From Passion to Integration

MY ROLE INCLUDED:

• UX RESEARCH
|
• WORKSHOP FACILITATION

How might we foster long-term ownership and effective collaboration to integrate accessibility work into the organizational culture?

Problem

Within many organizations, accessibility is either driven by a few passionate individuals or reduced to a checkbox, a task done out of obligation but deprioritized until the last minute due to lack of interest or understanding.

Solution

To reduce the work burden of those who typically shoulder the responsibility of accessibility work, we wanted to increase ownership within teams across the company and integrate accessibility as a natural part of the work flow. To do this, we turned to a well-known method within UX research

Double Diamond

The Double Diamond has four phases - discover as much as you can connected to the problem, define the specific problem you need to solve, develop solution by brainstorming and deliver a refined solution. By leveraging the four phases of the Double Diamond, from understanding the current state to shaping concrete, team-driven solutions, we shifted the view on accessibility. It went from being something that’s fuzzy, hard to grasp and in the hands of someone else to be something each participant could feel some connection to. When the participants themselves got to both explore the problems and hear other experiences through discussions, and then work together to come up with solutions, it is our firm belief that ownership is increased.

Discover and Define

We conducted six semistructured interviews with key roles at the company. The insights we gathered, combined with secondary research, helped us define hypothesis to create two workshops tailored to the specific needs for IF. The first collaborative workshop consisted of 15 employees from different teams and focused on sharing experiences through discussions. The participants worked together in crossfunctional groups to identify problem areas and painpoints that occured during their accessibility work.

Develop

We analyzed the problems that had arised thematically and used them to design our second workshop. The participants got to explore different solutions to their identified problem areas using group discussions. To help them concretize their ideas we had designed solution templates. Again, focus was on sharing perspectives from different roles and combine their experiences to something tangable. The participants then got to pitch their ideas to all the groups and, through dot voting, vote for the ones they felt had the most potential to actually follow through and the idea they felt would have the biggest impact. This way, we made sure that the proposed solutions was relevant to both the employees and organization itself.

Deliver

All results from the workshops, both from discussion and the participants concrete solutions, as well as important insights from our research together with our hypothesis shaped the final delivery.

Methods and data collection

This research was a qualitative study focusing on identifying painpoints and shaping tailored solutions relevant to IF.

Data collection

• Six semistructured interviews

  The six semistructured interviews included rolse such as UX leads, Accessibility specialist, QA Engineer, developers and content & SEO managers. The questions we asked were connected to general work within accessibility, for example: “What parts of your work is connected to accessibility?” and “How is the responsibility distributed today?”

• Crossfunctional workshops

  Our two crossfunctional workshops included roles within UX, development, PO, Content & SEO, Business developers and QA’s. We aimed to map out the current state, identify challenges and painpoints concretize problems and solutions.

Analytical method

We used thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns and insights from the collected data. The analyzed insights was divided into themes then presented both during our second workshop and as a part of the final delivery.

Key takeaways

The Double Diamond gave us structure and room for exploring and helped us ensure that every step forward was based on facts. It gave us, both as facilitators but also the participants in the workshop, a framework to be creative within. When focusing on ong term accessibility work this method is perfect, since every next step is based on the previously shared experiences and insights. The crossfunctional groups ensure multiple perspectives and increase understanding for what each roles contributes with.
The method itself has the possibility to ensure relevant solutions to problems and is applicable not only within accessibility work but any organizational problem that companies might face connected to ownership. To really get a full picture, this method should be repeated throughout a longer period of time. This way, the final delivery becomes a living basis for decision-making within companies.