🪴I'm Angela, a teacher and researcher focusing on equity, technology, writing, and rhetoric.
Students redesign Lego instructional manuals for an audience of children and other builders with visual impairments. They explore a variety of potential solutions, including audio instructions, visual design, and tactile bricks. This activity helps students understand how people who are deemed "edge cases" are often written off and not designed for, creating designs that exclude rather than include.
Students engage in empathy activities to better understand the experience of users with visual impairments. To begin, they try on glasses that simulate visual impairments like myopia and retinopathy and attempt to use their usual apps on their phone or computer. This experience helps students understand the true depth to which users with visual impairments may experience difficulty while using technology.
Recently, students in my User-Centered Design class worked with a local library software company. They conducted UX research (interviews and site observations) to better understand users' experiences with library acquisitions software. They created scenarios, personas, and journey maps based on their research for the client.
Books that have influenced my teaching, research, and ideas about how to create a better university for all of us.
