VICON · Virtual User Concept for Supporting Inclusive Design of Consumer Products and User Interfaces

The needs of people with sensory or dexterity impairments are generally not well considered when designing user interfaces (UIs) for mainstream consumer products. The majority of existing interfaces and controls rarely fulfil the accessibility requirements of users suffering from visual, hearing, and dexterity impairments. It is also common for an individual to have multiple impairments than just one; this is particularly prevalent among older people. A combination of these impairments creates a far greater problem when interacting with a product than just one.<br/>The audience for VICON will be older people who have age-related (mild to moderate) impairments (age-related hearing loss, macular degeneration, etc) rather than those with profound impairments. This group of people do not want (or require) 'specialist' assistive devices but mainstream consumer products. However they fully benefit from consumer products, when their UIs incorporate accessible multimodal interaction capabilities providing good usability.<br/>It is unrealistic for a mainstream manufacturer to have a detailed understanding of these issues and design appropriately, due to the complexities of singular and multiple age-related impairments. Therefore their inclusivity knowledge has to be supported from a third party solution.<br/>VICON will conduct extensive user research to build an advanced Virtual User Model that will reflect the requirements of this group, when designing a product or UI. The Virtual User model will accompany the entire design process and support the client throughout, so that the needs of this audience are address at every stage; conceptualisation, product and UI specification, virtual testing and prototype evaluation.