Introducing Product Design Students to Accessibility

Test Pilot playing the client

Over the next six weeks, students working in small teams will engage in a variety of iterative design activities to generate accessibility-related experiment ideas for Test Pilot. Students will perform design research to understand their chosen problem areas. They will engage in activities related to concepting and prototyping. Students will also learn how to conduct relevant primary research such as expert interviews and usability testing on their prototypes. Finally, students will learn how to craft and deliver a product pitch. To support these activities, students will meet on a weekly basis with Mozilla researchers, designers, engineers, as well as Ravensbourne faculty.

John Gruen and I will provide feedback on experiment concepts half-way through the project and will return to Ravesnbourne to evaluate the final pitches. We will also select a winning team, whose members will receive a cash prize, be featured here on the Test Pilot blog, and have their concept further evaluated by the Test Pilot team in hopes of building a related experiment.

Students choosing problem areas

The seven teams started out with a wide range of problem areas, but by the end of the class meeting, most teams set out to address challenges under one of the following topic umbrellas:

Students’ next steps are to continue articulating research questions, conduct secondary research, and begin planning primary research. We fully expect that some teams may change directions once their research gets underway.

Learning together

Accessibility and inclusive design are complex topics for anyone to tackle. We hope that the Ravensbourne students will gain valuable knowledge, skills, and experience from working with Test Pilot and Mozilla this term. In turn, it’s already apparent that working with the student teams will help Test Pilot further refine the ways we collaborate with other teams and inspire more experiments with clear ties to Mozilla’s mission.

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