Tatum Robotics aims to offer people with DeafBlindness, a historically underserved community, their first independent communication tool. Tatum is an anthropomorphic robotic system to sign tactile sign languages — the primary and often only communication method of the ~150 million DeafBlind individuals worldwide.
Samantha, our client and the founder of Tatum Robotics, was noticing her website for Tatum was outdated and not accessible friendly, despite the targeted audience's strong need for accessibility features.
How can we better align Tatum Robotics with their mission and the DeafBlindness community?
We began our journey by doing competitive research on other companies that had similar missions and searched for helpful accessibility considerations.
To build a new brand identity, our team conducted a variety of branding exercises to solidify the main themes and ensure the direction both us and the client wanted to go in. We worked on an elevator pitch and personality levers to help us build the tone of our brand and during the weekly client meeting, I presented my ideas and gave input on the vision I saw for Tatum.
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Next, we each created moodboards based on the tone we set out for Tatum. By the end, we consolidated bits and pieces from each moodboard to create a scale of visuals so that both the team and client could choose where our design system should land. Samantha wanted a balance of both the tech-y (for the robotic hand) and approachable (for the community aspect) side which landed us somewhere in the middle.
The original Tatum Robotics logo was representative of the T and R in braille and we wanted to keep this aspect but, still give it a clean update. We wanted to improve upon the visual design and help match it to our branding goal.
After many many ideations, we settled on curvy and rounded shapes which were the braille circles of T and R connected. Also, we made sure to colorize the logo with an accessibly-friendly color and visualize the logo both in light and dark mode.
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As we continued to build upon our initial design goals, we were able to create a complete design strategy with a color palette, typography, illustrations and components; Each aspect also has its respective dark mode version.
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Working with the developers, we mapped out a sitemap of what we envisioned the new website to be structured like. We wanted the navigation to be straightforward so that any kind of user would find it easy and efficient.
I iterated a ton for every page that I worked on and between each week’s sprint, I received critique from my fellow designers and my project lead. By the end of the week, we held our client meeting where I would receive further feedback on my design from Samantha that I could then implement for the following week.
About 2/3's the way into the semester, we conducted user testing with two groups (those with & those without accessibility needs). We gathered in one room with our participants and had them independently interact with our prototype and talk through their thought processes. Each of us collected qualitative data from these experiences, specifically on the accessibility features, to later make revisions to our pages.
A. Users were confused on how to interact with the homepage timeline → We added explicit directions to improve function comprehension and enhance user interaction guidance by incorporating a colored background and explicitly stating "Directions" for better screen reader assistance.
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B. Similarly, timeline buttons were not perceived as clickable → We were transparent with the user on their current status in the timeline using both color and text
C. Users requested a key toggle option for switching between the dark and light mode options → We added a tooltip by the toggle, highlighting the use of the Enter key as an alternate trigger.
All of the different versions of screens for the website (Desktop, Tablet, Mobile) & (Light Mode, Dark Mode) are very extensive!! So, contact me if you'd like to see all of them :-)
Our efforts led to a 50% boost in task completion rates for DeafBlind users. We completely improved the accessibility and overall user experience of Tatum's website and branding.
Iteration, experimentation, and an open mind during a design process allows me to constantly and quickly refine my ideas.
I also have to account for every possible audience that would use this site to make it truly accessible and inclusive to all; That’s where research and user testing really comes into play.
If I had more time, I would want to do further user testing since the ones we had were during the middle of our development and so, not all of our functional pages were done.
After working on this project, my view on accessibility has changed so much and now, moving forward, I want to try to make it more of a habit to always think about. I also want to help educate other designers on what exactly accessibility is and how exactly they can incorporate it into their design decisions.
