Design for Dyslexics, Part One
As designers, every day we think about what challenges our users face, and choose solutions that can help them. This week, UX designer Andrew Zusman will tell us about the problem faced by dyslexics around the world: the problem of lack of perception of reality, which is so obvious to many of us.
We have 52 cards of the playing deck and the task is to sort them in some way. We can make two piles of them, spreading them on red and black, and leave it like that. We could also divide these 2 piles into 4 suits. Complicating the approach, it would be possible to sort the cards in each of the 4 sets by par from ace to king.
Suppose we gave these decks of cards to a random person. We can expect that he will be able to pull out a particular card.
For example, if you ask to pull out the ace of spades, then he or she will be able to do this easily by turning over the decks and determining the sort order. This is a clear expectation, but it is based on the assumption that the perception of the person who is looking for the map and the sorter are identical.
')
What happens if he cannot determine the sort order? What happens if they can determine the sorting order, but the search for a specific map will take extra time?
For dyslexics all over the world, this is a real challenge. The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity says that 20% of the population has dyslexia, but designers and designers are generally poorly prepared to create products adapted for dyslexics. In this article we will look at my research and what I was able to learn about dyslexia. In the second part, we will discuss 5 universal design principles from the North Carolina Universal Design Center, which I believe can be incorporated into any design process, to improve the design for dyslexics.
Dyslexia is a cognitive impairment of reading , due to which the brain has difficulty transforming words into sounds and vice versa. As a result, reading becomes difficult. Due to cognitive difficulties in recognizing writing, many dyslexics can confuse similar words in their spelling: the word "CAT" may not differ for them from the word "CURRENT". Since dyslexia affects a large percentage of the population, it can manifest itself in various ways. For example, in one person the disease may cause a slight difficulty in reading, while the other does not know how to cope with the simplest sentences.
Statistical reports show a varying percentage of people with dyslexia among the world's population. The British Dyslexia Association says about 10% of people with dyslexia , while the Institute for Dyslexia Research in America claims that this figure is 15%.
Regardless of the exact number of patients, the fact remains that this is just a huge number of people. The number of blind users simply fades in comparison with this, but most likely most designers understand much better how to do certain things for the blind than for dyslexic patients.
My own interest in studying dyslexia from the point of view of UX began when I met Francois Roshdy, information architect at the Swedish company Border Crossing Media. He is dyslexic. When I asked him about how his disorder affects his work, he replied that he perceives all the information in parts before combining it into a general idea. In other words, if Francois is given our deck of cards, he will see in it 52 decks of one card before he starts analyzing the deck as one set and defining the sorting algorithm. Inspired by Roshdy's explanation, I decided to learn more about dyslexia. I talked about 35 dyslexics and asked them how they interact with web and mobile applications. The result was, I believe, one of the largest ever existed studies in the field of building interfaces for dyslexics.
I managed to identify 2 main reasons because of which previous studies do not reach an acceptable level. The first is that research has focused on graphic design. This is undoubtedly an important aspect of this area, but graphic design is only a part of what human-system interaction is. Typographers, in particular, sought to create fonts that would be less difficult for dyslexics to read when reading. In addition, graphic design guidelines were released, which are included in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 / WCAG 2.0 collection of standard guidelines for improving web content accessibility . They describe how to work with text and contrast. It really helped me in the study, but this is only part of the puzzle.
The second reason for the irrelevance of previous studies was the fact that they were carried out several years ago, and our sphere has changed a lot since then. There have been several attempts to develop guidelines for creating interfaces for dyslexics (formally, based on the few studies that existed at the time), but this happened before the distribution of typical interface elements on mobile and tablets . The type and form of human interaction with interfaces develops as quickly as users learn to use new interface solutions, so they face new trends every day. As a result, guidelines, which were works of art in 2010, are unlikely to be refined to the required quality level in 2014 and later. Even if these studies covered the whole range of UX problems in terms of dyslexia, they would already be morally obsolete.
When I began my own research, my goal was to understand how to improve the approach to creating products for dyslexics. I started with a series of interviews conducted with Roshdy, which helped me understand exactly what problems dyslexic patients face, what questions to ask and where to find additional information. With it, I formed 10 questions I wanted to ask:
As a doctor who treats the patient as a whole, rather than individual symptoms, I tried to find out not only about the interaction of dyslexics with digital products, but also about dyslexics themselves. Was dyslexia something they were ashamed of or were they happy to be like that? How does this change their behavior? Approximately 35 people answered my questions. I found most of them through facebook groups for dyslexics or parents of dyslexic children. The administrators of these groups were happy to help me with the survey. Many respondents were happy to talk with me outside the survey and give more detailed information, provide links to other thematic resources. After 2 months, I had a huge amount of data, and I was able to identify several trends and approaches, as well as 3 main ideas.
The first thing I learned: dyslexia manifests itself in people in many different ways. Some say it is easy for them to read, but hard to write; others - that everything is exactly the opposite. There are people whose disorder has spread to mathematics; numbers are the biggest difficulty for them. Some explained dyslexia to their clumsiness. What seemed only a problem with words actually goes far beyond the limits of reading.
As I wrote above, the previous discussion on dyslexia in web design focused on improving typography or color contrast. This does not greatly solve the problem of using e-commerce sites. Just imagine that you do not know how much money you will spend on the next purchase or that you are not sure of the correctness of the written address. One dyslexic wrote to me: “I’m afraid to pay anything via the Internet and withdraw money from an ATM (!)”.
The second thing I learned: some see their diagnosis as an advantage. There is no cure for dyslexia, but many are finding ways to cope with the disorder or their own approaches to the process, which allows them to overcome learning difficulties. An illustrative example of dyslexic success in business is Richard Branson [eng: 1 , 2 ], one of the managing owners of the holding company Virgin Group, whose difficulties caused by frustration were accurately recorded in the autobiography [book “ To hell with everything, take and do ”].
In his recent book, “ David and Goliath: Losers, the Dregs of the Art of Fighting Giants ”, Malcolm Gladwell uses dyslexia as an example of “desired difficulty” [ eng ] in an attempt to show, how these things can be a source of moving forward for some people. Gladwel cites the example of successful Dyslexic entrepreneurs who explain their success with dyslexia. In particular, he talks about Gary Kone, president of the investment bank conglomerate Goldman Sachs. It seemed strange to me, so I began to ask a question about the benefits of dyslexia. Most dyslexics explained that their way of solving problems was different from their colleagues. They said that they could “put everything together” in their heads, not like other people, and this undoubtedly was their undeniable advantage.
Finally, I asked the respondents to explain which websites, applications, and devices were convenient and helpful to them in life. The answers were very different from each other. I expected to see obvious trends that would describe what works in the field of web and mobile applications, and what does not, but there is no one solution. I noticed only one general trend: the 5 basic principles of universal design are useful when designing for dyslexics. Key points here: flexibility, simplicity, focus on information, accounting for user errors, sensible use of certain elements. The application of these principles will be discussed in the second part.
Dyslexia is mistakenly considered a learning problem. Although in a broad sense, this is so, I met many users who tried to explain to me that the manifestations of dyslexia can be very different.
Not every designer, having read this article, will immediately be puzzled by the question of design for dyslexics, but I hope to convey the idea of ​​how important it is to take into account dyslexics in the design process. I believe that the realization of this is the first step in improving interfaces, not only for people with disorders, but also for all users in general.
Translation of the original article “ Designing for Dyslexia, Part 1 ” by Andrew Zusman, published on the UX Booth website. Translated and published with the permission of the author. Editing by Maria Yorema and Stella Hon .
We have 52 cards of the playing deck and the task is to sort them in some way. We can make two piles of them, spreading them on red and black, and leave it like that. We could also divide these 2 piles into 4 suits. Complicating the approach, it would be possible to sort the cards in each of the 4 sets by par from ace to king.
Suppose we gave these decks of cards to a random person. We can expect that he will be able to pull out a particular card.
For example, if you ask to pull out the ace of spades, then he or she will be able to do this easily by turning over the decks and determining the sort order. This is a clear expectation, but it is based on the assumption that the perception of the person who is looking for the map and the sorter are identical.
')
What happens if he cannot determine the sort order? What happens if they can determine the sorting order, but the search for a specific map will take extra time?
For dyslexics all over the world, this is a real challenge. The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity says that 20% of the population has dyslexia, but designers and designers are generally poorly prepared to create products adapted for dyslexics. In this article we will look at my research and what I was able to learn about dyslexia. In the second part, we will discuss 5 universal design principles from the North Carolina Universal Design Center, which I believe can be incorporated into any design process, to improve the design for dyslexics.
Definition of dyslexia
Dyslexia is a cognitive impairment of reading , due to which the brain has difficulty transforming words into sounds and vice versa. As a result, reading becomes difficult. Due to cognitive difficulties in recognizing writing, many dyslexics can confuse similar words in their spelling: the word "CAT" may not differ for them from the word "CURRENT". Since dyslexia affects a large percentage of the population, it can manifest itself in various ways. For example, in one person the disease may cause a slight difficulty in reading, while the other does not know how to cope with the simplest sentences.
Statistical reports show a varying percentage of people with dyslexia among the world's population. The British Dyslexia Association says about 10% of people with dyslexia , while the Institute for Dyslexia Research in America claims that this figure is 15%.
Regardless of the exact number of patients, the fact remains that this is just a huge number of people. The number of blind users simply fades in comparison with this, but most likely most designers understand much better how to do certain things for the blind than for dyslexic patients.
Interest in dyslexia
My own interest in studying dyslexia from the point of view of UX began when I met Francois Roshdy, information architect at the Swedish company Border Crossing Media. He is dyslexic. When I asked him about how his disorder affects his work, he replied that he perceives all the information in parts before combining it into a general idea. In other words, if Francois is given our deck of cards, he will see in it 52 decks of one card before he starts analyzing the deck as one set and defining the sorting algorithm. Inspired by Roshdy's explanation, I decided to learn more about dyslexia. I talked about 35 dyslexics and asked them how they interact with web and mobile applications. The result was, I believe, one of the largest ever existed studies in the field of building interfaces for dyslexics.
I managed to identify 2 main reasons because of which previous studies do not reach an acceptable level. The first is that research has focused on graphic design. This is undoubtedly an important aspect of this area, but graphic design is only a part of what human-system interaction is. Typographers, in particular, sought to create fonts that would be less difficult for dyslexics to read when reading. In addition, graphic design guidelines were released, which are included in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 / WCAG 2.0 collection of standard guidelines for improving web content accessibility . They describe how to work with text and contrast. It really helped me in the study, but this is only part of the puzzle.
The second reason for the irrelevance of previous studies was the fact that they were carried out several years ago, and our sphere has changed a lot since then. There have been several attempts to develop guidelines for creating interfaces for dyslexics (formally, based on the few studies that existed at the time), but this happened before the distribution of typical interface elements on mobile and tablets . The type and form of human interaction with interfaces develops as quickly as users learn to use new interface solutions, so they face new trends every day. As a result, guidelines, which were works of art in 2010, are unlikely to be refined to the required quality level in 2014 and later. Even if these studies covered the whole range of UX problems in terms of dyslexia, they would already be morally obsolete.
My research
When I began my own research, my goal was to understand how to improve the approach to creating products for dyslexics. I started with a series of interviews conducted with Roshdy, which helped me understand exactly what problems dyslexic patients face, what questions to ask and where to find additional information. With it, I formed 10 questions I wanted to ask:
- When have you been diagnosed with dyslexia?
- How would you describe your dyslexia and its effects on others?
- What difficulties do you have because of dyslexia?
- What are the potential benefits of your dyslexia?
- Which websites or mobile applications do you find convenient to use?
- What makes them comfortable?
- Which websites or mobile apps do you find difficult to use?
- What makes them so complicated?
- What would you like people to know about dyslexia?
- If you have any comments or additional information, please write it below.
As a doctor who treats the patient as a whole, rather than individual symptoms, I tried to find out not only about the interaction of dyslexics with digital products, but also about dyslexics themselves. Was dyslexia something they were ashamed of or were they happy to be like that? How does this change their behavior? Approximately 35 people answered my questions. I found most of them through facebook groups for dyslexics or parents of dyslexic children. The administrators of these groups were happy to help me with the survey. Many respondents were happy to talk with me outside the survey and give more detailed information, provide links to other thematic resources. After 2 months, I had a huge amount of data, and I was able to identify several trends and approaches, as well as 3 main ideas.
# 1: Dyslexia is manifested in people in many different ways.
The first thing I learned: dyslexia manifests itself in people in many different ways. Some say it is easy for them to read, but hard to write; others - that everything is exactly the opposite. There are people whose disorder has spread to mathematics; numbers are the biggest difficulty for them. Some explained dyslexia to their clumsiness. What seemed only a problem with words actually goes far beyond the limits of reading.
As I wrote above, the previous discussion on dyslexia in web design focused on improving typography or color contrast. This does not greatly solve the problem of using e-commerce sites. Just imagine that you do not know how much money you will spend on the next purchase or that you are not sure of the correctness of the written address. One dyslexic wrote to me: “I’m afraid to pay anything via the Internet and withdraw money from an ATM (!)”.
# 2: Dyslexia can be an advantage
The second thing I learned: some see their diagnosis as an advantage. There is no cure for dyslexia, but many are finding ways to cope with the disorder or their own approaches to the process, which allows them to overcome learning difficulties. An illustrative example of dyslexic success in business is Richard Branson [eng: 1 , 2 ], one of the managing owners of the holding company Virgin Group, whose difficulties caused by frustration were accurately recorded in the autobiography [book “ To hell with everything, take and do ”].
In his recent book, “ David and Goliath: Losers, the Dregs of the Art of Fighting Giants ”, Malcolm Gladwell uses dyslexia as an example of “desired difficulty” [ eng ] in an attempt to show, how these things can be a source of moving forward for some people. Gladwel cites the example of successful Dyslexic entrepreneurs who explain their success with dyslexia. In particular, he talks about Gary Kone, president of the investment bank conglomerate Goldman Sachs. It seemed strange to me, so I began to ask a question about the benefits of dyslexia. Most dyslexics explained that their way of solving problems was different from their colleagues. They said that they could “put everything together” in their heads, not like other people, and this undoubtedly was their undeniable advantage.
# 3: Designing for people with dyslexia is a unique challenge.
Finally, I asked the respondents to explain which websites, applications, and devices were convenient and helpful to them in life. The answers were very different from each other. I expected to see obvious trends that would describe what works in the field of web and mobile applications, and what does not, but there is no one solution. I noticed only one general trend: the 5 basic principles of universal design are useful when designing for dyslexics. Key points here: flexibility, simplicity, focus on information, accounting for user errors, sensible use of certain elements. The application of these principles will be discussed in the second part.
Moving forward
Dyslexia is mistakenly considered a learning problem. Although in a broad sense, this is so, I met many users who tried to explain to me that the manifestations of dyslexia can be very different.
Not every designer, having read this article, will immediately be puzzled by the question of design for dyslexics, but I hope to convey the idea of ​​how important it is to take into account dyslexics in the design process. I believe that the realization of this is the first step in improving interfaces, not only for people with disorders, but also for all users in general.
Translation of the original article “ Designing for Dyslexia, Part 1 ” by Andrew Zusman, published on the UX Booth website. Translated and published with the permission of the author. Editing by Maria Yorema and Stella Hon .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/262815/
All Articles