Why I (nearly) bought a Chromebook after a GDS Instagram post, a tweet by Wendy, and great work from GDS on accessibility

I can be impulsive, so I thought I’d buy a Chromebook to test GDS’s accessibility persona setup, and when Wendy said she’d like to know about this — I figured what the heck. So I reserved a Chromebook at a local high street retailer but then thought (a) I can borrow one and (b) why not make this a test of both the tech and the method and our ability to buy some low tech kit for work.

So here’s some thoughts on the Chromebook setup, on Accessibility personas, on GitHub and a little on open tools and corporate procurement in support of transformation in the public sector….

Thoughts on the Chromebook

At work we are planning on building an empathy lab (or at least an empathy suitcase…). We’ve been excited about following in GDS’s footsteps for months — and after a recent post about ‘Using persona profiles to test accessibility’ we think a Chromebook will be a part of this.

So I went and borrowed a Chromebook. Immediate thoughts, it’s really nice how:

• the Chromebook functionality (e.g. voice/audio) and accessibility features just work
• Google sign-in/profiles work
• Chromebook’s are relatively cheap pieces of kit (less than £200) which means you can setup the profiles and the browser settings on a piece of hardware as a ‘test device’ rather than faffing with different settings on your main PC (think of people’s staff costs, particularly senior members — £200 for a Chromebook is about an hour or two of people’s time)
• ‘having the Chromebook’ is another marker you care about accessibility
• (and after talking to Alastair Campbell) the low tech really shows up poor contrast colours without using an analyser!

Thoughts on using GitHub to manage the personas (in effect content)

About 10 years ago we did some design system work at the Open University before it became DESIGN SYSTEM –- and it’s great to see Guy, Steven and Sam have moved to GitHub

So I’ve known of tools like GitHub for years, but it was a black box for me. It was a developer thing.

But recently with the work on our service manual we’ve integrated the frontend library into the service manual, and rebuilt it out of GitHub. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t get my hands dirty (yet) — but I’m feeling the urge to…

GitHub is now being talked about differently. Whether it’s Tim Paul @Amy_Hupe and @NickColley talking about content designers working in GitHub

Screengrab of a Twitter post

Or a recent @jukesie thread about using GitHub pages as a blogging platform, or my own team making daily changes to the Service Manual using GitHub more and more (interaction and content designers, not just developers).

I think there’s a really interesting vibe about who’s using GitHub, and how it’s being used at the moment.

I’ve had a login for years, I go and look at it but I don’t ‘use’ it. Think I need to….

Thoughts on the Accessibility Personas setup

Screengrabs from a Chromebook and the Chrome browser settings

After only a little use (as ‘play’ and not applied to a particular problem state) I think this is really neat. It blends hardware, behaviour and ‘empathy’ in one (pretty) easy to use setup. Other thoughts:

• You do have to consciously set aside time to do this, similar to how we used to put hats on ourselves to ‘channel’ personas back in the early days with Whitney and Caroline
• It reminds me when you’re testing — whether it’s pseudo IDs, pseudo profiles, or devices that demand an identity to sign in (e.g. iPhone) — you have to be quite careful about what ID’s you’re using, and that you don’t present people with pseudo anonymised devices which actually could be used malevolently.
• It is fiddly, which is why it’s really important we make it easy.
• I can see if there’s common usage of this it could be helpful in any formal or informal service assessment — teams using same methods applied to different services, with an underlying common language and techniques.
• And yes — using such ‘empathy’ personas does not and cannot replace testing with actual users BUT I’m very persuaded of the view which says anything which helps people (particularly commissioners and suppliers) ‘get this’ has to be good in my book — just make sure they understand the ‘path to user needs’ and the ‘shelves of wisdom’…😉

But ultimately I think this is a really cool setup and really evolved thinking.

Thanks GDS, and thanks Wendy.