Designing for Hardware Accessibility at Comcast

Grayson Byrd at UXDX USA. Video: https://youtu.be/bXEwnKkgBh8

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Designing for diversity benefits us all

[00:00:00] Hey everybody. I'm Grayson Byrd and I'm super excited to be here today. Thank you so much to UXDX and the show producers for having me. I'm an associate creative director at Comcast and industrial design manager, and I am part of a global design organization made up of designers and developers committed to making our products, our experiences and services accessible to the widest possible audience.

[00:00:29] Today I'm going to share a little bit about the Xfinity Large Button Voice Remote. I'm fortunate enough to stand up here and take all the credit for all the hard work you're about to see, but obviously that's not the case. It took a village to bring this product to life and to bring the story that I'm about to tell together. Really that's the best part about a case study. I'm going to share a story, but if there's one thing that I hope you take away from this, it's that when you make a product more inclusive you make a better product for everyone. Now you're going to hear me say that a lot and in a lot of different ways, but that's the main takeaway. I also forgot to mention, I'm a dad, and my son Otis insisted on being a part of this presentation, so I'm going to allow him to introduce title slides. Designing for diversity benefits us all.

[00:01:28] So before we dive into where we are today, let's first reflect on where we're coming from. You might be wondering, why is an industrial designer here at a UX conference speaking to UX designers and developers? Well, beyond the fact that we're working closer than ever to bring physical and digital experiences together, we also work the same. We all put people at the heart of everything we do. But human-centered design, that's nothing new. It's actually been around since the 1950s.

[00:01:58] That was a long time ago. That was back when there were really just men walking the Earth, with skinny ties and everybody smoking cigarettes. Obviously that's not the case. I think the point is that what was believed to be a cross-section of the population back then really misrepresented the diversity of people, the diversity of people across gender, age, ethnicity and even ability, especially those considered as living with a disability.

[00:02:32] Not only that, human needs change over time. A good example is that if you meet somebody who doesn't speak, they may be non-verbal, or they may have laryngitis, or they may not speak the same language. Human factors are vast and they change over time, and though you may not identify as someone with a disability today, it doesn't mean you won't be met with similar barriers to overcome throughout your lifetime. Human factors are vast and they change over time. As our world becomes brighter and continues to become louder and older, people with visual, hearing, mobility and neurodiversity conditions no longer sit outside the majority that we design and make products for.

[00:03:21] Now we see the benefit of designing for diversity in architecture, where spaces are just as open and easy to navigate as they are stunning. This is the Guggenheim Museum right down the road. In industrial design, there's probably no better example than OXO in terms of designing for diversity. For those who don't know, OXO was a brand started by a couple who struggled with using this vegetable peeler here on the left. It was painful because of arthritis, so they sought out to redesign it to make it more comfortable. And what they found is, when you design a more comfortable tool for those who may struggle with arthritis, you make a more comfortable tool for everyone. And what's amazing is, OXO used to be innovative. Now they're the standard. I can't imagine using anything like this on the far left.

[00:04:14] We also recognize how designing for diversity benefits us all in technology. So over a decade ago when Comcast first launched our voice technology button and control, it allowed users to navigate tens of thousands of shows and content more directly by pressing a button and speaking into it, without the need of a smart home assistant. And not many people know this: this was born out of the desire to empower folks with visual or cognitive disabilities to navigate more directly to what they wanted to see. But it benefited everybody that uses it, so much so that it's been a key part of every remote we've designed and delivered ever since.

Big Easy, and why a band-aid doesn't work

[00:04:59] However, here's the however. It wasn't brought back to the very remote intended to be more inclusive. I'd like to introduce everybody to Big Easy. That was our internal code name for this remote. This was our third-party solution at the time that was intended to make accessing content easier for the communities and folks that needed it most. So you can see why it was called Big Easy. It's definitely big, it's large, it's oversized, increased readability. But the problem is it hadn't evolved with the times. We didn't include any sort of enhancements along the way.

[00:05:37] So our user research team was interested: how is this playing out? They called customers using this remote and conducted phone interviews, and what we found out was amazing. Not only were people well aware that it didn't include voice technology like every other remote out there that we make, but there were a lot of other improvements that needed to be made. We heard things like, actually it's too big, it's hard to handle, it takes two hands to hold. Or things like, the batteries are really hard to change on this thing.

[00:06:09] It became clear that we couldn't just go back and slap voice control onto this and call it a day. I'm not even sure where we would put it. Maybe there, we'll squeeze it there. But the reality is, this band-aid solution, this approach isn't actually that easy or economical to do. Studies have shown in architecture that when you bake barrier-free design in from the very beginning, it's much, much more cost effective than going back and retroactively fixing. So a study by Independent Living in architecture shows that the cost increase due to that renovation can be anywhere from four to 35 times more expensive. And the reason for that scale is scale. You can imagine renovating a bathroom can cost so much, but compared to renovating a mall, or an entire school system.

[00:07:12] And the same can be said about industrial design. Slapping a button on this remote doesn't mean we can just do it. We're still retooling, we're still making new plastic parts, we're still respinning boards. It became clear that we could bake accessibility in from the very beginning and build in all of these enhancements along the way. Another benefit is that it ensured accessibility wouldn't be treated as some sort of tacked-on feature. In industrial design it's often treated as a negotiable, something that can be a bonus feature, if you will, that can be added or taken out later, rather than what it is. Accessibility is an inherent trait. Your products are either accessible or they're not. So by building from the ground up we ensure it wouldn't be treated as sort of that optional topping.

What we saw in people's homes

[00:08:06] Oh, we lost some audio. Otis is going to be really upset with you guys. I'll carry on. There's a few more slides with audio, just so you know.

[00:08:18] We're all familiar with the scenario: watching our favorite show or our movie, and it can feel so effortless to pick up that remote, start pressing buttons and navigating to your favorite show. But one in four adults in America have a disability that can prevent them from accessing content themselves. One in four. We're talking like 25%. I'm not a math guy but I think that's right. And it really limits independence, forcing folks to rely on others for help.

[00:08:50] This is something we came face to face with when our user research team conducted a series of in-home studies with those who have assisted needs. We came face to face with these challenges and the multitude of workarounds folks had when their standard-issue devices and controls fell short of their needs.

[00:09:10] For Joe, for example, who has limited mobility, watching TV meant having remotes mounted by a caregiver in front of them. Only, the mounting mechanism blocked a lot of the buttons, so getting to the channel he wanted sometimes meant navigating in a roundabout way, using page up, page down and so on and so forth.

[00:09:30] For Ozzie[?], the remote was simply too heavy. Now, this is a remote you could argue is very well designed, super comfortable to hold, ergonomic. But for Ozzie, what it meant is it didn't sit stable on that side table, and so it made it very difficult to control.

[00:09:46] Lee similarly relies on putting the remote on a wheelchair tray. The lip of the wheelchair tray actually blocked the signal, and so it made it not work properly.

[00:10:00] Now, all of these things, I'm sure you're all kind of thinking through it. You hear these things and we instantly go to what we can control. All of these elements are our bread and butter: scale, color, size, weight. These are the dials that we can play with, we can dial up or down. But what was interesting was that for every fundamental need we uncovered, like the text is too small on that button and really hard to read, or the remote was just too heavy, we also uncovered a very complex socioeconomic or emotional need. We heard things like, that piece of smart home technology is amazing but I can't afford it, rendering it inaccessible in another way we hadn't considered right off the bat. Or we heard things like, Big Easy actually worked for a lot of people, but we heard things like, I hide it when friends or family are in town because I'm embarrassed by the special control that I need.

[00:10:57] By leading with empathy and observing people firsthand, we uncovered a multitude of things that we could focus on. And that's the key, to hear firsthand from the people who are most often overlooked. Appreciating the true diversity of your audience allowed us to create solutions that work for them, and that would have been impossible had research not been an integral part from the very, very beginning.

A culture of inclusive development

[00:11:33] A culture of inclusive development. There he is. So this was a seven-year process. This section is meant to highlight the importance of getting it right when designing for all. Here's a quote from, we all know who said this, Mark Zuckerberg: move fast and break things. And in technology there's this fixation on failing fast, moving quickly, getting things in people's hands. The trouble with industrial design and the hardware side of things is that you make a product, you put it in people's hands, it lives there for five, 10 years. Also our product cycles are much slower, they're one to three years.

[00:12:12] But beyond that, I think we're all familiar with how irresponsible this mentality can be, especially in the day and age of artificial intelligence. But another area that gets it wrong that isn't so often talked about is trust. Moving fast and fixing later can be a detriment to building trust, especially for the communities that you're designing for that are already overlooked, already marginalized. And that trust is fragile and not so easily fixed. It's much, much harder to fix.

[00:12:46] That's exactly why research didn't just come along and drop some sweet learnings in the beginning only to dip out when things got rough. Research and design were truly intertwined in this process, where we played off of one another. As research studies got more specific, design solutions got more crisp. Our research team followed those in-home studies with focus group studies to really start to understand user needs, must-haves, criteria for an accessible remote design.

[00:13:19] And these focus groups, when designing for those with assisted needs, didn't just include end users. We realized we were designing just as much for on-site nurses, occupational therapists. They were just as much the audience for a more accessible remote. Also, research didn't just go off in isolation and do these studies only to come back and read off the results. Product managers, designers, UX folks, everybody was included in these studies so that we could learn firsthand what it is that was important.

[00:13:53] This was great because it allowed us to vet early concepts, put early mockups in people's hands, and start to learn what buttons are critical. Here you can see how the design evolved over time. Early concepts were modeled after Big Easy: just as big, just as many buttons. But as these learnings poured in, we realized the need to move to more familiar formats that were easier to hold and handle, and fewer buttons.

Buttons, and building your ideal remote

[00:14:20] Buttons. We like to talk about buttons a lot at Comcast. We talk about buttons as if they all need to fight for their space on the remote. We don't want to overload people with the remote and all the options. So we conduct these exercises where we bring everybody in and ask them what is their ideal remote. But it's funny, you ask a hundred people what their ideal remote is, with the buttons that they need or deem most critical, you're going to get a hundred different remotes.

[00:14:50] So rather, we love to break up teams according to discipline. You'd think we mix them all up, but no, we actually break up teams and we ask groups like UX, ID, product: build your ideal remote according to what you believe is critical through the lens of your discipline. This was great because it allowed us to quickly align, or recognize where we were already aligned, so we could set that aside and talk about the areas where we don't, and really have a discussion about what is critical for the remote that we're currently designing.

[00:15:27] This was also around the time we recognized the need not only for an accessibility shortcut key, but the need for it to be very prominently placed. This was a key that allowed quick access to closed captioning, large on-screen text options, and really other features to suit anybody's needs.

Color, contrast and the details

[00:15:48] So the remote started to take shape. We had a good sense of what it looked like, a rough sense of its form, the buttons that needed to go on it, and it was time to move from broad explorations to the finer details. An example of that is color. We knew color was going to play an integral role in navigating the remote, calling attention to different areas of it.

[00:16:12] A couple of options came up: yellow and blue. Yellow actually came out of those focus group studies where an occupational therapist said yellow's great, it sort of alerts you but it doesn't suggest caution or error. Blue was also up, in that it suggested, I mean, its association to accessibility signage, but it also conveniently aligned with brand colors at the time.

[00:16:39] So we took these colors, we applied them to the remote, and we sent it through a color blind simulator to understand how folks with eight different types of color blindness might perceive the remote. And we measured the contrast ratios to ensure that it would be seen with the highest levels of contrast. Obviously yellow won out, not only for those contrast ratios but for its reflective qualities in low-lit environments. And here you can see how yellow started to play on the actual device.

[00:17:08] Taking careful consideration not only on the outside of the remote but on the inside. Through those focus group studies we realized, you think of using a remote, 95% of the time it's in use, navigating content. But what we realized was the more novel interactions, the unboxing, setup, changing of the batteries, were the most painful, especially for communities with assistive needs. And so paying just as much consideration to those more novel interactions was super important.

Grading the design against our own guideline

[00:17:47] So it was great, we had working prototypes now, we knew what it would look like. It's time to put it in people's hands, invite people in, put it in their hands, ask them a bunch of questions. Only, the pandemic threw that all for a loop. All of a sudden we're being told don't invite anybody in, don't give them things. So we had to get creative, and our research team turned to other simulators to understand how folks with common vision impairments might perceive the remote.

[00:18:14] All of these simulations, along with extensive literature reviews, combined into a custom guideline, accessible remote requirements, that we could grade our designs against. So our research team was quick to tell us everything we were doing right, checking those boxes, room for improvement where there's some medium risk there, and areas, I'm realizing it's a lot longer, but areas where we just really missed the mark.

[00:18:45] An example of that is we knew we couldn't require very complex interactions with our remote. Our voice control at the time was defined by press and hold to give a command while that microphone was open, and then release to signify the end of the command. That wasn't going to fly, so we worked closely with our software engineers to redefine that interaction to just a press and release, but also to extend the length of time that that microphone is open to receive that command, so it's not so rushed.

[00:19:21] Kudos to our research team too, who spared no feelings. They plotted on a scale of least inclusive to most inclusive the current state of the design, every design we proposed up until then, and even remotes we had in the market then. So they really took a shot at the ego, hurt our feelings a lot, but it's great, and it's necessary. This entanglement between research, design and product is necessary to ensure that inclusive development approach.

[00:19:55] Being inclusive means continued discourse throughout the process. You can't just pick and choose what you want to listen to. You can't just pick and choose what you want to react to. And this goes not only amongst the teams that are working on a program but also with the communities that you're designing for. We never stopped listening to people. So we're about three, four months out until launch and we're still getting feedback from trial participants about how the color, material and finishes could be better, be more legible, down to the icons, what they look like, did they communicate the right thing. And we're making changes all the way up until launch.

The remote that shipped

[00:20:34] And what you see here is what's available today. This is the Xfinity Large Button Voice Remote. It has a voice technology button that allows Joe more direct access to what he wants to watch. It has a flat bottom so that it sits stable on Ozzie's side table when pressing buttons, and that upward-firing IR ensures that it wouldn't be blocked by anything on Lee's wheelchair tray. It's also lightweight, it's easy to handle, and it comes with an optional safety strap.

[00:21:08] And when it comes to iconography, we asked folks, which should we light up, what buttons should we light up? And spoiler alert, all of them. Duh. And when it comes to replacing batteries, there's a quick release button on the back that opens up the battery door. That was another finding: we didn't want a battery door that could be lost or hard to pick up if you drop it. There's also these easy lift tabs that allow for easy removal of the batteries. I'm saying all these features and I'm realizing it's all very duh. But that's exactly the point. When designing for the folks that need it most, you make a better product for everyone. Who wouldn't want these features?

A is for innovation

[00:22:02] A is for innovation. Another benefit to an accessibility-first approach is that we weren't limited by scale. Our other mass market remotes, to give you a sense of scale, one or the other of these remotes here on the left are shipped with every single set top box or streaming box that we have. Being that we weren't limited by scale, we could innovate in ways that would otherwise be constrained.

[00:22:30] A good example is we had the time to define best practices when it comes to color, material, button forces, that now can be applied to other remotes, future remotes, other devices even. We're innovating in material by introducing antimicrobial resins. This is our first remote that introduces that, something particularly useful for shared devices. We're stepping into uncharted territory by introducing haptics and unlocking potential within multimodal sensing.

[00:23:00] And we're even innovating in how it's delivered. Our packaging team has done a phenomenal job of including large iconography, Braille in the packaging, but also an industry-first audio guide. This audio guide, whenever you open it up, it speaks back to you. Our packaging team worked with voice talent to dial in that audio and it takes you through step-by-step instructions on how to get started, so you're not limited to just reading the instructions. Here's a sample of that. Hi, this is your new Xfinity remote audio guide. Please be sure the front of your TV box is not obstructed.

[00:23:41] It can be hard to innovate in areas like this when limited by scale or constrained by cost, but this remote and this program opened up doors to new frontiers that wasn't limited in that way. It allowed us to incubate new ideas and truly be that engine for innovation.

The business end of design

[00:24:00] The business end of design. This is the last section. I just wanted to share some of the strategies, some of the things that I've found have worked in moving mountains within a large corporate setting. We're all familiar with this process, we're all designers, or at least familiar with it: conceive, define, design, build, deliver. A lot of companies organize themselves in a way that plays to this process, with different approvals and stages and gates along the way. It's clean, it's pretty. This isn't the reality though. Our process is much dirtier than that. It needs a lot more squiggles. Very iterative.

[00:24:41] The point that I'm trying to make here, and it's been made before, is the idea that the programs that do the best aren't the ones that seek approval. They seek alignment. And that means a lot of different things. That's bringing stakeholders along, that's bringing downstream folks upstream and vice versa. A good example is this insights workshop years ago where we had junior level designers side by side with senior level executives. So this is an SVP of an entire enterprise and communications group. And what's great about this is that whatever comes out of this workshop is equally his. He's invested in that vision. The role of the executive is shifting. It's no longer the approver. The executive's role is shifting to a partner, a collaborator, that seeks to align along the way.

External validation and impact

[00:25:37] Finally, last couple of slides, promise. External validation and impact. Cringe. These are my least favorite slides, but they're important. They're my least favorite because, I'm going to be honest, it's going to come across as humble bragging. That's not the intent. But at the end of the day, absolutely everything we do is for the user. 100% of what we do is for the user. It's also in service of a business, so I think these points are important to cover.

[00:26:09] We were fortunate enough to be featured in several different publications, and the reason why this is great is because it speaks the business's language. It tells them, it proves to them, these are areas worth investing in, these processes, these methodologies, and continuing to invest in in the future. We were also recognized in the design industry. Hey, this is great, team morale, high fives, and that's not meant to be downplayed. But what's more profound is that the design industry recognizes that an accessibility-first approach to product development is good design, and it's starting to normalize these inclusive design methodologies.

[00:26:48] Finally, the biggest metric of success is what we're hearing from customers. We're going back to these communities that helped us develop these remotes and we're putting it into their hands, and we're hearing things like, I can do things all by myself instead of asking someone for help. And that's what makes this entire effort, all of these people that worked on this, some of which are here today, so worthwhile. That's what it's all about.

[00:27:12] And if you are a customer and you could use one of these, or you know someone who's a customer who could use one of these, here's some ways of going about getting one for free. Absolutely free. If you need it, it's yours. I even have a few with me at the conference, so tap me at some point along the way and I'm more than happy to give you one. And that's that. So that's an accessibility-first approach to product development. I'm Grayson Byrd. Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.