My Role
As project lead, I was responsible for all communications with the client, preparing and managing the timeline, managing team members’ time and deliverables and leading all client meetings. This included:
1. Managing an in-home, moderated usability study
2. Overseeing a benchmark audit of the current website through automated and manual testing for accessibility
3. Interviewing subject matter experts and conducting secondary research to help with identifying how to translate existing personas into more inclusive personas
Engaging stakeholder participation
Before starting our audit and testing, we wanted to hear from the WAHBE multidisciplinary teams what their goals and objectives are for this project. The teams had already spent a lot of time and effort in trying to ensure that the website is accessible and inclusive, yet they knew there were some areas that still needed improvement.
Stakeholders shared thoughts and goals for the upcoming project
In-home usability study
We conducted an in-home usability study with 10 people of different abilities to test the usability and accessibility of the website. Our goals was to observe and study people working through different tasks and scenarios using their own devices and any assistive technology that they usually use in order to understand and improve the user experience and approach to accessible design. It was important that we have the participants observed in their own environment, using their own devices and their preferred assistive technology. We wanted the experience of interacting with the website be as realistic as possible. Each participant had a unique tech setup tailored to their needs.
I was responsible in creating the criteria and screener document to help the recruitment agency find the participants for our study. I worked closely with the agency to help with recruitment and timelines of the usability study. Because these were in-home studies, I coordinated all travels and studies for our UX researchers. Lastly, I worked with our UX researchers to analyze the data and put together recommendations and UX improvements based on our findings.
In-home usability studies
Criteria and screener document
Benchmark accessibility audit
We had three accessibility experts, one of them a native screen reader usability tester leverage both automated and manual testing to audit the current WA Healthplanfinder website. This allowed us to see how WAHBE's website rates on the Accessibility Maturity Model and help us determine next steps and approaches in the roadmap we created with the multidisciplinary team.
Interviews with subject matter experts
As part of our deliverables and recommendations, I conducted 6 interviews with local subject matter experts to hear from them why and how to make accessibility a focus of the design process and the agile development lifecycle. What I heard across the boarder is that accessibility is more than just compliance check lists. The notion of "accessibility" shouldn't be a separate concept and inclusive and accessible design should be embedded in the efforts of all teams. The philosophy driving all accessibility and inclusivity efforts should be to strive to design and develop a website that is truly usable by all people of all abilities without the need of adaptation or re-design. The best way to achieve this is by being intentional in diversifying the team to include people of different abilities and different backgrounds to create a truly inclusive workforce and product.
Interview with subject matter expert
Inclusive personas
Research and examples presented to the client around inclusive personas
