What is Google Access?
Google Access is a new accessibility system developed and designed by myself and 4 other group members during a 24-hour Hackathon hosted by Brainstation and Google.
With Google Access we aimed to provide users with an expanded accessibility profile across the entire suite of Google products, that they can save and personalize with any unique needs they may have.
Google Access includes the G-Access Toolbar which seamlessly allows users to fine-tune accessibility settings such as text size or colour contrast while using Google products, without having to navigate through their profile settings every time something must be adjusted.
Introduction
On Thursday, December 1, 2022, as part of a UX Design Bootcamp with BrainStation, I participated in a 24-hour Hackathonstravaganza that was co-hosted by Google. Our Challenge was to design and develop a digital solution within a provided problem space, then present our ideas to a panel of engineers and recruiters from Google, all within 24 hours of learning of the problem space.
The competition was between 9 interdisciplinary groups comprised of Web Developers, UX Designers, and Data Scientists. Our team consisted of 2 UX Designers being myself (Alan Tweedley) and Duff Isberg, Daniel Logan our lone Data Scientist, and 2 crazy talented Web Devs in Jack Sprinkle and Rebecca Collins.
We realized during that we were a team of 5 in comparison to everyone elses 6. An added layer of difficulty that our team had to contend with when considering the condensed time frame of this competition. Thankfully, we never felt the pressure of being down one brain, as communicating our ideas to each other was a calm and understanding process.
Google's Considerations
Google wanted us to find new ways to empower communities through access to information, education, and digital tools in order to increase accessibility to their current services.
Accessibility in this context refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments built for people who live with disabilities, with the goal of easing the challenges they may face.
Some examples of those challenges may include varying degrees of auditory, cognitive, physical, speech, and visual disabilities.
These concepts all working under the umbrella of Universal Design, which is the process of creating products that are usable by people with the widest possible range of abilities, operating within the widest possible range of situations.
Initial Ideation Storytime
The first thing I thought to check immediately after the parameters of our challenge had been set, was Google’s current options for accessibility settings in the “Google Account” dashboard. What I found was that the current accessibility options provided were very limited, and located on a card titled “General Preferences for the Web” that was situated a good long scroll down the “Personal Info” page of account settings.
My initial idea surrounded a redesign of the current “Personal Info” page, adding an accessibility card that was much easier to find. That would then lead to a more robust page detailing specific accessibility settings users could then use to personalize their experience when using Google products. Thinking within the parameters of a 24-hour hackathon, I thought it was important to decide on our direction early.
To me, this seemed like it hit the sweet spot between “meaningful change that would increase the usability of all Google products” AND “not too big in scope for a 24-hour time period” So I got ready to pitch the idea to my teammates during our first planning call together.
Persona & Task Flow Development
Our team’s other UX designer Duff and I developed a strong working relationship during the boot camp we were both taking part in at the time. We were excited to get to work with each other again and immediately got started on validating our initial idea through the research concepts we had been learning with Brainstation.
Working within the constraints of a 24-hour period, we thought it would be most efficient to present a proto-persona and a task flow to add context to our design decisions.
When developing our persona, we felt it was important that they represent the everyday users of Google products, who live every day with disabilities. This helped us identify frustrations that users would experience in a real-world setting by thinking through a scenario of their current use of Google products. We then displayed this information in a Task Flow to communicate our findings.
We hypothesized through this that if we were able to design a way for users to smoothly adjust their accessibility settings on the fly while using Google products, we would have solved for the problem space provided in a meaningful way. This led us directly to our digital solution…
Digital Solution Summary
Google Access is a new accessibility system designed and developed to be implemented across the entire suite of Google Products.
By adding an Accessibility tab to the core features of a Google user’s profile settings, we signal to users that this is an important aspect of their experience using Google products.
We built further upon that idea by designing an entirely new accessibility page, where users are able to customize their accessibility profile. The changes made here will allow users to save these accessibility settings so they can be implemented on every product across the Google suite.
During the design process, we began to realize that having to go into your Google profile to fine-tune settings across multiple Google products would be a tedious process that users would most likely ignore, significantly harming the usability of our design.
Solving this hypothesized frustration led us to the G-access Toolbar, a persistent element across all Google products that would allow users to fine-tune elements of their screen on the fly.
The Next Steps
The next steps in our design process would be crucial to the success of Google Access. We would conduct user testing, as well as accessibility and heuristic evaluations of our designs.
Iterating on our design through multiple rounds of testing and evaluations would provide us with a strong foundation to support the future development and implementation of Google Access.
Getting to work within a multi-disciplined team was one of the highlights of this experience. Our team looked to me for leadership and direction throughout, which helped build my confidence in my ability to get the best possible work out of a range of different types of personalities.
Managing creative collaborators in a team context is something I have many years of experience doing, but being able to succeed so strongly in this medium was incredibly validating. Everyone on our team was integral to our success. I felt like we were able to shine a light on each individual’s strengths very quickly, allowing us to focus on what each of us was great at, preventing as much wasted effort or conflict as possible.
Accessibility will never be a one size fits all problem. That’s why I believe that providing users the power to create their own personal normal, is essential to designing truly usable digital products. Keeping this thought in mind allows us to design and develop tools that will help people feel like the world in front of them, makes a bit more sense than it did before.