Dr. Ronny Andrade Parra

For more in-depth descriptions of stage of this case study, see my Publications page.

This is an example of end-to-end user experience research undertaken during my PhD. Employing the double diamond to represent design and innovation, I will explain how I investigated the use of echolocation (sound and echo reverberations) to make more accessible and inclusive virtual spaces.

This research addressed the following question:

How might we create more inclusive virtual experiences for people who are blind or have low vision?

Discover

For the discover stage, I conducted a series of interviews with people who are blind or have low vision from all around the world, aiming to answer the following sub-questions:

• What are the habits, opinions and concerns of gamers with visual impairment? And
• What elements make videogames accessible?

Through thematic analysis, I identified seven themes affecting the experience of gamers with visual impairment. A significant insight was the tension between making a game both accessible and enjoyable: “You’ve got to make a game more crap if you really want to make it easier for blind people”.

Skills: survey development, user interviews, participant recruitment and management, thematic analysis

Define

Participants highlighted that videogames targeted at people with visual impairments often provide an inferior representation of 3D space, typically using a “tile” system to limit players’ movements: “A tile is not incredibly defined as how big it is. It’s basically how far you’re going to step”. They also noted that representations of real-world objects and sounds, such as white canes and footsteps, were useful for orientation.

Reflecting on these responses, it became clear that a successful navigation technique should be based on real-world analogies. Given some participants’ familiarity with echolocation, I decided to explore its potential as a navigation technique for people with visual impairments.

Skills: brainstorming, product strategy, task analysis

Develop and Deliver

There were three iterations of Develop and Deliver during my research project, each addressing a specific question:

Iteration 1: Is it possible to simulate echolocation in a virtual space?

A feasibility study testing a prototype created with Unity and the SteamAudio plug-in with five people with visual impairment. Through this study, I demonstrated that it was possible to create an echolocation-enabled virtual space with off-the-shelf components.

Skills: usability testing with users with disability, Unity, C#

Iteration 2: What spatial features can users identify via echolocation in a virtual space?

The next iteration involved two stages:

• defining a set of spatial features for participants to identify
• combining these features and using a modelling task to recreate a virtual space

Participants identified the size of virtual rooms, the materials they were made of, the presence of left or right turns in a corridor, openings in walls, and obstacles in a room. They then explored a virtual space that included some of these features and recreated it using modelling clay. The study found that openings in walls and obstacles were not identifiable with the current prototype.

Skills: usability testing with users with disability, Unity, C#

Iteration 3 How can we co-design a better echolocation experience?

This iteration consisted of a participatory design exercise, beginning with a focus group session with three expert echolocators followed by two fast iteration rounds to test ways to improve the existing echolocation prototype.

Through this iteration, I re-centred the perspectives of disabled people in the design of technology targeted at them, thus avoiding the creation of a disability dongle.

Skills: focus groups, participatory design, feature definition, usability testing

Conclusions

This research led to the following conclusions:

• There is a tension between making a game that is accessible but also fun.
• Spatial exploration is a barrier to videogame accessibility.
• It is possible to simulate echolocation using off-the-shelf components.
• Blind people were able to identify the following spatial features through echolocation, about 70% of the time: size of virtual rooms, the material these rooms are made of, and the presence of 90-degree left or right turns.
• Via a participatory design exercise, it was clear that pre-recorded sounds worked better than artificially-generated sounds, and that orientation aids such as a compass feature were also useful.