Magic Innovation: How Embracing Constraints Makes Better Products

Apple's got a hot new UI that's got everyone talking. Dynamic Island is an example of how designers can turn hard constraints into innovations big or small. It's also a great allegory for how you could be achieving more with investments in accessibility. Hear me out!

How it started

The Dynamic Island is all about the front-facing camera. These cameras have been on smartphones for long enough that most smartphone users likely take them for granted. In fact, they seem to predate modern smartphones altogether! Wikipedia tells us the first front-facing phone camera was on Kyocera's 1999 VP-210. "VP" stands for "video phone," and that's continued to be a principle purpose of the front-facing cameras, though it has since been superseded by the indisputably primary purpose of smartphones, the internet, and indeed technology of any kind: influencer selfies.

Note that the first front-facing phone cameras were placed above the screen in their own island (*wink* see what I did there?) of plastic casing—perhaps out of necessity for the bulkiness of the camera technology, perhaps due to the inflexibility of screen technology. Clearly, the size of the screen was important for viewing the output of either the camera or the call, but the screen had a maximum footprint at least partially constrained by the space needs of the camera.

By 2003, NEC, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola had all started adding front-facing cameras to their phones. It wasn't until 2010, with the HTC EVO 4G and the iPhone 4, that the new kids on the block—modern smartphones—got in on the front-facing camera party as well. Smartphones, perhaps dealing with similar constraints, kept the camera in the margins and surrounded by plastic or glass.

It would take almost another decade before the next big evolution: letting the screen wrap around the camera! Introducing: the notch. Kudos to Essential Phone for leading the charge on this one, with iPhone X close behind.

As I recall, notches got pretty thoroughly ridiculed on these first specimens at launch time. But despite how odd they looked at first, it turns out people really like having more screen, or a full-bleed bezel, or whatever. Yet even as the footprint for the camera (and other components) shrank, notches have remained noticeable chunks of not-screen that infringe on the space that might otherwise be an edge-to-edge immersive viewport into an endless world of cat videos, Snap filters, notifications, and (of course) the enviable lives of random internet strangers.

How it's going

Now we've arrived: Dynamic Islands are the utopia we never knew we dreamed of. OK, maybe it's not quite a solution to global hunger or systems of inequity, but neither is it entirely gimmick. Dynamic Islands represent a meaningful step forward for front-facing cameras. "But why?" you might ask. (And when does this get to accessibility, anyway?) Let's review:

• In the first generation of front-facing cameras on phones, the camera was awkwardly positioned in the margins of the experience, clearly added as an afterthought to already fully-formed products.
• With the notch, the camera became more integrated as product designers explored how to nestle the black spot of the camera as much into the experience as possible—even if it could never really be a part of screen (or so they thought). There was acceptance, tolerance, and early consideration of the constraints throughout the design of the device.
• Now, with Dynamic Islands, Apple designers have demonstrated not just acceptance but an embrace of the constraint.

For the last 5 years, product designers have been saying, "I guess the best we can do is a hole-punch in the screen somewhere." Someone at Apple seems to have said, "If there has to be a hole-punch in the middle of the screen, how might we turn that into a benefit?" That's the question you should always ask when thinking about any hard constraint: how can we turn this into something useful?

With the Dynamic Island pattern, the footprint required for the camera has been turned into an anchor of sorts around which critical controls and notifications swirl and dance. Far from simply tolerating a black hole or indentation in the screen created by the camera, Apple designers have employed additional negative space, motion, and complementary positioning of on-screen content to draw attention to the space as a locus of important activity and controls.

I have zero doubt that this will immediately become the new norm across virtually all smartphones. That's the thing about innovations (little-i or big-i): once you see them, you slap yourself on the forehead and think, "Of course! Why haven't we been doing this all along!?"

What does this have to do with accessibility?

The Dynamic Island, from what I can tell, has nothing at all to do with accessibility—except that it will almost certainly have been designed in a way that everyone can use regardless of ability. (I will be shocked if this isn't the case, given Apple's admirable track record in this regard.)

It's not the Dynamic Island itself, but rather the approach to constraints that I want to highlight here.

When designing any product, we have to work with constraints—some of them flexible, others hard and immutable. For physical products, the materials available and the size and shape of subcomponents may be hard constraints. For digital products, there may be technical limits imposed by the operating systems or by the devices we build for. We have stakeholders and business objectives that offer their own constraints. On top of these (and many more) constraints, for most UX Designers the principle constraints are those posed by the people who use our products: our users. And our users, as it turns out, are very diverse—especially when it comes to ability. Here's just a few examples:

• Some people are able to use a mouse or perform touch gestures with high precision. Some have lower precision or may not be able to use a pointer input at all, perhaps preferring keyboard-only (yes even for their mobile device), a switch controller, or voice dictation control. This includes people with tremors, people with very low strength, or people who can't use their arms at all.
• Some people are able to make fine distinctions between colors. Some can perceive only a subset of hues, and some may not perceive color at all. This could be people with color vision deficiency, aka "color blindness," or maybe just someone trying to use their device in bright sunlight.
• Some people can see and hear, and do so clearly. Some can't see at all or can see very little, such as those who are blind or have very low vision. Some can't hear or have limited hearing, such as those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Some are both blind and deaf.
• Some people are able to focus in distracting contexts, make sense of complex information, and read with ease. Some people have difficulty focusing or experience anxiety when distracted (e.g. ADHD). Some have limited cognitive ability, perhaps due to a congenital condition, an injury, or even just a situation that demands their attention for something else or elevates their stress. Some people have dyslexia or are otherwise neurodivergent.
• Et cetera. (The full list is very long.)

Human ability is a hard constraint: we can't negotiate with a stakeholder or work with a supplier to change human abilities. Designing and building products in ways that are compatible with the diverse constraints of people's abilities is called "accessibility." Neglecting accessibility means putting up barriers that cause disability for any person whose abilities don't match what your product was designed and built to do.

Sidebar: This is known as the social model of disability. The gist is this:

• People have abilities and perhaps some impairments.
• The environment around us (often a designed environment like an app, a device, a building, a city, or a society) has affordances
• When the abilities and the affordances don't match, its the mismatch that causes "disability."

If you're a product designer, that means that people who use your product aren't disabled until you design the product (intentionally or through negligence) in a way that disables them. Conversely, when you design the product in a way that matches, you empower person and sometimes even enhance their abilities.

Basic accessibility is represented in standards such as WCAG. The standards are the bare minimum requirements (read: the starting line or foundation) intended to enable the greatest number of people the basic ability to use products and services. Those standards are the basis of laws all around the world that require accessibility.

Unfortunately, many product designers are either unaware of accessibility and the key dimension of human diversity to which it relates, or they view the standards as the goal rather than as the starting line. Many product designers (and their partners) begrudgingly incorporate accessibility standards, sometimes even with feelings of animosity or hostility toward the standards when they seem to interfere with a designer's "creativity" or "aesthetic," or when their application of the standards leads them to perceive accessibility as detracting from the experience of "everyone else" (read: "regular users"—a term that's as offensive to people with disabilities as "normal people" is in the context of a White-dominant culture where people of color are marginalized).

People with disabilities represent at least 15% of the global population. 1 in 4 people (26%) in the US identify as disabled (source: CDC). Disability cuts across every demographic, and easily counts as one of (if not the) largest marginalized minorities in any population. The degree of their marginalization is so great that in many parts of the world they are literally not counted (or vastly undercounted) in official statistics. People with disabilities experience every kind of stigma, discrimination, and micro-aggression you can imagine—including regularly not being able to use products or spaces (or having an unreasonably hard time using them) because the makers of those products and spaces failed to count people with disabilities among those who would want or need to use them.

15% is a gigantic gap for teams that neglect accessibility, especially given the massive buying power of people with disabilities: $490 billion in the U.S. alone!

That also means those 15% is a huge opportunity for any product team that invests in accessibility. But you should know that you're not going to tap that $490 billion just by doing the bare minimum. You should also know that there's a lot more than 15% upside if you invest beyond the standards, because: accessibility is usability.

That's what this whole article is about: some people have impairments and experience disability (most people will at least a few times in their lives), but everyone wants better products that are easier to use. If you're not yet familiar with the concept of "Solve for one, extend to many," check it out in the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit. Solid gold. Everyone benefits when we make things more usable. Improvements and innovations specifically aimed at unlocking disability more often than not end up being beneficial to people without disabilities, too.

Constraints as drivers of innovation

The story of front-facing cameras and the Dynamic Island is a story of growth, progression, and maturity. Product teams started out by appending the feature to an existing package; gradually integrating it deeper into the product, while still clearly thinking of it as separate from the other features of the product; and finally taking the leap of innovating around the constraint in a way that makes it feel as though it was never even a constraint in the first place.

From my observations, product teams most often approach disability as something to append. Do the "real" work first, and add the accessibility after we get the "MVP" launched. But adding accessibility at the end of the product development lifecycle is both much more expensive and results in a much lower-quality final product. That said, practically speaking this is where everyone starts when they're new to accessibility, because they pretty much already have a product and someone has come along and let them know (read: sued them and/or publicly shamed them) that they really must make the product accessible.

Eventually, the smarter of those product teams look for ways to "shift left" on accessibility, a term that refers to addressing issues earlier and earlier in the product development lifecycle. Every step "left" usually means a lower overall cost and a more robust end result. This is true for any aspect of products, not just accessibility. Want to make your product more performant? More secure? Easier to manufacture? A better market fit? Address those things earlier—at the beginning of implementation, during the design phases, or even (gasp!) when developing the initial product goals and requirements. The idea is to address problems closer to their source, or at least early enough that you still have wiggle room to adapt and remediate the issue well. I can't emphasize that last word ("well") enough.

There's a great write-up on the concept of shifting left at the Ponicode blog, including nifty charts that inspired the one in this article.

Simply attending to accessibility early on will only get you so far. To be specific, it will get you to the notch. Getting to innovation requires another kind of shift: you could call it a mindset shift, a culture shift, or an attitude shift:

• Grumpily adding annoying accessibility support to your otherwise beautiful product is an attitude that will get you to the notch equivalent of accessibility. Things may work and people with disabilities can technically use the product, but at best it's just kinda OK.
• Actively seeking ways your product can add value and delight the maximum number of people is a very different attitude that's a lot more likely to result in high-quality products that genuinely include.

And you know what? If you start with the hardest part of the problem first, the easier parts of the problem might just fall into place. Sara Wachter-Boettcher introduced me to the term "stress cases" to describe such more-challenging aspects of a problem space, and her advice is exactly what we need for innovation: solve the stress cases first, rather than treating them as "edge cases" or things you'll address after you've captured all the "low-hanging fruit" by solving for your "normal" audience.

Solve the hard parts first, and what you create might very well be the better solution for everyone.

It might take a little more effort up-front. But not only will you avoid the much higher costs of remediating accessibility (and other) issues later on, you might just end up with something that captures the attention of an entire industry and lights up previously-unknown opportunities.

You might end up with Magic Islands.

Or, to cite a few disability-first innovations, you might end up with captions, audiobooks, curb cuts, or—one of my recent favorites—the Xbox Adaptive Controller.