Creating an Accessible Co-design Toolkit for Co-designers with Intellectual Disabilities and Computer Science Students at TU Dublin
- Inclusion
TU Dublin and St John Of God Community Services have run an innovative co-design programme where computer science students work with service users to create digital applications together since 2016 (Bourke, Boland et al., 2018). 3rd year students work together with co-designers with Interaction Design to develop digital applications together and find solutions to a problem together. These projects form part of the academic requirements for undergraduate assessment in computer science and co-design participants receive a certificate of participation at the end of the module. This co-design programme and partnership has generated a rich source of tacit knowledge on specific design tasks, methods and approaches that work well for both students and co-designers with intellectual disabilities.
Context
The co-design programme has highlighted a need for accessible design resources and training materials for both students and co-design participants. There are numerous practical resources and toolkits in the fields of design thinking and UX design that support co-design activities While many of these resources are valuable tools for designers to understand and adopt a participatory approach, the resources are not always accessible or appropriate for designers or co-designers with disabilities. For example, people with intellectual disabilities may have difficulties with literacy and have challenges with tasks and interactions that require reading and comprehension while drawing and graphics-based tasks are not accessible to people with visual impairments. Furthermore, existing resources are not always appropriate for software developers or computer science students without training in the fields of User Experience or Interaction Design.
Before the intervention, we interviewed students, lecturers and co-designers with intellectual disabilities to explore their perceptions and experiences of the co-design process. Participants who engaged in the co- design process reported their experience of the benefits and challenges of this interactive process. For student and co-designers alike communication was reported to be the biggest challenge! Co-designers with intellectual disabilities found it challenging to advocate for themselves and most importantly communicate what they don’t like (response bias). Students were challenged to speak colloquially removing their technological jargon when working on co-design tasks.
Based on literature, existing tools and our previous co-design work, a set of tools were created or adapted to create an accessible co-design toolkit. For this adaptation, two overarching principles were implemented:
- Use of simple English. All text from the tools was reviewed by the user expert from SJOG and was re-written using simple terms and sentences: nouns were avoided, and sentences were broken down into simpler grammatical structures.
- Providing visual aids. For each tool, every field was supported by an image (photos or icons) to help overcome literacy limitations.
From observation of codesign sessions, the tool kit presented above enhanced communication and collaboration between students and co-designers with intellectual disabilities.
The icon guessing games were interactive and engaging and improved communication on the look and feel of the interfaces being designed. The prompts to help computer science students elicit unbiased feedback from co-designers improved communication and also highlighted the importance of “asking the right questions” for computer science students. The tool “I like, I wish what if” was integrated as a regular feedback tool to iterate through design ideas and prototypes.
Some tools such as the enhanced empathy maps were more familiar and perhaps more intuitive for co-designers with intellectual disabilities due to their highly visual nature. This shows the importance of iteratively updating the tools to ensure that they are accessible to all stakeholders.
Conclusions
Co-design holds great potential for the creation of inclusive technology but existing toolkits and resources to support co-design are not always accessible to designers, developers and co-designers with disabilities. We need to ensure that the tools and techniques that we employ for collaborative design tasks are in themselves fully accessible to all stakeholders.
Guidelines to Create Accessible Digital Applications
- Ensure that tools and techniques are accessible: Co-design holds great potential for the creation of inclusive technology but existing toolkits and resources to support co-design are not always accessible to designers, developers and co-designers with disabilities. We need to ensure that the tools and techniques that we employ for collaborative design tasks are in themselves fully accessible to all stakeholders.Some of the tools that were created to be accessible for the co-designers with intellectual disabilities were not intuitive to the computer science students so we need to ensure that processes can be used collaboratively.
- Set ground rules for working together: It is important to take time at the beginning of each co-design session to agree on ground rules for working together that ensures an atmosphere of open collaboration and creativity.
- Consider communication across the design lifecycle: Time with co-designers and developers is often constrained and communication between design sessions is essential for iterative development that can incorporate feedback from co-designers.