Hello anyone who's watching this! My name is Maya Gupta. I'm a first year Masters
student at the University of California, Irvine and I'm going to be presenting
today on behalf of a team both at the University of California, Irvine and at
the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. This is my first ever conference
presentation, so it's nice to virtually meet you. I will start to share my screen
So, like I said, I'm presenting on behalf of a team, both at the University of
California, Irvine and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. It's a large
team comprised of students and professors, and our paper is titled:
Towards more Universal Wayfinding Technology: Navigation Preferences
Across Disabilities. Personal mobility is an important aspect of being an engaged
citizen. One needs to be mobile in order to navigate in and to important spaces
like hospitals, workspaces, and grocery stores or recreational spaces like
theaters and malls. I do want to acknowledge the fact that right now,
during the Covid pandemic, this has changed a lot, and a lot of these activities
must happen online. Most user-centered design methods do not include people
with disabilities, and inclusivity- oriented methods rarely recommend
studying more than one disability community at a time.
These practices run counter to the fact that 12.7% of the
U.S. population has one or more disabilities. So while the likelihood that
a technology will be used by a person from any one disability sub-population
may be relatively low, the likelihood of it being used by people with
disabilities in general is actually fairly high. As I said before, much of the
published accessibility research is siloed and focused on narrow
subpopulations. I've noted some of that work down below and in the references of
our paper. This is all fantastic and very necessary work. We would just like to
extend it and take a different approach by looking across disability groups.
Our two main research questions are: 'what navigational challenges do people with
various disabilities encounter' and 'how can navigation technology be more
effectively designed for needs across disability identities'.
In order to answer these questions, we conducted an interview study with 27
participants. Each participant was an older adult and/or had a vision, mobility,
hearing, and/or cognitive impairment. 17 were older adults. 14 had mobility
impairments, 17 had vision impairments, 4 had hearing impairments. and 2 had
cognitive impairments. The numbers add up to more than 27 because some
participants had more than one disability. Interviews were
semi-structured and about an hour each in length. We asked about strategies and
challenges employed and encountered while wayfinding. Our key finding from the
study is that people across and at the intersection of disability identities
have many shared mobility needs. Here's just an overview of some of the topics
that we cover in our finding section, like planning for familiar and
unfamiliar environments, misleading accessibility information, weather,
obstacles. Please refer to our paper to read more about them. Now I'm going to go a
little more in depth about a few of our findings, just to give an idea of some of
the topics we discussed. Disclaimer! Many of these findings are well-documented
in accessibility literature for specific disability populations, but
what's unique about our findings is that we show that these apply across
disability groups. First is crowds. Participants in all categories explained
that the presence of crowds causes many moving obstacles that can be difficult
to navigate around. Those with mobility impairments said that these moving
obstacles create a space where it's difficult to maneuver a wheelchair. Those
with vision impairments had shared that the noise of crowds disrupts their
ability to hear the echoes of their white cane and causes disorientation.
Visually impaired participants also said that they have encountered more cases of
others intrusively offering unwanted help during these situations, just
because of the sheer number of people around them. Participants with hearing
impairments found that the noise from crowds disrupts their functioning
hearing and can interfere with their hearing aids, causing a loss of that
sense. One participant with a cognitive impairment said that crowds can be
cognitively overwhelming and can cause a lapse in the ability
to functionally navigate. And finally older adults without these disabilities
expressed their desire to avoid crowds as a matter of aesthetic preference rather
than need; quieter, more scenic routes may be preferred even if they are longer.
Participants discussed the impact of various physical obstacles to their
navigation, but they often reacted with a lot of frustration when explaining their
experiences of encountering construction during navigation. So that
was a section unto itself. Many said that construction is very
disruptive since it's something one can't always plan for. The presence of
construction brings about many different problems. The first being that one's
planned route of travel is blocked. This means that one needs to backtrack and
find another accessible route, which creates an extra burden for the
navigator. Also, many participants with visual and/or hearing impairments
explained that the noise from the construction can impact their ability to
navigate, like with crowds, it can inhibit them from using their sense of hearing
for navigation - like listening for traffic or hearing audio instructions -
and it can disrupt the effectiveness of their hearing aids. And next is floor
layouts, both indoor and outdoor. Those across disability identities shared a
preference for grid layouts. Participants with vision impairments said that it's
simpler for them to navigate in a grid layout rather than one with curves and
foot traffic circles specifically because they share that it's difficult for them to
say straight, so a grid layout is a nice constraint. Navigating using cardinal
directions is also taught at orientation mobility of training. Those with mobility
impairments said that it's easier for them to maneuver their chair in grid
layout, providing that the layout has enough room for maneuvering. And older
adults without disabilities said that grid layouts are easier to understand and
more intuitive to navigate through. So what does this mean for wayfinding
design?
One of the main conclusions we drew from these interviews is that many challenges
and preferences were shared by people in various disability groups. However the
reasons behind these preferences varied. Like in the example about crowds that I
gave before, participants from all disability categories
said that they avoided crowds, but for different reasons. People in
wheelchairs said that it limits their ability to maneuver and there's a fear
of someone pushing them off their path. People with vision impairment said that
the sound limits their ability to hear the echo of their white cane. And people with
hearing impairments said that the sound can disrupt their hearing aids. So same
concern, different reasons. We also found that, although many preferences were
shared, some things that were preferable to some were challenges to others. And
sometimes an individual's own preferences were in tension. One example is
with ramps. People with mobility impairments stress their necessity, as
documented in plenty of research. People with vision and cognitive impairments said
that they were useful in the cases where participants had issues with balance as
a result of their disability. However wheelchair users explain that many ramps
can be dangerous. They shared stories of many wheelchair ramps that are not up to
code and are too steep. And older adults echoed this by saying that ramps are too
steep and can cause them to get winded sometimes. So, to reiterate, we found that
some preferences and needs transcend singular disability groups. So, this got
us thinking. What if representations of users, like personas, in accessible
wayfinding design centered about something other than disability. For instance,
instead of the 'blind navigator', it can be a persona about a navigator with
different preferences that are impacted because of their disability. This is not
to say that the aspects of e a person's experience that
are specific to their disability are not important, but there can be
characteristics that can explain the needs of a wide variety of people.
Through this we developed a wayfinding preference gap schema, inspired by
Michelle Williams and others, to encapsulate those cross-cutting
characteristics. On the screen are four sets of preferences: 'does the user prefer
human or technological assistance?', 'do they prefer a planned or
spontaneous route?', 'do they stick to tried-and-true technology, or do they
like to experiment with the latest devices?', 'do they want an enjoyable
experience, meaning one that's not only scenic and peaceful but also
has their infrastructure and route preference,s or do they want an efficient
experience?'. We see these preferences as more of a sliding scale than discrete
boxes. We applied this preference schema to participants in our study. Listed on the
screen are some of the most prevalent characterizations.
For example, nine participants were categorized as HPFEn,
meaning they prefer human assistance, to plan their routes ahead of time, familiar
technology, and and enjoyable experience even if it takes more time. Here's an
example persona that we developed using this preference schema. If you can see in the
traits section, there are four sliders that explain where Omar fits in this
schema. We encourage people to download and use these personas we made in class
exercises, and give us feedback. It takes more than just one small group of people
to make these kinds of things great! We have several design implications in the
paper, and you're more than welcome to go check them out, but the main idea that I
want to leave you with is this: when we only focus on the needs of one
disability group (or one marginalized group), we're ignoring other marginalized
groups that may have shared or conflicting needs. So, we're not getting
the whole picture. As for our next steps, we want to use these personas to develop
user scenarios. We then want to use those scenarios and personas to develop
prototype navigation technologies, which we'll then present to focus groups made
up of people with disabilities in order to receive feedback. Just as a final
thanks, we'd like to thank Toyota for sponsoring
this research. I also want to give a shout-out to everyone else who worked on
this project. I'm the only one presenting but there was a large group of students and
professors that contributed to this research. Finally here's my email if
you'd like to contact me or ask me any questions about this at any time.
Thank you for watching!