Braigo Companion is an iOS app aimed at fostering independence and community building among people with visual impairment. It has been developed for Braigo Labs Inc. The brief was to design and develop an application for people with limited visual abilities which could help them extract and manage content from documents / images for easy access via voice over. The project was backed by Intel.
Research
Before starting off with the design process, I spent considerable time reading through the visual accessibility guidelines given by WCAG and Google's Material design. This whole exercise helped me in understanding the concepts of accessibility while designing for inclusivity.
I also visited blind school for the primary research to understand the relation between people with visual disability and technology. Extensive user research was done to get insights into their interaction with mobile and web applications and also to understand the existing design features which make the experience intuitive. It helped me in highlighting the road blocks encountered by them while navigating an app.
User persona of the major user for the application
The inferences derived from secondary and primary research led to collating crucial points which helped in achieving accessibility in design.
Key accessibility parameters
As the important functionalities of app were given by the client, writing user stories was quick. The main challenge was while designing the wireframes, where the learnings from the secondary and primary research had to be reflected in the design. As highlighted by the users, familiarity and structuring of the content are the two experience defining points. Thus features like Braigo guide, limiting the action buttons per page and structuring the content so as to reduce the number of flicks were specially taken care of.
Information flow architecture
After deciding the app flow, final wireframes were made using Balsamiq. First time logging in users were on boarded by a welcome screen with Braigo guide to help them with the familiarization of the app. Content on the screen was structured to ensure high memorability. Also, high colour contrast was used in the final visual design.
Promo video at the launch of the Braigo companion application
Inferring the learnings from the project, I wrote a blog on 'Accessibility in Design' which was lauded by key users and accessibility practitioners. It has been published on the 'Magic Software' website at the following link-
http://www.magicsw.com/design-for-accessability/
