Usability Assessment of AccessPlace During Initial Public Community Launch
Mentor 1
Roger Smith
Mentor 2
Nathan Spaeth
Start Date
1-5-2020 12:00 AM
Description
People with disabilities consistently face challenges participating in the community due to inaccessible mobile, cognitive, and sensory environments. AccessPlace is a mobile web-based app that allows users to leave ratings and reviews of their experiences related to the accessibility of community buildings as well as search for accessibility information in order to determine which establishments best fit their needs. It is designed to be simple, quick, and easy to use for the average community member. We held our Pilot Community Event to begin populating the AccessPlace database and receive community feedback on the usability and functionality of the web-app. After having time in the community to use the web-app and leave ratings and reviews of local restaurants, 16 individuals were surveyed about their experiences. We found that 87.5% of participants reported that they had an overall positive experience and 43.75% gave specific suggestions for future improvements. Even with the need for continued improvements and further developing, the majority of our participants were enthusiastic about the implications of the web-app and found the overall design to be easy to navigate and use. From this feedback gathered from our interviews, we are able to conclude that, with continued improvements, the AccessPlace web-app will be an intuitive tool for community members to leave reviews of their experiences which will help us make accessibility information readily available to the community.
Usability Assessment of AccessPlace During Initial Public Community Launch
People with disabilities consistently face challenges participating in the community due to inaccessible mobile, cognitive, and sensory environments. AccessPlace is a mobile web-based app that allows users to leave ratings and reviews of their experiences related to the accessibility of community buildings as well as search for accessibility information in order to determine which establishments best fit their needs. It is designed to be simple, quick, and easy to use for the average community member. We held our Pilot Community Event to begin populating the AccessPlace database and receive community feedback on the usability and functionality of the web-app. After having time in the community to use the web-app and leave ratings and reviews of local restaurants, 16 individuals were surveyed about their experiences. We found that 87.5% of participants reported that they had an overall positive experience and 43.75% gave specific suggestions for future improvements. Even with the need for continued improvements and further developing, the majority of our participants were enthusiastic about the implications of the web-app and found the overall design to be easy to navigate and use. From this feedback gathered from our interviews, we are able to conclude that, with continued improvements, the AccessPlace web-app will be an intuitive tool for community members to leave reviews of their experiences which will help us make accessibility information readily available to the community.
