Use this post for interesting news from MWC:
Monday 16th opening
- MiFi hotspot from Novatel
BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones - Tuesday 17th
- a good demo of the projector phone, interview with Nokia, demo of new N97
On friday 13th feb Arun and myself went to the RNIB office in London for a workshop on ‘Tools for Inclusive Design’.
John Clarkson from the University of Cambridge Engineering Design Centre did an excellent presentation on Designing a more inclusive world - hopefully the slides should be made available soon so we can share them, it would also make a great Wednesday lunchtime talk!
We also did some practical exercises in groups, using Personas to evaluate the design of some cameras - 2 digital cameras and a disposable camera. The exercises assessed the cameras from a usability point of view (for example one of the personas currently had a broken arm) and according to demands made on vision, thinking and dexterity abilities.
The fundamental message from the day was:
There were some interesting practical examples given, such as: lever taps are much easier to use for people with dexterity issues such as arthritis, but work for the rest of us when our hands are slippery with soap; the same goes for cordless kettles which were actually designed for arthritis sufferers but became the standard for the rest of us.
The engineering design centre have created a number of tools to aid us in thinking about models of interaction from a functional ability point of view (such as vision, hearing, thinking, communication, locomotion, dexterity).
You can find their software impairment simulators in the links and resources section of their website: