Background: There is currently a massive accessibility deficit for those living with aphasia. We conducted interviews with aphasia patients and literature reviews to understand the barriers and facilitators for aphasia patients. Based on our findings, we have created a tool for aphasia patients to find business venues that suit their needs.
My Role: I played key roles in conducting literature review, organizing the findings, and translating them into designs. I performed qualitative analysis on data gathered from interviews and research to create design suggestions accommodating of aphasia symptoms. Guided by principles of compassionate design, I created these wireframes of aphasia-friendly interfaces.
Literature findings revealed that aphasia patients struggle with interfaces in which similar clicking patterns lead to different functions. To minimize confusion, we placed each function into a different corner of the screen.
Everything has a visual icon, since aphasia patients struggle with reading and fare much better with images.
The preferences are compiled based on the most common facilitators that patients and literature informed us of.
Patients also told us that typing and spelling are sometimes barriers, so we added a clickable suggestions pop-up that will minimize the amount of typing and spelling required of the user.
Once again, every option comes with a visual icon.
Results are color coded by accessibility based on preferences chosen by the user, which facilitates visual processing. Icons indicating which accessibility features the venue supports are also displayed. Additionally, users can choose to organize the results based on multiple criteria.
According to aphasia patients and our literature review, people with aphasia struggle with ordering, particularly when under pressure in loud, busy settings.
To overcome this, many patients practice speaking their orders beforehand. To facilitate this process, we've created a tool that takes voice input from the user and provides feedback on their spoken order. Users can keep trying until they get it right, and have the option of listening to the entire order or just words that they're struggling with.
A huge barrier that almost every patient and research paper discussed is lack of understanding of their condition from staff.
We've created a screen that gives a brief definition of aphasia and helpful pointers for users to show staff in order to facilitate their interactions. This screen is designed to be customizable, most likely by a caregiver, since each case of aphasia has unique variations. For those who don't have a caregiver, this default description is given.
