Analysis.

As our co designer belongs to the visually impaired community, he resorts to technology and techniques that help him in his daily life. The collages below were made to give us a good idea of what we need to focus on and in what certain direction we need to be heading.

During the co-design sessions, we learned that technology is really involved in our co designer’s daily life and has an impact on it as he works and studies. He mentioned that he faces difficulties writing notes and making agendas during work meetings and he also has an issue organising and finding back his stuff.

Therefore, the group made the collages below which includes technology that revolves around and helps with the issues the codesigner mentioned.technologies such as applications for visually impaired people that helps them read and write down easily, and devices that helps with the issues well. A collage including people from the visually impaired community using assistive technologies to help them with daily tasks such as writing and reading was also made to help give us an idea of the product we need to design and also to give a general idea of the situation at hand.

From the two above collages the following can be concluded: most products that are on the market of assistive technologies for the visually impaired community are mostly digital and if not they rely heavily on the ability of the user to read braille. Alternative applications use voice input. These conclusions are relevant to the project as these technologies are those that are available to solve the client’s current problem, however, the client can only read slowly in braille and does not want a solution that uses verbal input as they are not always accurate and they cannot talk through meetings to the note taking device. For these reasons the solution to the current problem will be unique to the market by not making use of these inputs to suit the specific user.

Collages

The collages below are a visual representation of keywords that describe the co designer as a person and how he spends his time.

Luke is a 29-year-old male who lives, studies and works in the Netherlands. He has two children (both boys) who are one- and four-years-old and is currently living with them and his girlfriend. Luke has limited free time but when he finds himself with a gap he enjoys walking, hiking, going to concerts and listening to podcasts and audiobooks (he is a particular fan of Stephen King.)

When Luke was 21-years-old he was diagnosed with Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON.) Luke was in between studies at the time and had just returned from traveling when he noticed blurring in his vision in both eyes. LHON is a disease that causes the optic nerve to deteriorate and within two months Luke lost his vision and now only has 5% left. He is able to see blurry outlines but not details, for example, he can recognise gestures but not expressions. After his diagnosis Luke went to a clinic to learn how to cook, read and use a computer. He now mainly uses audio feedback from digital technologies to retrieve information.

Before Luke’s diagnosis he studied technology but he is currently studying Business administration. He is also actively involved with the visually impaired community and worked for some time at the MuZIEum in Nijmegen which creates awareness around how it is to be blind. This is also where he met his girlfriend. Luke’s visual impairment has become a part of him over the past eight years and its implications have become his norm. He misses being able to get visual feedback from people’s emotional expressions when talking to them and not being able to read frustrates him sometimes.

During the week Luke works half the time at home, half the time in the office and goes to his educational institution once a week. He likes working at home because he can sleep in until five minutes before a meeting but also likes to be at the office because he finds himself to be more motivated.

Detailed explanation of the context of the problem

While asking our user which problems he faced, he kept mentioning how he cannot easily write down a note or a to-do, which makes him forget a lot of things. In order to replace the function of a normal notebook, he uses two different methods for note taking. The first way, he writes emails to himself, and the second way he writes things down in Word.

During the second Co-Design session, the user was asked to conduct different tasks. These correspond to the ones he carries out for taking notes.

The first task is writing a note for himself. When our user needs to write a fast note and be able to find it back later, he writes an email to himself. For this, he first has to find the outlook app on his computer, start a new email, give it a heading and choose his own email address. After that he can finally start writing the note, and when he is finished he can send it. With this way of note taking, at the end of each day, he should listen to every email he has written to himself and categorise that information in a logical way. However, he usually does not carry out this last step due to this taking up a lot of time each day, so it is really difficult for him to find any notes back afterwards, considering that if he does not remember the heading, he just has to listen to the heading of all the emails that are in his inbox.

The second task for note taking that he carried out was opening an already existing word file that he used earlier that day for note taking. For this, he first searched for the Open Office application, opened it and with his screen reader he slowly navigated through the app. After a while, he finally found the file he was looking for and opened it.

During these activities, we noticed different problems and challenges he faced.

Both these applications are well adapted for people with a visual impairment, they are programmed in such a way that the screen reader can navigate well through the screen and communicate this to the user. However they are designed for regular users so they have many different functions (such as different font types) which are not necessary for a blind user, and can actually make the application excessively complex.
When the user wants to write down some quick notes during a meeting, he depends on the screen reader of his laptop. So he would have to interrupt and stop the meeting or stop listening in order to open a platform to write a note down. This usually stops him from taking notes, which causes him to forget things he has to do or discuss.
After taking a note, another problem he faces is that he cannot find a lot of notes back. In order to categorise everything well it takes a lot of time and many steps, and for that he also depends on his screen reader.