Role: UX Researcher and Designer
Timeline: 28 Weeks
Project Type: Capstone Project
Team Type: Individual Project
Google Maps “Accessible Places” prioritizes information about accessibility when the user is searching or viewing a place.
But the feature is not sufficient for several reasons.
That’s why it's crucial to ensure that accurate accessibility information is readily available. This empowers people with disabilities to avoid dehumanizing experiences by steering clear of inaccessible environments.
According to the World Health Organization an estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. This represents 16% of the world’s population, or 1 in 6 of us. If Google could provide accurate and detailed information about the accessibility of places they would be able to increase their engagement by helping 16% of the population avoid inaccessibility.
Focusing on empathy, observation, personal engagement, and problem solving I used the POEMS framework to conduct primary research.
POEMS is an observational research framework used to make sense of the elements present in context. It stands for People, Objects, Environment, Messages and Services. I learned this method from the book “101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization” by Vijay Kumar.
Then analyzed the the data using the DIKW Pyramid method.
After analyzing the data I came up with 2 main insights that drove the next steps of my design process.
We should aim to limit the number of times disabled people plan to visit a place and then end up having to leave or having a miserable time.
"It can be really frustrating, especially if you make plans with a large group or people you don’t know very well"
"the difference between someone being able to enjoy themselves at an establishment or leaving soaked in their own piss. And that’s never fun"
"I personally don’t believe in blanket calling places “accessible”, as everyone has different needs and the majority of places aren’t able to meet that"
Need to figure out a way to automate accessibility needs on Google. Also make it easy to hear the opinions of disabled people.
"It is disturbing some of the stories they have told me about inaccessibility and accessibility features being implemented in such a way that it is actively dangerous"
"…but the best thing any business can do is be honest about its provisions, and stay as open-minded as possible towards accommodations for all :)"
Using the information from my primary research I created 3 personas, 1 current user journey and 1 corrected user journey for each.
I categorized information into, easy to find, buried and can’t be found.
The test involved 5 participants who completed the test in the same order. They were shown 2 restaurants each and were tasked with finding 3 pieces of information per restaurant (1 easy, 1 buried and 1 can’t find.)
Half of participants went to the about page because of the “about tab” and the other half clicked on the “about teaser”.
When information was missing participants started to jump to conclusions.
“..it doesn't give all the information but I assume that wheelchair accessible parking lot being a no, would mean he couldn’t enter the restaurant”
Most participants described info in reviews as easy or pretty easy to find but most participants found looking for info about page challenging.
“I mean yeah I think there's a good amount of information but these two restaurants, it's not uniform”
4/5 participants are confused by the lack of consistency of information.
It is currently up to the establishment to provide information to Google. This means information about accessibility is often not available. When information is not available it just doesn’t show up in the about page. That’s what causes inconsistent information.
For this prototype test I created 1 version of missing information with the current Google Maps design and 1 with my placeholder design.
Without the placeholder 50% felt confident and 50% felt like they could have missed information
“Yes because it says missing information and then it lists exactly what is missing"
Now I wanted to test more features that addressed insights from the usability test and observational research. So I created a flowchart to show how all the features that would be implemented eventually.
I split up testing all the features into 2 prototype tests so I could focus on each feature and get a clear understanding of each one individually.
Information about accessibility should be prioritized on the page if the user has selected the “accessible places” option. It’s important to have multiple ways of going to the same location.
The user experience of alerting the restaurant is intuitive which will encourage users to report missing or incorrect information.
As soon as placeholder information was “hidden” in a dropdown, users described finding information hard. People look for information by scrolling and reading headers, use this as a tool for an effective design.
Insights about Reviews
Reviews are a solution to missing and/or incorrect information. Even though users described having to look through reviews to find information as difficult and missing information as frustrating and annoying, all users found the correct information and felt confident in it.
Reformatting reviews to weed out “irrelevant” information.
After testing I realized that I could benefit from both tags and headings when sorting reviews.
Planning was probably my biggest ongoing challenge. In school I was always given timelines and instructions for each step. Before doing this project, I thought schedules had to be followed exactly once they were made. So, I felt a lot of pressure to make the perfect schedule, which I learned does not exist. So, I learned how to make structure my project that allowed for “risks.” I came up with a system that allowed for changes. I used a risk plan and factored those into the deadlines I made for myself. If I were to get sick, I was able to move the deadline to a later date because the original deadline allowed for that.
I thought that I would be able to figure it out as I went along, and that planning wasn’t essential. Because of my lack of planning, I didn’t know what I was testing for, and I felt confused about the purpose of the test. This caused me to start thinking of what I thought the insights “should be.” After conducting the test, I had realized that I needed to remind myself what I was testing for. This made me make sure to always create a structure before I did any sort of testing or research. I think there is a theme here for me, I was intimidated by making plans. I tried to avoid it and it created more stress for me even though I thought it would create less. This project has really helped me learn how to make efficient and realistic plans.
Throughout my years at school, I always thought about the user first, my goal is to help marginalized people through design solutions. When I chose Google as the company I wanted to design for, I knew they had some efforts in creating solutions for inaccessibility, but I didn’t think much of it. As this project went on, I realized that thinking about Google and the needs of Google as a company are important. The reason designers can make designs and launch them all over the world is because of these companies. They go hand in hand and that is something I truly hadn’t considered.
Having detailed and accurate information about accessibility needs would take this design to the next level. This would impact the headings in the accessibility page as well as the tags in the review page. I would conduct interviews with people with different disabilities to find out what information is helpful, what I’m missing and what information is the most important.
