visual impairment
CO-DESIGN
To get more insight in the life of our co-designer it was of importance to do some activities to gather more information. The so-called co-design methods used are the day in the life timeline and the brainstorming session.
Timeline
Together with the specific user we set up a timeline of her daily life. Here she explained what she did, and we put it in a chart. In this timeline she indicated problem areas or areas which cost more time than she liked.
Looking at her daily life it became apparent that using products with a touchpad, rather than physical buttons, were a big annoyance and difficulty. Next to this our co-designer struggled with finding and or recognizing products in the freezer and refrigerator. Lastly a big struggle was cooking, our co-designer likes to be independent, but the time spent cooking because of this is about two hours (for dinner).
Brainstorm
The second method used was brainstorming. We planned an online brainstorming session with her and decided to together find some ideas. First, the problem situations were discussed. Looking at the mindmap this is shown by categories such as social life, hygiene, maintenance, kitchen, can’t find, reading displays and navigation. With every category we asked what she found difficult or how this specific occasion played out.
This was quite insightful as some aspects we thought she would have difficulties with, were no problem areas at all. For example, ironing, she mentioned that this was easy to do for her. Other areas we did not expect any struggles, but our co-designer struggled with were cutting her nails.
Furthermore, in the brainstorming session it became apparent that the can’t find category just like in the daily life timeline was a difficulty. Finding things in the cupboards, fridge or even the right clothes took a long time.
By doing these methods we really understood the specific user rather than just guessing. The timeline and the brainstorm session gave us many aspects to think about and start ideation. This ideation was quite diverging, as the problem areas were diverse at this point in the project.