BBC CAPE

Client
BBC launched CAPE (Create a Positive Environment) initiative in 2014 to study the knowledge and attitude towards neurodiversity. Neurodiverse individuals are those with hidden conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADD/ADHD and Autism Spectrum Conditions.

role
User design research + Testing
Ideation
Journey mapping
Storyboarding
UX for AR & VR Experience

team
Claire-lise Bengue, Adam Ambrozy,
Maria Boroukaeva, & Yatharth Awtaney

Brief
Create a digital solution to enable a neurodiverse person with sequencing difficulties to go to a concert.

How might we design an experience for those with sequencing difficulties to feel empowered?

BBC CAPE & Designing for Neurodiversity

The Process

Desk Research & reaching out to professionals

Sequencing is an invisible illness, and often has stigma attached to it. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject, and considering the ethics in finding someone who has sequencing difficulty to speak to directly, we instead focused on finding professionals in the field who worked with sequencing patients to help us understand the issue. It was important to empathize, and dive deep into understanding the difficulties that someone with sequencing might face on a day-to-day basis.

Overview of our design process using the Double-Diamond.
Illustrated by teammate Claire Bengue

Synthesizing findings

Synthesizing the findings, it became clear that people who had sequencing difficulty usually had trouble organizing thoughts, following order, prioritizing tasks, remembering things, and seeing the bigger picture.

An insight from our findings was how important it was for people with sequencing difficulty to feel empowered.

Affinity Mapping

Persona

Gaining more perspective about the topic of neurodiversity through desk research and professional interviews, we created a persona for the team to serve as a guiding star, as well as to empathize with the user during the design process.

Personas Helps in Building Empathy for the User

Journey Mapping

Next step was to map the user journey and define potential pain points.

According to professionals working with people with sequencing difficulties, it was important to have lists, to be able to refer back to the task at hand, and for them to feel adequately prepared and familiar with a situation.
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Building on our research, we found the closure experience in purchasing a ticket could have more support in providing navigation for those with sequencing difficulties prior to the event.

Journey Mapping to Visualize the User Experience

Ideation

Focusing on the pain points of the user journey, we used ideation techniques such as: 'random word association', 'lotus blossom', and 'reverse' to generate ideas for potential solutions.

During Ideation, It's Important to Build on Others Ideas. 'Lotus Blossom' Technique is Pictured Here.

Opportunity Cards

Taking the strongest ideas from Ideation, we built on top of those ideas to create 'Opportunity Cards'. Refining concepts that emerged as a patterns during ideation.

Capturing the Best Ideas Into an 'Opportunity Card' Communicates Ideas in a Snapshot

Dot Voting

From creating Opportunity Cards, we used the silent 'dot voting' method to converge and to narrow down the scope of features and ideas. Silent voting allowed for a discussion afterwards in explaining individual thoughts to make sure each person had a voice in the process.

Silent 'Dot Voting' Exercise Helps in Giving Equal Voice to All Members of the Team

Storyboarding

Once we determined the main features we’d like to put into the first prototype, we re-mapped the user journey through storyboarding.

Visualizing the different stages, from 'awareness' to 'join', to 'use' and 'growth', it helped in communicating how the proposed solution would help our persona.

Storyboarding the Different Phases of How a Person Would Engage in the Service

Prototyping

We also shared our paper prototype to professionals working with sequencing difficulties to get their feedback and input.

After gathering final round of feedbacks, we created final hi-fidelity prototype, along with research findings to pitch to the BBC CAPE team.

Helping Those with Sequencing Difficulties Familiarize Themselves With a Route Before the Day of the Event.

Taking the insights from professional interviews, this VR/AR experience allows for those with sequencing difficulties to roleplay different scenarios to prepare for real situations.

The Outcome

People with Sequencing Difficulty have trouble remembering what to do without lists, and find difficulty in interpreting directions and orienting themselves. From the feedback we received from the experts in the field, we developed the concept of the app ‘Segue'.

Segue allows them to have the option to have a AR & VR experience to make real time decisions and prepare them for random events that might occur when trying to get to the concert. People with sequencing difficulties can now book the experience of the gig, and afterwards experience the gig in AR & VR beforehand.

Empowering the user to make decisions beforehand to make them feel more comfortable on the day of the event. The decisions they make in the AR/VR mode could be sent to them as a list afterwards, to give those with sequencing difficulties ease of mind.

Tools & Methods

Online survey
Immersive Experience
In-Depth Interviews
Observational research
Desktop Research
Journey Mapping
Value Proposition Canvas

Culture Design

Team culture canvas
Check In & Check Out
Team Feedback

Project Reflections

Key Learnings

Developing empathy first is crucial to developing ideas and solutions that reflect the needs of the people.
Storyboarding was extremely helpful in this project when talking to others on the team who were more management focused. With the aid of visuals, it was easier to take them along the user journey and to help them understand the user’s pain points.
Setting up the team culture at the beginning of the project is extremely important in building trust between team members. This enabled the team to have effective and open feedback sessions as the project progressed.

What I Would Do Differently

There’s value in understanding our own bias and assumptions of the subject before beginning the project. We didn’t realize our own bias and assumptions until we started interviews with professionals. It would have been a better approach to map out our assumptions in the discovery phase.
Having a round of Analogous inspiration during the ideation phase, to challenge our own framing and to draw different experiences to inform our final solution.

Pitching our concept to members of the BBC Cape program, at the BBC Office in Salford Quays, Manchester, UK.