[Irl-dean] A wee conundrum

[brendan spillane]

Hi Mark,

I did study this back in college but id have to do some reading to
rfresh myself on the finer points.

However I recently had to help a friend on a college project which
specified that he had to create personas for a system he was designing
which would allow a user to perform basic banking facilities in a
public place. Transfer money etc

When we were creating personas which ranged from 20 - 70 years old,
who had money and who had a minimum technology proficiency we never
specified that any of them had a disability.

The reason for this is that they system had to be accessible both the
software and the hardware being used so the fact that one of the users
may have a disability was immaterial. We could have specified one of
the personas had a disability just like we might have specified that
they were 44 years old, we just didn't.

My 2 cents say that they are separate but linked things and both
methods of design "Design for All" and "good interaction design
practices" should be used throughout a design process.



Best,

Brendan


On 25/04/07, Barry McMullin <barry.mcmullin at dcu.ie> wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, Mark Magennis wrote:
>
> > I was just doing a bit of reading about interaction design and I
> > repeatedly came across the following statement about the value of
> > using personas:
> >
> > "defining and designing for a set of specific personas helps to avoid
> > the common practice of trying to design for all users".
> >
> > So is there a fundamental conflict between Design for All and good
> > interaction design practice? Or is Design for All not the same thing
> > as designing for all users?
> >
> > Discuss.
>
> Well ... for what it's worth, here are a few comments I made in
> response to a similar kind of query from a student recently (I'll
> omit the query itself, which was a bit cryptic!):
>
> ... I'm not quite sure I follow the point you were trying to make;
> but maybe it is that there is a tension between "universal
> design" and "individual accommodation"?  If so, I can understand
> how you might think that.  However, the way I think about it is
> that the two are actually complementary: "universal design" is a
> stance from the producer, or designer, or (in the web case)
> "server" side; and "individual accommodation" is a stance from
> the user or client side. Think of them as two overlapping
> circles, where the intersection shows successful access.  The
> intersection can be made bigger by increasing the size of either
> circle; but in both cases there will be a "diminishing returns"
> effect, where it gets progressively more difficult (and
> concretely more expensive) to improve access. So that the "best"
> outcome is usually achieved not by concentrating on either
> exclusively, but by making both as big as possible.
>
> Thus: make "mainstream" cars usable for the widest possible range
> of drivers, with "standard" adjustments (seat position, steering
> wheel angle etc.); build in "hooks" for special adaptations
> (interfaces for alternate controls, anchor points for adapted
> seating etc.); and *also* be prepared to modify cars and fit
> special adaptations to accommodate unique, individual users.
>
> In the web case, "universal design" means that web sites should
> be designed in accordance with (say) the W3C web content
> accessibility guidelines (WCAG); but "individual accommodation"
> is still absolutely necessary, and achieved through provision of
> browsers, media players, plugins etc. which conform to the W3C
> user agent accessibility guidelines (UAAG).  There is no actual
> conflict here: these are different parts of a single jigsaw (to
> hopelessly mix my metaphors).  Certainly, in advocating that web
> sites should conform to WCAG (or, in the US case, perhaps section
> 508) there is no suggestion that this somehow magically means
> that individual users will not still often need special,
> individualised, accommodations.  But it does mean that those
> accommodations are much better facilitated and generally much
> more functional.
>
> Just my (re-cycled) tuppence worth!
>
> Best - Barry.
>
>
>
> --
> Barry McMullin, Dublin City University
>   phone: +353-1-700-5432
>   web: http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/
>
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