Designing in the Dark
How well do we really understand the people we design for?
We watch, we interview, we take notes, and we come away feeling informed. Yet, there’s a gap between observing a challenge and living it, and that gap is where some of the richest insight sits.
A family trip to Finland and an hour in total darkness got me thinking about how far designers could go to close it.
The Dark Cafe experience
On a recent trip to Finland, the family and I were invited to a ‘dark cafe experience’. A long-time friend, Mira, has a degenerative eye condition and has been gradually losing her sight for many years.
She works at the Iiris centre, which does great work advocating for accessibility and providing services and support for blind and visually impaired people. One of their initiatives is the ‘dark cafe’, created to help people better understand the day-to-day challenges they face.
Credits and further reading
Insights you can feel
We arrived as a family feeling fairly relaxed, but were quickly taken aback once we stepped into the pitch black and gave ourselves over to the experience. Low light still offers a glimmer to work with, but this was something else entirely. Every trace of visual wayfinding – gone in an instant.
Instinctively, we formed a ‘caterpillar’. Hands on shoulders, we shuffled our way to our seats, keeping everyone connected. Suddenly, the practice of guiding someone with a visual impairment to the front edge of a table made complete sense.
In the dark, trust becomes everything
You rely completely on the person beside you, whether they’re describing the cake you’re choosing, helping you tell the milk from the oat milk, or pointing you towards the water jug.
Simple distances become guesswork. When your eyes usually do all the heavy lifting, it throws your spatial awareness. Passing jugs and cups across the table becomes a careful negotiation. In this moment, the people opposite felt miles away, and I found myself reaching a surprising distance to find a friendly hand.
Everyday tasks become puzzles. How do you know your cup is full before the hot drink reaches your finger? Other senses take time to tune in. The heightened sense of smell and taste we’d expected arrived gradually.
Beyond research
The experience got me thinking about the levels of research, immersion and augmentation we, as designers, use as part of the inclusive design process. Observational research is the starting point and extremely important for getting a feel for the challenges people face, and there’s a strong case for taking it much further.
It’s almost akin to method acting. Plenty of actors do a great job through craft and observation, yet method actors ‘inhabit’ the part. They’ve lived it and picked up on every nuance of the situation.
Patricia Moore, the American universal design pioneer, took this approach quite literally. In her twenties, she famously dressed up as, acted as and inhabited the role of an elderly woman. She wore prosthetics every day, used customised rigs to restrict her movement and mobility, and wore cloudy glasses to imitate vision impairment. Her approach revolutionised inclusive design through empathy and lived experience.
Credits and further reading
Augmented immersion
Going to such lengths may suit some designers more than others, and new tools are emerging that let us experience the challenges faced by people of varying abilities more closely than ever. One interesting approach using AR and VR is VARID, an open source game engine plug-in that helps designers experience a range of eye conditions.
Co-developed by Foster + Partners primarily for architects, it could help many design disciplines simulate and experience visual (and other) impairments first hand.
In UI and digital design, tools have been around for a while to simulate everything from visual impairments to dyslexia and other neurological conditions. Figma and Google DevTools are widely used by developers, along with many plugins.
In industrial design, smart glasses are starting to emerge as a tool within the design process. At a much simpler level, there are adaptation tools such as the capability loss simulation gloves and glasses from the University of Cambridge.
Credits and further reading
+ VARID
Including immersive design
So how do we bring this approach into practice?
It can be as simple and low-cost as you like. Throw yourself in with some makeshift adaptations: wear thick gloves to imitate dexterity issues, tie one hand behind your back, hold a weight similar to a three-month-old baby while cooking and multitasking, or wear a blindfold to do just about anything!
These ‘entry-level’ adaptations can teach a designer far more than a series of guided interviews. Learning from many perspectives is valuable, and inhabiting the role takes that learning deeper.
Before your next project, release your inner method actor. Whatever the brief, inclusive or otherwise, make it better for all.
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