Exclusive Design
Exclusive design is designing for the needs of a specific person. This person may have or may not
have a disability to take into account. In making an exclusive design you take a very close look at
the person you are designing for, what obstacles does this person have in using a similar
design/service. Exclusive design is person-specific, a lot of people may have the same disability
but the way they cope with is usually unique. This does not mean that what works for this specific
person doesn't work for other people, but it doesn't mean it will either. To find out, simply test
it! And that's what I'm going to do in this project.
Assignment
In this project, we got to work with a 'real' person that has a 'real' disability. I got to work with
Darice and she is deaf. The assignment was to get to know Darice and create a fitting solution for
podcasts. To create an exclusive design, I had to find out how she uses podcast at this moment and
how I can improve this experience.
Darice & Podcasts
As mentioned before, Darice has lost her ability to hear sound. This means that she has experienced
sound before but lost it during her lifetime. I was surprised that in our meetings our part of the
conversation got translated by a typing tolk that transferred our audio speech into text, but Darice
was able to respond to that by speaking through her mic. This made testing very smooth and she got
all her feedback over to me loud and clear! Darice is a front-end developer and much more than that.
Because she is also an expert on accessibility and exclusive design. She knows all about design
principles and this shows in testing with prototypes. In our first meeting, my suspicion was
confirmed, she doesn't listen to podcasts but she reads the transcriptions. You might say, ofcourse
she does that! But if exclusive design has thought me anything, it is that you always have to verify
your thoughts because it might very well be different with this particular person. Some other points
of interest in getting to know Darice was that she has a love for the tv-show 'Friends' and has a
very good sense of humor.
Highlights
Font & sizes
In the podcast, you can change the font, font size and line height. I tested this with Darice to
find out which font size and line height she prefers while reading. Turned out, she preferred to
have the controls.
Simulating a podcast
I was looking for a wow-factor because just plain text but nicely designed was still just a bunch of
text and you might as well read an article or an interview. I came up with an idea to simulate a
podcast with text. My idea was to show dialogs over time so you would get the podcast feeling. The
test went smooth and Darice liked the idea, it needed some tweaks in the end though.
Nuances
I wanted to dive a bit deeper into nuances. How can I show context she can't hear or read? For
example silences during the podcast. Those aren't usually in the transcript but give context to the
situation and Darice told me in an earlier meeting she wanted to see the mistakes made in speech in
the transcripts. So the 'ehhssss' and the double words when someone is stuck in their talking
progress. I thought adding silences to the transcription would fit this thought process.
The Final Solution
The final solution is a podcast that you can personalize with a font to your liking, and the
preferred font size and line height. You can read the podcast at the same speed as it is being
spoken and there are added nuances to the text being spoken, like being surprised or silenced. I
also added speaker icons that are animated with lip sync, this way it's easy to see who does the
talking.
