Guest post: UX Booth

I wrote a 2018 User Experience Prediction at UX Booth. Amy Grace Wells asked me what I thought was going to be a leading theme in UX in the next year, and I said, “better accessibility”. I think that’s both a serious prediction and a hope, because there is never enough accessibility, but I also think we are getting better.

So many things that are designed for accessibility, but that we don’t always understand that way when they happen, and frequently we mock them as lazy or luxurious. Backup cameras on cars seem silly – why not just turn around? Until you physically can’t turn around, and then you realize how much they matter. Pre-chopped vegetables, electric can-openers, and velcro shoes seem laughable – unless you’ve ever been unable to hold something in both hands at once. In the same way, building web and mobile apps to respond to a variety of command styles may not occur to us if our fingers are nimble or our voices clear, but will matter immensely to people who are not in that category.

Since before I was employed at LaunchDarkly, I’ve been fascinated by the ability that feature flags offer designers to customize user experience. We haven’t had a good test case yet that I know of, but it will come, and I’m looking forward to it.

Pre-peeled oranges for accessibility