Tasks, Roles, and Types

Our project explores how users with limited mobility deal with the task of navigating to an accessible route to a location. This can be divided into multiple relevant subtasks:

1. Finding accessibility information about a location
2. Identifying the optimal route
3. Finding accessible entrances, ramps, and elevators
4. Locating alternative routes when the current route is inaccessible

The types of users that are impacted by the issue our project addresses are categorized based on use of mobility aid and physical disability below:

1. Mobility aid - wheels (i.e. wheelchair)
2. Mobility aid - manual (i.e. walker, cane)
3. No mobility aid - physical limitations re: walking on inclines, stairs, etc.
4. No mobility issues, but accompanies those who have mobility issues

To address the issue of navigating with limited mobility, we need to know what information is required for proper navigation. This required information will likely differ based on the user’s physical limitation and what tool(s) they use.

Participant List

In order to reach out to one of our primary groups of participants, RIT students with limited mobility, Team Montréal got permission from the officers of a disability-centered student organization to send out a request for volunteers in their Discord. Following approval from the club officers, the member of our team sent a team in an RIT-centric channel of the server asking about interest in a survey that would take ten to twenty minutes to complete, and an in-person activity that would take place over the course of about an hour. Members of the student organization’s server responded with Discord reactions to express their interest over a period of roughly three hours.

Students who expressed interest were reached out to individually with details about the contextual inquiry. Through this method, so far the team has been able to set up appointments with four students through the week of 09/23 to conduct contextual inquiries.

There are some issues with scheduling these inquiries due to the university-wide career fair this Wednesday. Not only would scheduling inquiries during this time massively change the environment we’re observing, it limits the availability of our participants and our researchers.

Reaching out to people with limited mobility outside of the RIT community as well as people who do not have limited mobility but frequently accompany or assist those who do poses a greater challenge. Currently, our team plans to join several online disability-related forums and community groups centered around people with mobility limitations. The team plans to search social websites such as Facebook, Reddit, and Discord for these groups and talk to their moderators before sending links to our survey. With the addition of members of these online communities, our survey results will be less centered around members of the RIT community and therefore will be able to report data in a greater scope.

Data Collection Methods

We will make use of a survey to gather data. Surveys will allow us to reach as many people as possible, on their terms and schedules. While we would also like to conduct a focus group, data gathering methods that require assembling many people at once can be problematic, as people with mobility-related disabilities find it more burdensome to physically meet and travel; this reality is a major motivation behind doing this research, after all.. We don’t wish to impose undue burden or unnecessarily reduce our number of participants, so surveys are a good method for our study.

The survey has been prepared on the Qualtrics platform. It features a variety of open-ended questions to ascertain what sorts of information is most important to users, what kinds of features they wish applications had, and what kinds of accessibility barriers they routinely face. There are 2 questions where the participants are asked to rank the different problems and solutions from our Milestone 1 document by relative importance to them, this will allow us to prioritize our focus areas; these items are displayed in randomized order to reduce bias. There are some questions only displayed to certain kinds of respondents, based on their user group. There are several multiple choice questions to help quantify the obstacles that users currently face, and the tools that they use today. Finally, the survey ends with demographic and background information.

Download the Survey Questions Word document for the full list of survey questions and logic.

We will also make use of a contextual inquiry. It is of paramount importance to be able to understand how people with limited mobility navigate their environments in order to truly understand what obstacles and frustrations they face. A contextual inquiry provides an opportunity to see the reality of this process, as well as the workarounds and troubleshooting. Contextual inquiry also provides an opportunity to ask clarifying questions throughout the process, perhaps on things that the user wouldn’t have thought were noteworthy or memorable in an interview or survey setting.

As alluded to before, we are considering conducting a focus group to gather more diverse insights. Ideally, we would recruit participants through the Disability Culture Club, potentially holding the focus group at the end of one of their meetings with their approval. However, this option requires further discussion with the leadership of the club.

Data Collection Plan

The recruitment strategy for this study involves targeting specific inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion criteria: we require participants to be either individuals with limited mobility or those who accompany such individuals at least once a week. Each user group needed at least 10 participants to ensure meaningful data collection.

Exclusion criteria: we ruled out individuals without limited mobility and who do not accompany people with limited mobility regularly, individuals who do not leave their home at least once a week, and those who only travel by car. These groups of people do not have enough relevant experience with the use cases that we are researching.

We determined that a larger participant pool would help us collect richer data and provide more comprehensive insights. Therefore, to expand the participant base beyond the RIT campus, the survey will be posted on popular online forums such as Facebook, Reddit, and Discord communities–platforms which have proved useful for recruiting participants in the past.

There is some risk in opening the participant pool beyond the campus, as it could reduce the quality of the responses. To mitigate against this risk, we have enabled anti-bot protections on the survey, and have implemented measures to ensure that participants may only submit responses one time. Another risk with these communities; many public disability communities have rules against soliciting, which is likely to include our survey. We have begun reaching out to administrators of groups to get permission to seek participants in their communities. To improve our chances, we will reach out to multiple communities.

Finally, the survey will collect key demographic information, including which user group participants fall under, how long they have lived with their disability, what type of mobility aid they use, the type of housing they live in (e.g., single-story home, apartment), their age, and whether they have a constant caretaker. This data will help contextualize the participants' experiences and ensure the study captures a wide range of perspectives.

Contextual Inquiry Plan

For the contextual inquiry, we will conduct one interview per participant, with each of the six team members assigned to two users from each user group. We expect that the interviews will last approximately an hour, and will be conducted in person. If the participant uses a mobility aid, an additional 15 minutes will be allotted to allow for a demonstration of how they use their aid and to discuss any pain points they experience while using it. Additional time may be required for some participants to rest, considering the relatively high amount of physical activity involved.

During the interviews, we will collect relevant artifacts, such as photos, handouts, or any other materials the participants provide that can support our understanding of their experiences. This will help document the interaction in a tangible way and provide more context during the analysis phase.

Contextual Inquiry Pilot Study Activity

For the contextual interview component of the study, Andrew, one of our group members, volunteered to be the pilot participant. To maximize realism and reduce bias, Andrew had not reviewed or worked on the contextual inquiry script before the pilot study. Stephanie and Andrew met at 3:00 pm on Monday, September 23rd to conduct the pilot study. The audio of the contextual inquiry was recorded and transcribed automatically using the Google Recorder application. The study took about 58 minutes in total to complete, with each of the four tasks taking ten to twenty minutes to complete.

Overall, the pilot contextual inquiry went smoothly, with many of the script’s questions eliciting the type of data we wanted to collect from participants. A few issues in our methodology were uncovered during the pilot study: firstly, for the task of navigating to an unfamiliar place, we did not prepare a list of potentially unfamiliar places for the participant to choose from. We did not consider that it is difficult to think of unfamiliar places by name, and realized that it would reduce cognitive load if we give participants options to choose from. Additionally, we noticed that some of the questions in our script did not apply to the tasks where participants were already familiar with the location they were navigating to, so we added more questions for navigating to familiar places. Finally, Andrew expressed that it was somewhat difficult to think of familiar locations to navigate to off the top of their head, so we now plan to tell future participants to think about where they would like to navigate to beforehand.

Further, because of the extended length of the contextual inquiry, the amount of walking involved, and the limited mobility of our target user group, we discussed the importance of introducing built-in break times in our contextual inquiry. The purpose of this is to reduce the risk of inducing adverse effects of walking long distances, such as exhaustion or flare-ups of symptoms. Additionally, we will do a better job of setting expectations to participants ahead of time, ensure that they are aware of the time and effort commitment, and emphasize to them that this study is not about timing them or getting them to push their limits, it’s about usability and seeing how they would naturally navigate these situations.

Contextual Inquiry Discussion Guide

Goals of the interview:

• To learn what navigation tools are being used today
• To learn what information is missing from existing tools
• To understand what workarounds have been created

[Pre-Interview Prep]

1. Inform participant that they’ll be doing 4 journeys in total (2 accessible, 2 inaccessible)
2. Highlight possible risks: exhaustion, time, flare ups
3. Bring snacks/water for participants if needed
4. Ask participant how long each journey can be, given any physical limitations
5. Ask the participant to pick two locations that are known/familiar to them (1 accessible, 1 inaccessible)

[General introductions]

1. Introduce yourself, the interviewer: Name, area of study
2. Introduce the purpose of the interview (see list above)
3. "Today I will be focused on learning about you and how you navigate through the current state of navigation tools. I want to learn about what existing tools do you use today and how you get around campus with them. The things our team learns from these interviews will help provide inputs to creating concepts, which we’ll create and test with folks afterwards."
4. "Is it okay if we record this interview for notetaking purposes?"

[Tasks]

1. Could you please show me how you would navigate to ___[known, relatively accessible place].
2. Could you please show me how you would navigate to ___[known, relatively inaccessible place].
3. Could you please show me how you would navigate to ___[new, relatively accessible place].
4. Could you please show me how you would navigate to ___[new, relatively inaccessible place].

[Observations and Questions, for each Task above]

[Setup]

1. What navigation tools is the participant using, if any?
   1. If none: how do they know where to go?
2. How long does it take the participant to set up directions and start their journey?
3. If they used a navigation tool, did the tool suggest any paths to them that they rejected, or needed to adjust?
   1. If so, how did they know to do so?

[On the journey - known places]

1. What is the participant saying, if anything, about the path they’re on? *Take Pictures/Videos as needed*
   1. Any observed obstacles?
   2. Are these obstacles noted in the navigation tool, or just something that they see?
2. Did the participant have to deviate from the path they pathed? *Take Pictures/Videos as needed*
   1. If so, what was the cause?
   2. How close to the deviation did the participant realize that they needed to change their path?
   3. What cues did the participant use to realize they needed to change course?

[On the journey - new places]

1. How often is the participant checking the navigation tool?
2. What is the participant saying, if anything, about the path they’re on? *Take Pictures/Videos as needed*
   1. Any observed obstacles?
   2. Are these obstacles noted in the navigation tool, or just something that they see?
3. Did the participant have to deviate from the suggested path? *Take Pictures/Videos as needed*
   1. If so, what was the cause?
   2. How close to the deviation did the participant realize that they needed to change their path?
   3. What cues did the participant use to realize they needed to change course?
4. Did the participant take about the amount of time suggested by the navigation tool?

[After the journey]

1. How was the experience navigating to a place they already know, compared to navigating to a new location?
2. Are there any stressors in this experience?
3. How might the experience of navigating to a new place be improved?
4. Are there any obstacles that they can think of that were not encountered today? 
5. (follow up on any noted deviations from the navigation tool, either during the setup sets, or during the journey)
6. Thank them for their time