Our First GPT!
ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, rolled out functionality for paying users to create their own AI-powered chat, called “GPTs,” in just a matter of minutes.
I decided to test the feature and create my first GPT trained on accessibility guidelines for wireframes and design. I believe accessible design is paramount for effective design and should be implemented at the very beginning of any UX or design process. Making sure your wireframes and designs are up to WCAG standard benefits not only those with impairments or disabilities, but every single user who interacts with or sees your design.
You can start chatting with my GPT, called “Accessible Design Navigator” here.
Ask it questions about color palette contrast, upload your wireframes to see whether they adhere to WCAG guidelines, or have it evaluate your web designs to see how you can improve accessibility in your layout.
Why did I choose this topic as my first GPT? I’ll tell you…
Let’s start with some definitions. What exactly is “Accessibility?” Accessibility is an attribute of Inclusive Design, which details how an experience can be open to all.
Inclusive Design is a methodology that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity. This means including and learning from people with a broad range of perspectives. You can think about this like a “one size fits one” approach to design.
If you’re thinking to yourself, “wait, isn’t that called Universal Design?” the answer is no, that’s a different concept that functions off of the widest possible range of situations, without the need for adaptation of design or formatting. Universal Design is basically “one size fits all.” We know from digital and IRL experiences that most of the time, “one size fits all” really fits no one.
One of my favorite references for these concept is Kat Homes’s book, Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design, which I re-read at least 3 times a year. In it, she describes how a lot of design decisions are made with “exclusionary” habits. For example, creating solutions with only one way to participate, creating solutions with our own individual abilities as a baseline, or treating accessibility as an afterthought. In order to shift toward Inclusive Design, there are a number of skills to build in order to resolve what Holmes calls “Mismatches.”
In order to move toward Inclusive Design, you can:
Think about diversity in terms of human interactions and how people can change over time. For example, as you age, you can gain and lose all sorts of abilities through illness or injury or just plain getting older.
Create a number of different or diverse ways that people can participate in your experience or solution.
Adopt a more flexible definition of what it means to be a “designer.” Open up your processes and invite contributions from people with relevant experience, but not necessarily traditional design skills. This will always help in developing a diverse perspective as well as ways of working that will aid in your ability to create Inclusive Design.
One of my favorite examples from Homes’s book is about testing our assumptions about human beings when it comes to exclusion habits in design. Basically, if you employ exclusion habits and never think about inclusive design in the truly accessible and diverse way, you can end up designing something that doesn’t actually work for anyone.
For example, in the 1940’s, the first fighter jets were designed to fit the “average” pilot. The USAF measured hundreds of dimensions on the human body across thousands of pilots and then used the averages to design the cockpit. You might be thinking, ok, yea, that makes sense. If you use the average, you have a pretty good chance that it works for almost everyone, right? Wrong. What ended up happening was that because all of the dimensions were based on averages, in reality, not one pilot fit all of the dimensions used in the design. This resulted in a super high rate of crashes that were not due to mechanical failure or pilot error, they were simply due to the fact that pilots couldn’t reach certain tools easily, read dials easily, or perform maneuvers easily, because the positions and angles of those things were not in the right places for their actual bodies. I’m simplifying the study a lot, but in essence, by designing a flight deck for everyone, they had designed it for no one.
Shifting towards an Inclusive Design concept, with an emphasis on accessible design, actually drives more innovative outcomes for everyone. Think about how objects or designs you interact with in your every day life are easy or helpful. That adjustable chair you might be sitting in right now, reading this article. Your sit/stand desk. The light/dark mode options on your laptop. All of these features and solutions adopt inclusive design methodologies.
What other products, software, or designs will you interact with today? How can they be made better with Inclusive Design?
Thanks for reading! And stay tuned for more GPTs that are on their way from the Gitsul team.
Interested in learning more about how to use Inclusive Design for your project?
