Loro:
user-centred Accessibility Design
Loro is a smart companion robot & app designed for individuals with limited mobility. How can we assist their product going to market?
Role + Scope:
My role on a 2 person team was user researcher, animator and visual designer for the mobile application portion.
The timeline of this project was 2 weeks.
Task:
We took on the challenge of shifting the goal surrounding the Loro website and creating an onboarding experience all fully designed with accessibility in mind.
Loro is a smart companion robot that aims to assist individuals with limited mobility.
Through the use of a mounted 360 degree camera and inclusive application, Loro enhances it’s users interactions with their surroundings in a wheelchair.
Methods:
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Screener Survey
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Comparative Analysis
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User Interviews
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Affinity Mapping
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Synthesizing Research
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Sketching
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Persona Development
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Journey Mapping
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Wireframing
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Usability Testing
Deliverables:
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Business Canvas
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Competitive Analysis
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Persona Chart
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Caregiver journey map
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Current website usability testing
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Redesigned website usability testing
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Redesigned website clickable prototype
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App onboarding & settings clickable prototype
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Three Principle animations
Programs used:
Finished Designs:
Redesigned Website
Application On-boarding & Settings
Competitive Analysis
Assessing competitors like Tecla and Tobii dynavox allowed us to see how they try to reach a similar audience with mobility issues. Our goal, however, was to make the flow of learning about and ordering Loro infinitely less difficult than the rest.
Two Surveys
Caregiver Survey
CMS Survey
User Interviews
We interviewed 15 caregivers, specifically for those with ALS, Multiple Sclerosis and other disabilities affecting mobility.
When interviewing these caregivers, we asked questions about the accessibility issues they’ve encountered, options that provide the most benefit for their patients and their approach towards teaching their patients how to use new devices. We gathered the following takeaways directly from our interviews:
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Users have visibility/mobility concerns that can benefit from accessible layout design (fonts/colors) and keyboard control.
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Demonstrations are an effective way to introduce new tech
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Clear action buttons and simple navigation is essential
To compare different content management systems.
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Screener: whether participants had created a website in the past 5 years
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The purpose of their website and what CMS they utilized
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Gauged their opinion on CMS strengths & weaknesses
To gather insight about accessibility issues on digital platforms.
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Reached online community of ALS patients and caregivers
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Open ended questions to allow their personal experiences to
show through
Research Synthesis
As a way of organizing our insights into digestible information, we utilized affinity mapping. This allowed us to group our data into themes and see what responses were most common.
User Persona
To condense our caregiver audience into a single representative, we created the persona of Eve. She is a professional caregiver specifically for individuals with ALS and devotes the majority of her time to finding solutions to allow them to live their life to its fullest. Her ultimate goal is for individuals with mobility issues to have a voice in what features and options go into new products and devices that are made to try and solve their problems.
Eve's Journey Map
After noticing that the individual she takes care of has been having trouble navigating his surroundings, Eve is motivated to discover whether Loro is the right solution. She finds that the Loro features are congruent with her patient’s needs, orders the product and downloads the app, all in a less cumbersome way than other sites.
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With all of our research and insights, we formed the following statements,
Problem:
-Users must first learn about Loro to want to buy it.
-Varying needs make accessibility settings overwhelming.
Solution:
To solve for this, it was integral that we made an accessible site for all, with clear opportunities to learn about and purchase Loro. Secondly, with the diversity of needs for each user, we created an onboarding experience that starts users of the bat with personalized settings through assessing their current physical capabilities.
Paper Prototype
Sketching and paper prototyping allowed us to visualize the restructuring of content for each page and how the users would navigate. Our first iteration included a breakdown of the camera and app features on the landing page, but this layout was tinkered many times over.
Style Guide
We created a style guide to incorporate Loro's existing typography, color and layout without conducting a rebrand.
Usability Testing
Task 1
What: Discover the features of the product and attempt to order Loro through the redesigned website
Why: Identify any potential confusion in navigation, validate the existing feature set and navigation, gather insight about the current layout
Task 2
What: Create an account and complete the onboarding process
Why: Identify any potential confusion in navigation, validate the process of assessing the user's physical capabilities
Feedback
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Too much content (cut)
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Testimonials not priority
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Make blurbs not technical
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Naming is confusing
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Make elements clear
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Less scrolling on home
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Even bigger text
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Split content more
Onboarding Accessibility Design
To personalize the accessibility settings for each user, the onboarding process includes three calibration tests. These tests assess their motor function, speech and vision by completing different tasks. For example, we ask the user to trace a hexagon with their dominant hand without using any assistive device to test their motor function. This will play a part in how much or how little touch gestures will be relied on in the rest of the app and the corresponding touch accommodation settings. We also provided animations to demonstrate each of these tests.
Motor Function Test
Speech Test
Vision Test
Next Steps
• Further User testing
• Iterating and developing designs
• Professionally produced captioned product video for home page
• Apply style guide to Squarespace site and add chat bot
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