Who am I in this project?
Product Design
Who did I work with?
1 Project Lead, 3 Engineers, 1 Branding Designer, 1 Marketing Expert, Sponsored Schools & Museums
What tools did I use?
Figma, Adobe Creative Suite
What skills did I use/learn/gain?
Design Thinking, Workshop Facilitation, User Interview, User Testing, Brainstorming, Ideation, Sketching, Wireframing, Interface & Interaction
Previous
The Presidential Hackathon is an initiative designed by the Taiwanese government to demonstrate its emphasis on open data and innovative data use to address needs of national development and social needs. In 2020, the Presidential Hackathon will build on its success by challenging the team to use (open) data to enable the Sustainable Development Goals.
Approaching an interest in social design, I participated in the Presidential Hackathon 2020 as a side project. My team’s project, Art for All, underlines the importance of cultural equity and inclusion. I led overall user experience design including user interviews and resource research to find solutions for people who suffer from disabilities. As admiring art through sight is difficult for the visually-impaired, we built a web application based on web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) to compile descriptive videos of the art from all facilities in Taiwan. Our main objective is to lower the barrier and increase accessibility towards the arts. We are partnering with Pu Tian-Sheng Sculpture Museum to initiate our platform in June 2021 at the Centennial Birthday Anniversary of Pu Tian-Sheng, including a designated area for the visually-impaired to experience artwork.
Interview
In order to build a blind-friendly platform we have reached out to Taipei School for the Visually Impaired. Our interview focused on their experience of accessibility and inclusion of art. From their feedback, we noticed there are only few private museums provide/customize the exhibitions for the blind. Without government's assistance, it is relatively difficult to produce descriptive audio/video service due to its human resource and the market scale. Recognizing the great lack of resources among minority groups, such as visually-impaired people, we have started partnering with Taipei School for the Visually Impaired.
Problem statement
・Lack of support
Insufficient budget to construct accessible facilities.
・Lower impact
Not cost effective for the number of users.
・Social awareness
The minorities are not involved in the culture growth as much as the others.
Initial concept
Build an App that can detect the exact location of user in the museum. When the visually-impaired get close to the art work, it will remind them with the assistance of multiple sensors on site.
Constraints
・Device specifics
・Hard to apply to different space design
・Users’ physical and cognitive abilities
・Unavailable to integrate other systems
・Reliability requirements
・Maintainability requirements
・Technical constraints
・Limited capped budget
Final concept
Our team facilitate the project called A.F.A aiming to underline the importance of culture equity and inclusion. In response of the proposition from our Minister of Culture, “Culture is the foundation of a nation, and it is the people that create it”, we advocate to lower the barrier, accumulate the resource and enhance the connection of people.
A.F.A is a platform where you can access a descriptive video service from all facilities and share your opinions through text or audio to exchange and collaborate with others. With assistive technology advancements in recent years, the platform enables the blind to get involved with digital products more than before. A.F.A plays a key role to bring people together by the use of our tool to strengthen the community.
A.F.A considers not only meeting the technical criteria but the real needs of the users as well. We work with a team of visually handicapped testers to actively test web accessibility features. We prefer constantly approach to web accessibility on the concentration of users' needs than merely meeting the rules of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).
Personas
User journey map
Although we were not able to get into final-round selection the project is going to be continued with the support of Digital Minister @Taiwan.
Development milestones
Design highlights
Next step
・Validate design and iterate products to be more inclusive and user-centric by continuously testing in workshops and real exhibitions.
・Collaborate with museums to produce descriptive audio/video and upload them on our platform. We hope to invite artists themselves or descendants of deceased artists to create the audio/video in order to provide a more insightful and meaningful service.
・Engage existing volunteers in museum to get verified on the platform so the visually-impaired can reserve a time section for the real-time Audio guidance remotely or an audio tour in person.
・Expand the scope from the visually-impaired to the elders with interactive activities and workshops.
Stakeholders
My responsibilities
・Lead the Design process, articulate a vision for the product and ensure the team's work achieving that direction.
・Facilitate workshops and webinars to embrace people's voice and engagement while initiate culture integration conversation in the society.
・Ensure a good fit between product, user and the market by interviewing visual impaired people and NGO specialists.
・Take conceptual ideas and define them into an useful and valuable product experience.
・Thinking in terms of design systems and making rational design decisions.
・Constantly re-evaluate the team's work and search for opportunities to achieve the goal with limited resource and tight schedule.
・Frequently communicate with engineers to make sure the concept is aligned.
・Leverage problem-solving and communication skills in the project.
・Incorporate agile team work.
Activities
Workshop
Workshop
Demo day
Online webinar (Attendance rate: 80%)
Chia Ling Chen
UX Design・UI Design・Product Design
Open to relocate.
Thank you for your time and attention.
If you are interested in discussing further about my work, please get in touch with me at chialing83@gmail.com
If you are interested in discussing further about my work, please get in touch with me at chialing83@gmail.com
