The ‘Teslasuit,’ a wireless suit created by a UK based company,
claims that their invention can allow users to feel sensations in the
virtual world. If the prototype is brought to the market, it could
revolutionize the world of entertainment.
Onwards Travel,
a Wisconsin-based non-profit, has found a way to use tourist dollars to
fuel local, small town economies. By purchasing their adventure
packages, you not only get an organized tour but you also help
communities fund their own development.
The startup was founded by Jacob Taddy who saw how a Dominican
Republic town transformed from an agricultural sleeper into a hit
destination through tourism. In the early 2000s, during the government’s
decision to move farmers off from a protected forest to greenhouses,
international aide organization workers flocked to Rio Limpio. The rise
in visitors provided occupants to bed and breakfasts, diners for local
restaurants and sent youth-led tour guides a constant stream of clients.
Taddy then found a way to accelerate this tourism-led growth through
microfinance for budding local entrepreneurs. Merging both fields,
Onwards Travel was born. Aside from organizing tours to its pioneering
area, the Caribbean, the company also provides small loans to local
business owners.
Here’s how it works: the startup’s client Raquel opens a bed and
breakfast with a $950 loan from Onward Travel. The startup also books
her B&B for its guests, helping Raquel pay her loan back and also
providing her with a steady stream of income. Aside from micro-financing
schemes, the startup also plans to provide business training and
professional development for locals in the tourism industry.
To fuel the drive, Onwards Travel is now turning to crowdfunding to
grow its lending pool. Eyeing a $10,000-run, the Indiegogo campaign
offers those who pledge a discount off their next tour bookings with
additional perks. For $50, backers can get a T-shirt and Sticker plus a $50-discount off a booking
made through Onwards Travel within the next two years. For a $1,000
pledge, backers can get a spot on the next trip to a new location.
As of press time, Onwards Travel is offering two trips. An 8-day trip
and a 9-day trip in the DR, the latter including a border crossing to
Haiti. The trips expose tourists to rural life against breathtaking
natural landscapes. Veering from “slum tourism”, Onward Travel aims to
show adventurers how communities can grow and prosper through the
tourism industry.
This furniture chart entitled 'What is Your Sofa Personality?'
by Singapore online design retailer Hip Van offers an interactive way
for homeowners to find out what couch design is best suited for their
lifestyle. The infographic cleverly pairs up the reader's personality to
a sofa style that best suits them.
The 'What's Your Sofa Personality?' chart highlights six different types
of people and couches that match their lives. The first is The
Socialite that suits best a Chesterfield couch that is designed to
accommodate lots of guests, offer an elegant decor and last during
countless parties. The infographic uses colorful block graphics and
minimal text to interact with the reader as they figure out what couch
is best suited for them.
Designers can reach over 1 billion people just by keeping accessibility in mind, says Google's Astrid Weber and Jen Devins.
According to the World Health Organization,
more than 1 billion people worldwide have a disability. To Astrid Weber
and Jen Devins, Google's resident accessibility experts, that stat
should be stamped on the back of every designer's hand, because it means
that one out of every seven people on the planet is potentially left
behind by thoughtless design decisions. At this year's Google I/O
conference in San Francisco, I sat down with the two UX experts and
asked them what designers could do to make their apps more accessible.
The key, they told me, was using your imagination and having a little
more empathy. Here are six ways designers can reach that extra billion.
Color blindness is one of the world's most common disabilities. It
affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 (.5%) women
worldwide. These statistics prove that designers should be thinking
very, very hard about the colors they use in their apps. "Colors are a
great way to convey critical information in an app, but they can't be
the only way," Devins says.
She gives traffic apps as an example. If there's a traffic jam up
ahead, you can't just mark it in red to be understood. If you do, there
are millions of users suffering from red-green colorblindness who won't
know what you're talking about. You also need to accompany it with a
label, or some other visual cue that doesn't depend on color to be
understood.
Blind people use screen readers to access the internet and navigate
smartphones. Yet few developers design their apps with screen readers in
mind. "On smartphones, the way screen readers typically work is that a
blind user navigates through all the elements on a page from top to
bottom by swiping," Devins. "It's a very linear experience."
That's a problem. It's common in many apps for the most important
interface elements to be at the bottom of the screen, closest to a
user's thumb: for example, Instagram's button to take a new photo, or
Twitter's navigation buttons. It's fine for sighted users, but users
with visual impairments might have to swipe 50 times or more to reach
that element, every time they switch screens.
The better solution? Put your most important interface elements
closer to the top. That's how Google does it: open the Gmail app on your
phone, and you'll see that the "Inbox" and "Write New Mail" buttons are
at the top of every page.
Most designers know that interface elements and images need to be
labeled for screen readers. But they often don't think about labeling
them usefully.
"It's not enough to just label a close button with 'CLOSE,'" Devins
says. "Close what? Make that text contextual and relevant. For example,
'close the new message window' or 'close the share window.'"
Remember: while a regular user might know where they are within an app's workflow, a user who is visually impaired will not.
Empathy is all about understanding, but many designers never think
beyond what life is like for them. Handicapped users have a very
different experience of the world, even doing simple things. You need
imagination if you're going to design an app that works for them.
"We'd love to see more developers imagining their users' journey,"
Weber says. "Put yourself in their shoes. Think about how you'd need to
perform a task in your app if you were blind, or deaf, or had motor
disabilities, and then pay attention to the steps it takes to get that
task done."
"You really can't ever replace the experience of seeing how how
someone uses your app," Weber says. "No one will ever say, 'I just don't
care,' but if they don't have that experience—a family member, or a
personal connection—that allows them to understand how their design
decisions are impacting the disabled, they might still not get it."
Weber recommends that designers try to make that connection. Within
Google, Weber and Devins hold regular workshops with app teams,
providing insight into how the disabled use their apps. She showed the
dev team how users with visual disabilities were faring with Google
Calendar, for example.
"There were so many different reactions. Some developers were
mortified that their app was making someone struggle, while others were
just delighted. 'Hey look, someone's able to do something they could
never do before!" But if they hadn't actually seen someone with a
disability use the app for themselves, they might never have understood
the issue.
Ultimately, the biggest mistake Weber and Devins say they see when it
comes to accessibility is that designers try to tack it on at the end.
That's a big mistake.
"From a pure efficiency perspective, you should do everything you can
to build accessibility into your design," Weber says. "If you do it
later, you'll have to revisit everything you've already done: there's a
ripple effect through your entire design, because accessibility is not a
feature. It's just part of good design practice."
