How can you use user research to improve product accessibility as a junior designer?

Before delving into user research, it's crucial to acquaint yourself with accessibility standards and guidelines relevant to your product. For web or mobile products, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a solid reference. These guidelines offer criteria and techniques to ensure content accessibility for users with various disabilities—be it visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor impairments. Tools like WAVE or Lighthouse can be invaluable for auditing your product's accessibility, flagging potential issues that need attention. This proactive approach ensures that your product is inclusive and user-friendly for all.

Accessibility standards are guidelines ensuring digital content and technology are designed inclusively for diverse abilities and disabilities. They create a framework for products, websites, and applications to be user-friendly for individuals with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments. Adhering to these standards not only promotes inclusivity but also complies with legal requirements. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a key standard, offering comprehensive guidelines for web content accessibility. Industry-specific standards contribute to a digital environment free from barriers, fostering usability for all users.

Understanding the accessibility standards is the first step towards making your product accessible. Having a in depth knowledge of different accessibility audit tools and latest updates on the guidelines is crucial

Three major ways to understand the standards would be 1. Learn About Standards: Familiarize yourself with key accessibility standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and others relevant to your region or industry. These provide a framework for creating accessible products. 2. Specific Needs and Disabilities: Understand different types of disabilities (visual, auditory, motor, cognitive) and how they affect the use of products. Each standard addresses these in different ways. 3. Technology Aids: Learn about assistive technologies (like screen readers, alternative input devices) and how they interact with products.

User research is a powerful tool for any designer, and as a junior designer, it's especially valuable when it comes to improving product accessibility. Some specific ways are based on my perspective, - Aim for inclusivity by recruiting participants with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments, as well as individuals with situational limitations like aging or language barriers. - Conduct in-depth interviews - Facilitate usability testing - Conduct surveys and questionnaires Keep learning, practicing empathy, and advocating for inclusivity, and you'll be on the right track to creating accessible products that benefit everyone.

Setting clear research goals and questions is the compass steering your user research efforts. What insights do you seek from users? How will you gauge the accessibility of your product? How do these insights inform design decisions? Utilizing the SMART framework ensures that your goals and questions are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For instance, a SMART goal could be: "To enhance satisfaction and retention of users with low vision by 10% in the next three months through improvements in contrast and readability." This framework adds precision, ensuring your research endeavors align with concrete and achievable outcomes.

As a junior designer, understanding the purpose of accessibility research is important, with the goal being the identification of what you want to learn from users about your product's accessibility, including measuring all relevant metrics like user satisfaction. This helps gain actionable insights to improve your design decisions. Overall, it's a solid reminder that focused research with clear goals leads to impactful design solutions, truly increasing product accessibility.

One addition to above would be Identifying the target audience for the product and understanding how that ties into accessibility. As a product targeted for senior citizens need to be researched in multiple accessibility standards compared to a product targeted for teens. Inclusive research with deeper insight of target audience is key to unlocking learning user behaviour.

As a junior designer engaging in research, it's crucial to establish clear research goals and questions before diving into the study. Aligning stakeholders and relevant parties on these objectives ensures a unified understanding of the study's purpose. Additionally, creating a script with well-defined questions not only maintains consistency but also facilitates ease of replication, allowing anyone to pick up the study and conduct tests seamlessly, enhancing the overall research reliability and effectiveness.

My main goal is figuring out what users need and like. I ask questions about their problems, what features they want, and if the design is easy to use. Having clear goals and questions helps me get useful info to make designs that users will love and find practical. It's all about making sure my designs not only look good but also make sense for the people who'll use them.

The success of user research for accessibility hinges on recruiting a diverse pool that mirrors your target audience. Engage users with a spectrum of abilities, preferences, and experiences. Leverage multiple channels—online platforms, social media, community groups, or referrals—to find and invite users. Pay careful attention to the accessibility of your recruitment materials and communication methods. Ensure clarity using plain language, offer alternative formats, captions, or interpreters, making recruitment and engagement more accessible. Additionally, providing incentives and support demonstrates a commitment to making the research process inclusive and accommodating.

As a designer, use user research to enhance product accessibility by recruiting and engaging diverse users. This involves: 1. Identifying a wide range of participants, including those with different abilities and backgrounds, to ensure inclusivity. 2. Conducting in-depth interviews and usability testing with these diverse users to gather insights about their unique needs and challenges. 3. Analyzing feedback to identify accessibility barriers. 4. Collaborating with senior designers and developers to implement changes based on these insights, making the product more accessible and user-friendly for all.

Hire a diverse team: having team mates and peers that use assistive technology will give you the opportunity to learn outside of the limited context of a user study. For user research sessions, invite the cross-functional product team to observe (or watch recordings) to observe users' workflow with assistive technology. This is so much more powerful than a report/list of accessibility bugs!

I make sure lots of different people are involved in designing by reaching out through different channels. I talk to users from various backgrounds, making sure they feel their opinions matter. This way, I get a mix of insights that helps create designs that work well for everyone. It's about making sure all kinds of people are heard and considered in the design process.

As a designer, using user research to improve product accessibility involves choosing suitable methods and tools: 1. Surveys & Questionnaires: Gather broad insights on accessibility needs/preferences. 2. User Interviews: Conduct in-depth conversations with users having diverse abilities to understand their challenges. 3. Usability Testing: Involve users with different accessibility needs in testing sessions, observing how they interact with the product. 4. Analytics Tools: Use tools like Google Analytics to identify usage patterns, highlighting potential accessibility issues. 5. Accessibility Testing Tools: Employ tools like WAVE or AXE to audit the product for compliance with accessibility standards.

Accessibility research blends empathy and precision. Begin by immersing in WCAG guidelines for a foundational understanding. User testing, embracing diverse abilities, yields crucial insights. Leverage tools like Axe or WAVE, complemented by manual audits, for efficiency and nuanced issue detection. Establish ongoing feedback loops, refining the user experience, especially for users with disabilities. Infuse accessibility from project inception, acquainting yourself with assistive technologies. Regularly consult industry checklists and engage with communities for evolving practices. This user-centric, technologically savvy approach ensures inclusive and seamless digital experiences.

I choose methods like talking to people, surveys, and testing to understand what users need. Tools like analytics and prototyping help me get accurate data. By using a mix of these methods, I make sure my designs are based on what users really want and how they interact with the product. It's about using the right tools to create products that people will find easy and enjoyable to use.

Upon concluding a user research study, the critical phase of analysis and synthesis commences. This entails delving into the data to extract pertinent themes and actionable insights that will serve as invaluable guides in informing design decisions. The synthesis process is dynamic, with various methods available to designers; the key is to identify a method that resonates with your workflow and allows for a comprehensive understanding of user experiences, ensuring the translation of research findings into impactful design solutions.

After talking to people and testing, I look at the info to find patterns and important details. I figure out what users really need and what problems they face. This helps me decide what changes or improvements to make in my designs. It's like putting together a clear story that guides how I make things better for the users.

Keeping your design updated as per the latest accessibility standards and guidelines is crucial. After auditing your designs the next step should be to do a next level of iteration on making your designs compliant to the standards

One of the things we often overlook when user testing is the rapid iteration phase. User testing serves a very specific purpose: to identify strong features or pain points of an existing product. But the reason we user test is to find improvements. Once a test has been completed and its findings analyzed and synthesized, it’s crucial that the designer goes back to the drawing board, and iterates on the existing design. With an updated and improved version, user researchers can then go back to the testing phase, to validate any new design concepts or ideas that were implemented.

After uncovering actionable insights from user research, the design process advances to creating low-fidelity designs, whether in the form of wireframes, sketches, or prototypes. The primary objective is swift and cost-effective validation of the design direction, identifying areas for potential iteration. Maintaining flexibility in these initial designs is crucial, allowing for quick adjustments based on user feedback. Involving stakeholders at this stage ensures alignment with project goals and facilitates a collaborative approach, fostering a shared understanding and commitment to the evolving design direction.

It is worthwhile for a junior designer to find a mentor or mentors within or outside the company. This could be a more experienced colleague from the design and/or research area. Having a mentor can provide clarity in the initial stages, offer a structured approach, and help shape good habits.

For a junior designer like me, accessibility is a learning topic by exploring different tools, methods is as essential as gaining tacit knowledge in designing for diverse audiences. Observation, reading, and implementation on how to go about in the proper way is essential. When it comes to designing for a diverse audience, one should keep note of the cultural and ethnic elements.

Antes de ir a campo realizar observa??es ou entrevistas, procure coletar e analisar dados secundários sobre seus usuários, ou seja, dados que já existem em estudos prévios, bases de dados, artigos na internet e redes sociais. Essa categoria de informa??o possibilita direcionar a pesquisa primária, realizada diretamente com os usuários, garantindo a eficiência do trabalho, de forma que se investigue apenas o que os dados pré-existentes ainda n?o conseguem responder. Busque por padr?es que se repetem nas nos dados bem como informa??es fora do padr?o. Triangule os dados para validar hipóteses iniciais e identifique vieses e áreas de oportunidade para se aprofundar posteriormente com usuários.