feel like I shouldn’t try to find the best way to redesign things to be accessible on my own.

It makes more sense to work with disabled designers. Or to continually collaborate with disabled stakeholders, consistently getting their input and attempting to understand them. I can only pretend to imagine what it’s like to actually be blind. I can’t just close my eyes for a couple of hours and try out an activity and pull data from that, then use that to address accessibility for blind people. Ellen Lupton said, “you can’t assume people’s configurations” when describing that blind people tend to read brail against their bodies as opposed to out in front of them like classic reading. I felt this was super important to bring up. As someone who isn’t blind, I would never know that!

Liz Jackson also brought up the phrase “inspiration porn” and I really connected with that. I recently watched a couple of videos about bad accessibility and messages. One video depicts a bunch of kids outside playing basketball and one kid in a wheelchair who just moved into the neighborhood. He was shy and sad until one day when he was invited to play with all the kids who had also brought chairs on wheels and played a game where this kid could be included. This message failed by depicting the child in a wheel-chair as someone who was sad and shy just because his wheel-chair made him that way (non-verbally explained). Then the perspective of this commercial wasn’t from the boy in the wheelchair but from the kid who reached out. Instead of making this message inclusive, it became a story about how we can help disabled kids by including them. This painted a picture where people will see disabled people and feel bad for them. More often than not this makes them feel worse. This wasn’t the intention of the commercial but that’s what happens when minorities aren’t consulted and aren’t considered experts as Liz Jackson pointed out.

I think going forward I would consider “designing for accessibility” not to mean designing just for the physically impaired but for those socially impaired as well. Jackson said, “fix things not people”

Huge Takeaway; Disabilities = Physical AND Social