While I think that the majority of us who had tried to navigate the User Inyerface faced quite a bit of frustration, both Chris and I had defaulted to seeing another person walk through the game. He had watched a Youtuber, Kittrz, do a speedrun of the game to see where players usually go wrong and how to successfully bypass obstacles to get to the end of the game. I think we both leaned towards watching somebody else navigate the remainder of the game, rather than devoting more time troubleshooting. 

Evidently, the purpose of the game was so that users were not able to intuitively move through the process and struggled nearly at every step – regardless of how small the step may be. Chris’s analysis through a disability vernacular, is a perspective that I didn’t think about deeply enough. Chris’s point prompted me to think about user design in a broader sense. The game really demonstrates how frustrating design might be for individuals with a disability, who struggle when user interfaces are not accommodating. That frustration for design can go well beyond web-based pages and even front facing user platforms, but also to our physical tools and technologies.  

This line of thinking reminded me of a TikTok I watched (I desperately tried to find it for this reflection but it’s unfortunately lost in the abyss). A young woman in a wheelchair was saying that her school was able to offer her some really “fancy” assistive technology. This support was offered through applications and platforms, such as advanced audio recording and transcription services. Which is great and all….BUT, most of the doors in the buildings she needed to access for her university classes were not wheelchair accessible! Accessibility to the building through door-opening buttons and elevators are the designs that she needed to succeed in her learning. That is to say that accessibility and design is not a one-size fits all. I took a UX/UI design course through Google and the number one thing they stressed was that user design needs to be made for the universal user, “universal usability refers to the design of information and communications products and services that are usable for every citizen” (Wikipedia). Ultimately, this exercise shows that a keen eye for detail and a high-level of user consideration is needed to create user interfaces. 

References

Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, July 24). Universal usability. Wikipedia. Retrieved March 29, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_usability