Universal Design
For the first step we chose three personas with different characteristics. The base for choosing these personas was to make them as unique as possible, trying to avoid stereotypes and our own characteristics as well. These are the three different personas we made for the first step:
- Persona 1 is from Germany with an African ethnicity. This persona is a 38-year-old wheelchair user, a female with a master’s degree.
- Persona 2 is from Norway with a Sami ethnicity. This persona is a 70-year- old deaf man. He has no degree or level of education
- Persona 3 is from the Philippines with a mixed ethnicity of native filipino and hispanic. This persona is a 21-year-old female, and has only one arm. She has a high school education.
Further on, we picked the one that seemed the most different from all of us in the group. This is Persona 3’s life. We chose Maria Cruz because of certain similarities with our own lives, but at the same time, vastly different obstacles in everyday life. The ability to both see similarities, but at the same time emphasize with differences makes it approachable to relate to this person.
More information about a dilemma- Name:
- Maria Cruz
- Country:
- Living in USA, Boston, Massachusetts
- Household:
- Lives with three other exchange students from other countries
- Family:
- Two younger sisters, parents and grandparents in the Philippines
- She likes:
- Soccer/football, gaming, photography
- She doesn't like:
- Martial arts, rock music, rock climbing
- A Day in their life:
- Going to MiT and working a part-time job at the bowling alley
Maria Cruz is a 21-year-old hispanic filipino living in the United States for her exchange year on MiT. She is currently living in Boston with three other exchange students from other countries. The rest of her family is still living in the Philippines and she has regular contact with them. When it comes to modern technology, it can be challenging for Maria to use computers since computers are an essential part of modern life. She often experiences barriers in relation to the design and functionality of this technology. Here are ten examples of Maria’s barriers in the daily life with computer technology:
- Taking notes in class on the computer, can’t write fast enough
- Typing and moving mouse at the same time
- Getting the computer from a bag
- Opening the computer with only one hand
- Plugging in charger and cables
- Understanding how to upgrade her stationary PC manually
- Websites without translation makes it difficult without a great knowledge of english
- Games on computers typically need two hands
- Difficulty with using keyboard shortcuts
- Too many distractions on the keyboard
With some small adjustments these barriers can easily be solved. We’ve looked at a couple of them below:
- Solutions to the barrier of taking notes in the classroom could be recording devices on the computer. Speech to text program
- Joystick feature with options to both move and type on a digital keyboard
- The zip-lock with one hand could be solved by a different type of opening and locking the bag. One solution could be velcro, even though velcro would not be as safe for keeping the items within the bag
- Opening the computer with one hand is possible though it is more difficult. Tablets could be a solution
- Wireless or magnetic charging could be implemented to computers to make it less of a hassle
- All new components could be made to be color coded with PC’s to see where the newly bought parts belong, this would streamline the upgrading process and generally make it easier to understand the inside of your PC
- Computer applications that automatically translate websites can be improved to make its translations more precise
- Games could integrate a “one-hand-mode”, where they could use a type of eye-tracker so that only one hand would be necessary to play the game
- Easier shortcuts will be the solution for this problem. We can do this by customizing the keyboard with custom shortcuts
- Easier design made as a one-handed keyboard, fewer buttons but the same functions (see: evolution of tv remote controls). Touch screen is another solution for this problem
