Thank you so much for being here today. My name is Ankita. Uh I'm a, I'm an interaction designer at Frog Design. Uh And today I'm gonna be talking about inclusive smart homes.Um I'm based out of Bangalore and for the last few years, I've been working on a smart home ecosystem that's shipped globally uh in about 50 countries. So this is usually my introduction. Uh It's mostly around work, but I do have another part of my introduction, which I'd like to talk about today. First and foremost, for me, I'm a sister to a wonderful person who happens to have Down Syndrome. Um For me, my experiences with my brother uh have shaped the way I think about inclusive design. And the storm. Inclusive design has been in my vocabulary since I was very young. Thanks to my parents. And uh I wanna share some of the stories that uh personal stories today. Hopefully they can help other people think about inclusive design and understand how to think inclusively uh because everyone doesn't have the same experiences. So, yeah, without further ado, I wanna talk about my brother Manus and his story. Um I'll take you through some of uh the way he uses technology in day to day life and also uh how he uses some smart home products that we have.

Uh But at the end, I'd also like to shed some light on my learnings from working on a smartphone ecosystem for the last two years. So talking about man, he uses a lot of different uh technology products. And when he was very lucky, he was very curious about tech and machines, how and how they work. He was obsessed with the washing machine and he loves to locate the Wi Fi wherever he goes. And his frequent question is how does the Wi Fi travel from the router to my ipad. Uh He plays tennis slash and temple run on any device like a pro. Uh if you played it, you know, you, you know, you need to be really quick uh to be able to play it really well and he plays it better than me. Uh The Xbox connect is his favorite indoor game. Uh He operates a firestick. He reminds people to charge their devices uh which is on the right programs for my mom, even though she can do it herself. He likes to be in charge and he chooses new songs for his youtube playlist. So these days he's also been using Zoom and whatsapp, just like all of us. And more recently, I've introduced him to a tool called Sigma, which a lot of us designers use in many ways. Um It helps him in working on his profession.

Um He's a water color artist and we've been creating calendars using his water color art for a few years now. And I had been creating the calendars for the last few years but introduced him to, he was really fast and to start creating calendar. Um There are, there are kind of hiccups with every tool, not every tool is designed for someone with cognitive disabilities. Um But I'll just highlight that there are some things that are really good at working well and there are some things that he can't see so well. He doesn't know how to reach. Um Tech helps him in staying cognitively active. He does a quiz every day um where he needs to go and look for the answers on Google using his ipad by typing the keywords from the questions that he has. Um while this is normal and all of us are able to search for, search for things on Google. I was surprised, pleasantly surprised to know that the way he types on Google, the results that pop up actually are uh accurate for him as well. Um Tech also helps him in staying socially connected. Uh It's been a very difficult time for everyone. We're not new to isolation in the last one year. All of us have felt that he's felt it a lot more and uh introducing him to social tools like uh whatsapp and a little bit of Instagram has really helped.

Um You can see how excited he is to get a message and uh respond to it and use the camera features to keep his friends and family updated on what he's doing. So that's about, I really want to focus on smart homes for this dark day. Um So we, we use uh smart products in our day to day uh day, I mean, in our day to day life, uh some of it is for attainment, some of it is for daily activities and some of it is for safety as well. And we have some products like these in our home and I will take you through how he uses them. Um The first one is around entertainment. Uh He uses the Xbox connect to feel socially engaged and play his heart out. So it's not only in the last year that he's needed this, he's needed it for a long time because not everybody with uh disabilities has a friends group, uh especially cognitive disabilities as uh as they grow older. Uh the kind of friends group changes over time and you'll see that um they probably require a lot more social engagement at home from friends and family, which are who are close. So the Xbox really helps in that way because it has this the social feature where you can play with the computer or you can play with people online. And um the attention to detail that's been paid to commentary and design of the actual audience that sits around.

Um and all of the small features that go into giving them uh giving the person who's playing a feeling of actually being in the game is um really, really well thought out. The other aspect which is very inclusive for my brother is the Xbox Connect and the way it works. So the way it works is you don't actually need a controller to play. The Kinect camera can uh sense your body movements and you can play uh without having, yeah, without having to use a controller. So what this helps with this? Like he doesn't have great um gross motor and fine motor skills. So he doesn't feel the need to use that controller. He doesn't feel like he's um uh different from anybody in any way. And uh in the pitch on the right, what you can see is he can include people in the game and it creates a level playing field um regardless of what ability the other person has. And what I've recently learned about the Xbox is also that it has an adaptive controller. So people with all kinds of disabilities can play this game, which I think is quite amazing.

It, it shows how much, if you focus on inclusive design, how many people you can cater to, right? The and from South India, we make a lot of rice. Uh typically we use the traditional stuff which has uh made to light a fire to actually cook food. So that's as you can see, it's not very safe for him to use. At least I wouldn't feel my family wouldn't feel super safe asking him to cook on uh on, on the fire. So when I got introduced to this rice cooker, when I looked at it, I immediately knew that it's something that he can, he can learn very easily. It just has two settings. It has warm and cook. You need to put raw rice and water in. You just need to uh push the uh push button down and uh it starts cooking. Once it's done, it goes back to warm on its own. You don't have to do anything. So it's really simple and you can see that there are text labels, but there's also a color to light. The yellow light is warm and the red light is book. I would have preferred that if there were, the colors would be more disparate if it was like red and green. When I'm standing far away, I can actually see what it is. Uh but still it is, it is good in its own way.

So he is now taking to checking on the cocoa and seeing if it's finished or not. So it's really good because we want him to be more independent, as independent as he can be. Um another product that he uses every day. Now, is uh this um door. It's, it's actually a doorbell, but we use it as a calling bell at home. So we are assured of his safety and as uh we can assist whenever he needs it. So, uh what I like about this is that it has uh it's very simple, you can attach as many remotes you want to this bell. And uh as you can see on the picture on the right, the bell actually has uh a light as well. So whenever the bell rings, you hear the sound, but you also see the light so helps if you're not, if let's say you're hard of hearing and you can't hear the sound, you can see that the light is blinking and that somebody needs assistance or vice versa. Like you can um you may not see the light but you can hear the sound. So it's helpful and uh it, it helps him feel a little more independent because he doesn't have to call out and ask for help all the time. So all of these are fine. They're all separate products that he uses. But now would I call my home a smart home because of having all these products. Um in some sense, yes.

But in the, in the largest sense of the word smart home, I wouldn't call it a smart home because we're not talking about separate instruments playing uh well, on their own, what we mean by a smart home is and come to. Right. And I don't see that happening just yet. But, uh, would I feel comfortable if I left the house for an hour and he had to make the rice on his own? Not really, uh, because I don't have any idea what's going on in the house. I'm not updated about that rice cooker. It, it shows, um, the light and, uh, it shows the status only when I'm in the similar doorbell. If I'm away, it doesn't alert me on my phone about uh when he's calling. Uh What if I'm busy and I need somebody else to go and uh look at him, take a look at what he needs, then can I pass on the alert to somebody else? No. So I would love to have that kind of integration across devices and make use of the phones that we have in our hand. Um in the right context, it's not that you want every alert on your phone, but you do need your home to be uh a place where you can count on the different people uh at home, but also when they are busy and when they're away um and bring everything together.

So talking about the orchestra of devices, I've been working on a large scale smart home ecosystem for the last two years. Um It's been uh shipped in more than 50 countries and there are many different types of devices that we uh already in the market and some not yet in the market. And our processes have adapted a lot over time and uh we've tried to do multiple things, but our main goal has always been to be uh to try and be inclusive as inclusive as possible. So this smart home ecosystem has uh remotes, it has um devices and it also has a phone that's attached to it. So there are uh many aspects to it and the way we work, our team was focusing on the digital realm that is the app and there are other teams that are focusing on the actual physical design. Um It may not be ideal, different teams work in different ways. Um I would say the ideal scenario is for an inclusive product is from end to end work with the same team. Um But this is the way we were working. So our ex experience has kind of been with the digital side of things.

So, um how do we make the, the app more inclusive? That's how we were thinking. Um It's not, it's not near where I would like it to be, but it is a good start. I would say uh we, we made sure that number one actions that you need to take are close to the bottom of the screen so that you can use with one hand. Uh if you have only one hand uh or if you have only one hand that's available. And let's say you're holding a baby or a bag or anything else, you want to be able to uh quickly say yes or no or say confirm on something. It should be close to your thumb. Number two. We made sure that we always have uh labels on the buttons. It's not just an icon because many times you don't know where uh where you're going next or what you're doing, you may need it to say next or continue. If it just showed you an arrow, you may not understand what's happening, not everyone will. So uh we've tried as much as possible to have a combination of icons and text. Number three is um we tried our best to keep the application as democratic as possible. What we know from research is that the we are still in the early stages of the tech adoption curve in when it comes to smartphones. And uh from the data that we have, we also know that these early adopters are mostly male.

So until it actually goes to mass market, when we are still in the tech adopter phase, if we introduce something like a log in or an admin, then we unconsciously or subconsciously are allowing the head of the household to be male. Um And this may be really nitty gritty, but I'm really glad that the client I worked with was so um uh was so felt that this was so important to take a look at. So we have, we hadn't released a login, uh, until we solved, we figured out a way to solve this problem. We wanna make sure that there's no one single admin of the household. Um, number four, whenever we had an action to be done, which is important or not important really. Uh, it depends on what, what need you have as a user. You may feel that something is important, but I, as a designer might think that that's a secondary, secondary action to take. But regardless of whether it's primary or secondary, we try to make sure that there's both uh an implicit and an and an explicit way of using it. Uh The example that I have here uh shown on the screen is that of a bottom sheet which is similar to a pop up. So uh you press something, something comes up from the bottom of your screen.

You know that some people know that you can swipe down to close it. But uh the explicit way to do that is also to show an X because you know the X's exit because that's something that people are familiar with. So we try to keep this familiarity as much as possible. Yes, in terms of design, it makes it more flattered and it looks a bit more complicated, but it is uh important. We found that it makes it more inclusive. Um Number five, we always uh try to accompany color with text uh or sometimes with pattern. Uh this is to make sure anybody with color blindness can still figure out what's going on in the screen. Um And lastly not specifically related to the app, slightly more on the platform side of things is that the entire system works even when the internet is down so many IOT systems today, um kind of count on the cloud for all the actions that they have to take. Um But we do, we are planning to release in countries that are uh let's say they don't have stable internet. Um And we wanna make sure that you can do your day to day uh functions like especially if you have C devices. Um and they're connected to the cloud only, there's no way that's going to work because if the internet is down, you can't just have an unsafe home. So we try to make sure that these are covered beyond this. We started looking at all text.

How can we create a better um all text for the screens that we have for the images that we have? And we started uh exploring how our home screen reads on a screen reader for those who cannot see the screen. So it's a starting there's a long way to go. Uh And there's a lot to be done. Uh But we know we understand that uh there are, there are mistakes that we made along the way. So I want to actually share some of these mistakes so that in case you are on the path to make products more inclusive, maybe you can avoid some of these. Well, the first one is we try to tackle every possible scenario of inclusion right from the start, everyone came in, everyone had different priorities and we kind of just wanted to uh bring everything together and that's really good in theory and it's really good as a mindset to have, but uh it doesn't work.

Um when you're trying to take something to market and trying to ship. Uh number two, accessibility was not a muscle response for the people on the team. So, accessibility and inclusion are two different things. Accessibility is about making sure you follow those at least those basic guidelines of accessibility to, to uh to ensure that those who can uh see the screen, I mean can use uh can use smart products can at least use them as well as they uh as well as it should be. So there are different accessibility requirements for uh screen readers for those um who uh let's say cannot use a particular device. There are various things that you can think about, but there there are so many guidelines to go through before you can have it as a muscle response.

So you need to go through some training programs before you can say, yeah, uh I know accessibility. So it wasn't uh something that's a muscle response for me even I'm still in the process of learning it. So you can imagine that we're trying to ship and we also at the same time, need to uh need to know what are the accessibility requirements. Uh Number three, we didn't have a concrete plan on how to reach our inclusive design goals or a champion for it. So coming back to man is, do you think these excuses are reason enough for him to feel excluded? It's not fair, right? How, how dare we make such excuses? Very few people with Down syndrome even hold jobs, especially in developing developing countries like mine and those who do either work in the food industry or sometimes as janitorial staff, even though many of them have been reported to use computers. So this makes me think about how, how applications and systems are designed. I'll just leave you with a few thoughts. Um Number one, understand the stories of people behind the data. So the only way to do that is to expand your circles, get to know more people who are different than you and work with accessibility experts who can bring them in to user testing and start to bring them into your process itself.

Number two, identify a champion for inclusive design within your team and work with them to create a road map. And lastly before making large scale commitments, make small strides. It'll help a lot of people. That's all for me. Thank you so much. And if you want to uh discuss anything more with me. Feel free to connect with me on Twitter. I'd be happy to uh, speak with anyone about this. Thank you.