As a part of my work, I was able to work on a 4 month long qualitative research study with the Intel RED UX Research team on college students with high-compute needs and their mobile device expectations in order to drive future Intel Project Athena priorities.
I also worked with the team's Inclusive Design Ops lead to build in new accessibility auditing practices to the team's design process.
1. Software isn't a limitless solution to all problems.
One key experience I got at Intel was working to connect both software and hardware together to create a seamless customer experience. While I could design any number of software features, these all had tradeoffs in terms of battery performance, perceived latency, adoptability across computer manufacturers, etc. Creating a good experience that happens on any computer means balancing both the hardware and software tradeoffs of designs.
2. Accessibility audits needs to happen early and often
When I began realizing doing an indepth accessibility audit of my work, I began to realize that I failed to address problems that could have been addressed earlier on from recruiting a more diverse research participant pool, and even running my user flows across a wider set of users. Accessibility shouldn't be an afterthought, it should be baked into the process from the beginning.
