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IncreasING Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities

Role:  User Research, User Experience

Tools: User & expert interviews, Immersion, Analogous inspiration, Benchmark, Prototypes, User tests

Date: 2018

THE CONTEXT

  • Peruvians with disabilities face many difficulties when navigating the city and getting a job because most experiences are not designed for them.

  • By personal initiative, I proposed 3 co-workers to carry out a Design Thinking project focused on designing for people with disabilities. I led the team and design activities, facilitated our workshops and participated in the Design Thinking process. 

  • Although this was an amateur project, I consider it one my favorites because it was the first project I led and on a topic that I would love to develop. 

* Due to the proprietary nature of this work, the case study will discuss my process and some of the work but at very high level.

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We studied different contexts in Lima that were not designed for people with disabilities.

One of them was bus stops (picture on the left), so we proposed a solution based on maps, a speaker and visuals for passengers to know where they should get off (picture on the right).

UNDERSTANDING THE USERS' NEEDS

We conducted interviews with users with different disabilities and experts on disabilities, HR and talent recruitment. 

To understand how a person with disabilities might experience some aspects of daily life, we blinded ourselves at the office, university and at home to have the experience first-hand.

Finally, I attended an inclusive school, qualified in educational and infrastructure terms for students with disabilities (visual, auditory, speech, motor and mental disabilities). Hence, I suggested we visited 3 inclusive schools as analogous inspiration.

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One of the interviews (to the left)

'Blinding ourselves' exercise (to the right)

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Analogous inspiration at inclusive schools in Lima

Findings & definition 

We discovered 3 key insights and associated each with a ‘How might we' question:

  • HMW create a system to share practices, success stories, and communicate the importance of continuous effort and small steps in rehabilitation and social integration?

  • HMW introduce a space in the recruiting process where the company and candidate can discuss disabilities comfortably?

  • HMW increase consciousness for caretakers about the importance of their role in the social integration of the disabled?

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Clustering boards and extract from the How Might We ideation

SEARCHING FOR POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS 

Although many ideas were proposed, we decided to choose the one that could be applied to enhance the recruiting process at the company we worked at. 

We proposed an inclusive and accessible chatbot to be used in the recruiting process, designed to create a space where the candidates can discuss openly and without stigmas their disabilities or special needs.

To find inspiration, we benchmarked other chatbots such as Poncho Weather, Chat with Cody, Warby Bot, Many Chat and more.

Ideas from the Ideation Workshop

Prototyping ‘dory’, an inclusive chatbot 

Collaboratively with one of the UX Designers from the team, we built a series of wireframes for the inclusive chatbot. Within our office, we conducted guerrilla user tests to adjust and improve the experience. 

Furthermore, we built a mockup to present the idea as a possible product to be offered to Recruitment and Social Responsibility areas, as the majority of companies in Peru do not take into account the disabilities as part of their recruiting process; however, these tend to significantly influence the final result of candidate selection.

Extract from the wireframes created for the chatbot

Mockup for Dory, the inclusive chatbot

see other projects

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the right tools for employees

How might we enhance the day-to-day journey of the bank's branch employees through the tools provided for them? 

(before and during the COVID-19 pandemic)

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MAKING REMOTE CHANNELS THE FIRST CHOICE

How might we turn remote advisors into the main interaction channel, leaving the bank branches as the last option? 

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