Designing The Dot Experience for Everyone

This episode of Change Makers explores the inclusive design process behind The Dot Experience, including prototyping with people who are disabled, creating multisensory experiences, and designing for visitors to experience the museum together.

Corey Timpson and Sina Bahram of Prime Access Consulting also discuss APH’s commitment to making inclusion an opportunity, not a constraint, and how The Dot Experience could raise the bar for accessible design.

Transcript

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Narrator 0:00

Welcome to Change Makers, a podcast from APH. We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or have low vision. Here's your host.

Sara Brown 0:15

Hello and welcome to Change Makers. I'm APH's public relations manager, Sara Brown. And on today's episode, we're taking just a short break from our cast member spotlights to talk about another feature that is the epitome of The Dot Experience... Inclusion. This means completely explorable for everyone. And when you get down to the nitty-gritty of making that happen, it's no small feat and something that should truly be celebrated. Think about your own experiences. Did you hit any barriers? And how often have you seen that in museums or other attractions? To talk more about this, I have Prime Access Consulting's, Corey Timpson and Sina Bahram here. Hello, Corey. Hello, Sina, and welcome to Change Makers.

Sina Bahram 0:59

Thanks for having me. Hello.

Sara Brown 1:00

Would you like to introduce yourself and let our listeners know a little bit more about you and what you do at Prime Access Consulting?

unknown 1:08

Sure.

Corey Timpson 1:09

So my name's Corey. I use "He/ Him" pronouns. I'm a designer. And yeah, I'm one of the two principals at Prime Access Consulting. We're an inclusive experience design team. So if humans are going to experience it, we want to work on it and work on it from an inclusive design perspective. I'll pass it over to Sina.

Sina Bahram 1:32

I'm Sina Bahram, he, him, one of the other principals here at Prime Access Consulting, or PAC for short. You know, and as Corey said, we do a lot of work in inclusive design, digital accessibility, experiential design, everything from culture and museums to websites and mobile apps and AI and virtual reality and just ensuring that things are inclusive, not just accessible.

Sara Brown 1:57

PAC has been involved with The Dot Experience from the very beginning. Talk about some of the ways you've been involved.

Sina Bahram 2:04

Sure. Um we um were uh involved um a lot during the design phase. Um so uh, you know, when you're building a museum, um, they have these different phases. A lot of it is informed by architectural phases and things like that. And it's just it's just a way of organizing the work so that people know what's being um worked on, what the goals are, what the objectives are. You know, you gotta think about the content of the museum, you gotta think about the things that are gonna go into the museum and uh the stories you're going to tell, the experience, the vibe you're trying to build. And so there's all of these best practices that just go into "how does one build a museum?" "How does one build a building?" "How how does one build a website," right? It's just that unfortunately, so often these processes they don't have a lot of inclusivity or accessibility in them. Um, it's not because people don't care, it's not because uh, you know, it's out of any kind of malice or anything like that. It's just uh a lot of the ableism that is systemic in our world and built into a lot of the processes that then yield deeply inaccessible outcomes for many disabled people. And so what we do at PAC is take a methodology that Corey and I first um, you know, really meddled and came up with when he was uh the project director for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and said, "all right, what if we flip the script?" "What what what if we instead figure out how to build things accessibly and inclusively from the get-go, instead of adding it after the fact." So, in other words, don't build the exhibition, design it, lock it in, lock in the lighting, the flooring, the exhibition, uh, the exhibitry, the furniture, all of this stuff, the content, the screens, and then be like, "oh yeah, we need sign language." "Oh yeah, how would a blind person access this?" "Oh yeah, where would the service animal sit beside the bench?" "Oh yeah, what do you do if your wheelchair is higher than 27 inches?" "Oh, yeah, like all of this, right?" So what if what if we think thought about all of those things inclusively from the get-go? And that's called inclusive design. And so that is what Corey and I first did, oh gosh, 14, 15 years ago, even longer, at Canadian Museum for Human Rights, really reproduced that process and matured it at the Obama Presidential Center, which recently opened over the summer in June, and uh on The Dot Experience as well as many other projects. So we got in, we started meeting with the design team, uh Solid Light, right? The APH folks, and really it was a lot of teaching, right? It was just like, how do we think about things inclusively? How do we think about accessibility in a different way? Yes, there should be braille on that. Yes, you should be allowed to touch those things. Yes, a blind person needs to be able to navigate this space in a uh dignified and independent way, but also with a sighted guide, also with a service animal, also with, you know, however they want to like move through the space. Let's not be prescriptive about that, but make sure that the agency is with the visitor. And that's like easy to say, you know, I just said it really easily right now, but then for the last three plus, four plus years, the devil's in the details, right? Of doing that at every single step of design, implementation, construction, building, content development, digital, flooring indicators, you name it, right? And so that's um a lot of the in the weeds work that we've been doing for the last few years.

Corey Timpson 5:51

And getting in early is critical because it allows us to affect more of the ecosystem, say. So we use the word "ecosystem" because a project gets broken down into different silos. There's the architects in construction, there's the content team, there's the exhibit designer, media producer, there's all of these different groups and many more. And they all have to work together to create this outcome. But if they're not all thinking about inclusive design and accessibility through their own parts and that we're not there ensuring a congruency between all of the work everyone's doing, then we are going to inadvertently end up with barriers. Um, for example, the media producer may be producing um a film or an audio escape, and we want to ensure that those are accessible. "Are their captions?" "Are their transcriptions?" "Are their audio description?" "Is their American Sign Language?" But say that video exists in a kiosk. Is the interface to the kiosk done by the digital programmer is that accessible so they can even access the accessible media? And then is that kiosk built in a way from an exhibit designer and fabricator that a wheelchair user can roll up and have knee clearance and reach the interface properly? And then is that kiosk built in an environment where it's not up two steps? And you can, you know, all of those things are being developed by different teams and different groups, but they all have to work together in order for us to have not just an accessible outcome, but an inclusive one. And that's really the critical piece that Sina was just leaning in on is a lot of accessibility in the world segregates its audience based on ability and disability. You know, if you're a chair user, go take the elevator, we'll meet you at the top. Or if you're a blind user, here's the braille while we look over here at the, you know, that kind of thing. And that is not what we want. You know, Sina and I are great friends. We get to spend a lot of time together, and we have this informal metric that is like, do we get an emotional response at the same time? Um, when we're using two different primary modalities of engagement, and if the answer is yes, then someone's doing something right. The sad truth is the answer is most often no. So at The Dot Experience, what we're looking for is to provide as many of those yes moments as as possible.

Sara Brown 8:07

What was your initial reaction when you first became involved with the project? And what made this an interesting project from an inclusive design standpoint?

Sina Bahram 8:16

I think it's that it would be very, very easy, very easy, uh trivial, in fact, to phrase The Dot Experience uh in terms of accessibility. That that would be very easy to do. It would be the wrong decision, and we are delighted that that was not the decision that was made. But all other things being equal, if you think about it, it would be very easy to phrase everything in The Dot Experience as an accessibility problem. So, like, "can a blind person get text and speech or braille or or whatever?" That's not how we thought about this, and so I think what's powerful is that folks were willing to change their thinking and and and really shift from an accessibility mindset to an inclusive design mindset, and so then it really deeply affects the design process, not just the remediation after the fact. And so for for me, that was a really powerful um moment early on in the project where folks started having those light bulb moments of "oh, this is what y'all mean when you say multimodal. Okay, it's not just having sounds and lights and vibration, it's having those things work together. We we're we're starting to get it, you know." Like one of the things you go to The Dot Experience, um, the flooring tells you everything. Not because there's some guide path for blind people, not because there's some cane rail, not because of any of those kinds of things. There's no groove cut in the floor. It's because we were just really, really, really clever and intentional about where the carpet goes and where the not carpet goes. In other words, the wood or the you know, tile or the what have you, and where the carpet is, that's an interaction area. There could be seating, there could be Stevie Wonder's piano, there could be canes that you can play with to learn about different kinds of cane tips, and then where there's no carpet, where this the floor is a hard surface and so that's a circulation path. Now, this this sounds like this sounds like the basics. I mean, this is like as as simple as it gets, you know? But uh, you know, go ahead, I'll wait. List list five other buildings that get that right, because I sure can't think of any. Airports sometimes come close, they make the concourse be a smooth area, and then the seating area has carpet, but they sure don't uh repeat that pattern when it comes to the eatery and the other areas of the airport and lounges. So it's not consistent, right? And what The Dot Experience did really well is that once we laid out some of these principles, people didn't just say, "Oh yeah, sure, no, that makes sense. I get it." But they were willing to lean in and revisit those assertions and those, those, those, those rules, whatever you want to call them, those design, uh, that design thinking, those principles, so that it was all the way consistent, all the way to the end. So, like for me, that the that is is is the part that gets me excited about it because it's a cohesive system.

Corey Timpson 11:36

And and my first thought at the beginning was there was a clear demonstration of commitment on the part of APH to not just think about accessibility to but but to think of inclusive design where accessibility is an outcome. Um just, you know, the way the project was structured, the way we entered into communication with them, and then got brought into the project, it was clear that we got to operate across the different project aspects, whether it was architecture and construction, exhibition design outside of exhibition, like retail area, um, the tours that will take place through the fact, you know, we really got to participate in all of those things. And that is a clear demonstration of the will of APH to just do better. And so, you know, um that that immediately for me set the tone in terms of the way the project would go. And then um, you know, all of the project collaborators we got to work with, I think uh one of the points Sina made there was they they internalized the stuff that we were talking about and then became true collaborators with us, which is not always the case on our projects. You know, sometimes we're just always offering critique and demonstrating gaps and opportunity. And in some nice cases, like on this project, the partners come back with their own ideas. They've clearly intern, and then we get to learn and realize new opportunities as well because of this participation and collaboration. And so that was said at the very beginning by APH's approach. And it was really nice to um be on a project with other project participants that actually would internalize what we were talking about, and then you know, not just leave inclusive design and accessibility up to pack. You know, they got to really participate and dig into that as well, and and that was really rewarding for everybody.

Sina Bahram 13:29

And they they extended it. Like, so uh, for example, we are really big believers in prototyping. We or just we really test, you know, be data based in your decisions, right? Corey said, informed deliberate decision. Well, you can't be informed if you don't do prototyping, otherwise, it's opinionated deliberate decisions, right? And so if you want to make informed deliberate decisions, what do you do? You gather a group of disabled people together, right? And you're like, "hey, I need you to test some stuff. Give me some raw, honest feedback." But you know what you don't do? What you don't do is you ask them silly questions like, "should this have braille on it," "or should the computer talk?" Obviously, the answers to those things is "yes." "Should the video have captions?" Obviously, the answer is "yes." So we don't want to waste disabled people's time because so often disabled labor is undervalued in this in this world. And so what we want to do is be like, "listen, we got this really cool artifact, and you're gonna be able to feel this amazing resin print uh uh, you know, replica, right, that the design team has created. But what kind of detail do you do you care about? What what kinds of things do you want to make sure that you're able to access, right?" So then what do you have to do? You have to sometimes let people feel the real artifact, right? And then then get them to like get that behind the curtain experience and access, right? I was just visiting um with Corey last week uh in in Louisville, and you know, I got to touch uh Stevie's piano and you know Andrea Bocelli's chess set and things like this, because like we're also looking at the touch objects and the mapping between them. And and uh, you know, major shout out, by the way, because the touch objects in this museum are pretty spectacular, right? Like in terms of detail, in terms of fidelity, in terms of quality, in terms of how they've been mounted, how they've been presented, their accessibility to wheelchair users, their height, all of these things. But why is that? Well, we had some good ideas. We we started some things, that was awesome. Design uh uh Solid Light, had some great ideas, and they did some prototyping, etc. But it's great, not because of those initial decisions, it's great because then everybody leaned in, they've still been meeting with that prototyping uh uh uh group of individuals. It wasn't a one and done just to check a box, it was actually a methodology. And the proof is in the pudding.

Sara Brown 15:49

One of the fundamental ideas behind PAC's work is that inclusion should not be something added after the fact. How was that principle incorporated into the design of The Dot Experience from the very beginning?

Corey Timpson 16:01

Well, I I I think one of the reasons it's so important is in this context, it was really about the inclusive design and not just the accessibility. And so that means that visitors will go through and experience things together and have the opportunity to have emotional reactions together, um, even though the primary modality of engagement may be different amongst the users who are traveling together. And that only happens when we really think across that ecosystem. So Sina mentioned the flooring. Um, you know, that that is that is um, you know, something that often just doesn't get a lot of attention. We would consider it uh opportunities that get just get left on the table, right? Material selection, finishes of materials, these things can hold meaning and then not just serve aesthetic purposes, like we want the space to look and feel a certain way, but also can carry information along with them while they look and feel great. And in this design process, we really had the opportunity to dig into all of those aspects that come together within this environment. And so um I think that that was a really, really critical part that leads to this outcome. Um, and it was at the it wasn't just at the beginning, it wasn't just at the end. We really were afforded the opportunity to collaborate as a team throughout every phase of the project. So that means design charettes, prototyping groups together, um, you know, weekly calls, you know, all of these touch points, they build up um an inertia and everyone, and it's and it's just really difficult to slow down that inertia, right? So um that I think that that was just a critical aspect to how the project was run.

Sina Bahram 17:54

And you know, from an operational perspective, it's just more expensive to do it the wrong way, right? And so what happens is when you when you think of things as accessibility versus inclusive design, and you're like, "all right, well, I'm gonna make stuff accessible. So I'm gonna make this really amazing website, it's gonna be so cool." Um, and uh, oh yeah, um, well, we got to make it accessible. So about 90% of the way through the website, let's let's let's bother thinking about that, right? All you are doing is guaranteeing failure at that point. Like it's just a foregone conclusion. You will fail. It may come out okay, but it'll never come out great. Period. End of conversation. Why? Because the very design, the very essence of the thing was conceived of in a visual way and in a way that was not a minimal to accessibility. So, what do you then have to do? You have to spend money, time, effort, energy, all this other stuff to go in and undo stuff, redo stuff, fix stuff, remediate stuff, and at the end, after doing all of that, after spending all that money and doing all that effort, the best you can hope for is good enough, right? I just don't like a world in which I do that much work and the best I can hope for is good enough, right? I'd like to do that much work and have an outcome that is amazing. So, how do you do that? Well, you shift left, right? It's a very corporate sounding phrase, but all it means is just consider the stuff earlier. That's all you gotta do. It's pennies on the dollar, right? Changing braille that has been uh printed that has been pressed in bronze costs thousands of dollars. Getting the braille right on day zero costs almost zero dollars, right? And so it's it's just little things like that where thinking about it at the beginning is all of the difference in the world. Um, for a more like less kind of industrial example, just think about a house. Think about a three-bedroom house and you want to add a fourth bedroom onto it. If there's a family living in that house, there's a whole project there. There's construction and dust and electrical and plumbing and it's all this stuff, right? And you all this disruption. But if you're in the blueprint phase of a house, I mean, shrug, just out of room, right? Like this is not hard. That's a that's a math problem, that's a geometry problem. Um, it is not a physical, expensive operational problem. So anything you can do to think about these things ahead of time, then also means you get to do more because you're not always just in a state of compromise. You're actually in a state of saying, "no, I respect the disabled experience enough to design for everybody from the beginning, not just as a side effect at the end."

Sara Brown 20:50

And you recently toured The Dot Experience while it's still under construction. Seeing the project at the stage, what are some of the things you're particularly excited for, visitors to experience when Tthe Dot Experience opens?

Corey Timpson 21:02

Um, for me, it'll be the inclusion. Um, I think relating it back to the previous question also is that one of the tactics in a design phase that even when people are thinking about accessibility is they'll use personas to try and create their design intention and their design rubrics. And so this means, you know, like the wheelchair user or the blind low vision person or the deaf person, but you know, we all have multiple intersectional identities and these identities are dynamic. We're not necessarily the same person at 10 a.m. as we are at 10 p.m., you know, things or on a Monday as we are on a Sunday. You know, these types of things all matter. And so um, you know, the idea that we approach things inclusively and then we we battle test things with personas is how we do things. So once we have an outcome that we then we test it with personas, all of the all of that is really important because this project did it that way. But what I'm like really looking forward to is This develops inclusive opportunities where people can participate in sharing an experience. And so, you know, we can go through all of the really amazing artifacts and stories that are going to be presented through unique storytelling. You know, we'll probably have our favorites, but what I'm what I'm most excited about is that this museum will truly be one where people will get to experience those things together. And that is something that is quite rare.

Sina Bahram 22:28

Yeah, I agree. I think it's, it's, it's the, it really is the whole thing coming together. Um, and you know, in terms of specifics, I also think it's the um kind of it goes beyond the first layer. And so what I mean by that is like a lot of times people, especially disabled people, are very um, you know, our expectations get lowered over time because of the inaccessible state of the world. And so then what happens is it's really unfortunate because then it means we push less for things to be truly accessible and inclusive. "Oh, well, you should be grateful enough there is braille. You you should be happy enough that the video had captions. Never mind that they weren't spell-checked, you know?" And that's not a productive way of looking at it, right? It's not a fair or equitable way of looking at it, and it's most certainly not the way APH looked at it. And so here, I just feel like there's a core tenant of respect for the visitor, especially the disabled visitor, that really shouldn't go unsaid, right? That like "the museum, the experience, the institution by extension, respects you as an individual, as a visitor, as a creative being, right? As a stakeholder, right?" And and that then leads to everything, right? It it leads to, hey, maybe there's gonna be this cool uh evening event. You know what I don't have to worry about? The accessibility of the venue if it's at The Dot Experience. Or maybe there's gonna be this uh really cool um, you know, uh uh uh gathering in town or like a conference or something like that, and they're gonna go over to The Dot Experience to learn about like how to do things accessibly. And you know what I don't have to worry about? "Oh, they're only gonna like see Braille, but they're not gonna see sign language, they're gonna see it all, right?" And so it's like this that holistic grouping together, it does, it is really everything, like Corey's saying. Um, but then it's also the opportunities that it affords, like you said, like game nights or something like this, you know, social events that can be held there because it facilitated through its presence, through its commitment to inclusive design, through its execution of doing that well, uh, a space, both uh, you know, physically and kind of emotionally, um, that really is actually welcoming to the widest possible audience instead of accommodating people begrudgingly.

Sara Brown 24:57

Talk about the prototyping team and how instrumental they've been in the creation of The Dot Experience. The prototyping team is a diverse group of individuals who are actually locally based and they are either blind or low vision or have varying abilities, and they were the ones who would test and review prototypes and potential museum exhibits to ensure true inclusivity.

Sina Bahram 25:24

Critical. Just hands down, like without exception or equivocation, uh critical. Like actually, I would say beyond critical, in that if they did not exist, this would not be as good of a project. End of story. It's it's it's it's as simple as that. Um, because the real world uh gives you actual data instead of what a group of politicians agreed to uh in some room in Washington, DC. When you look at the ADA, one of the things that it says is that the roll under for a desk or you know anything like that, the how high off the floor that something should be, like a countertop, it should be 27 inches to facilitate, you know, wheelchair access. That sounds reasonable. "All right, cool. Let's do that." Except now you do the math, or now you interact with real people in real wheelchairs. And you know what you learn? "27 inches ain't nothing." It's not it's 50% of wheelchairs, maybe, maybe 50%, right? So what you're saying is 27 inches is what the law says. That doesn't mean it's a good idea, that doesn't mean it actually is helpful to people, that doesn't mean anything other than it's the least thing that somebody could agree to in order to codify it into some regs, right? So instead, what if we took a step back and said, "fun thought, what if we invited a bunch of disabled people into a room and actually had them try stuff?" And that's what we did here, right? And by the way, we tried, we really tried to push for that on every project we're on. Prototype the stuff. And so what did we learn? Well, we learned that one of our prototypers who uses a power chair, right, he couldn't roll under the blade, the braille reading uh plaque to read the braille because his chair wouldn't fit under it. Why? Because we had put it at 27 inches, right? So this is why PAC standards for all of these things, they're 30.5. Because if you look at the data, um, there was this great California report and it measured all these different kinds of wheelchairs and it gave you like the number of inches high and how many known wheelchairs could, you know, what percentage of them could fit under. And it turns out when you go over 30 inches, especially when you go to 30.5 inches towards 31, it's like over 90 to 95 percent of wheelchairs. But when you're at 27, which is what the law says, that's this is 50, 60 percent of wheelchairs. That's it. And so that sounds really small. That sounds like a little piece of minutiae, but think about it. Those few inches make all of the difference in the world to somebody being able to be treated with dignity and rolling under something and looking at it straight on and feeling it straight on and not craning their neck sideways and not half breaking their shoulder, trying to feel a wall vertically, that is so deeply uncomfortable, right? And it's frankly disrespectful, right? And so, how do you prevent that? You prototype at the beginning. So, like when you ask how critical is the prototyping group, it is hard to overstate how critical they are. Absolutely brilliant, amazing, like just awesome, all the value in the world.

Corey Timpson 28:36

And when it comes to creating some of the experiences that are more unique, we always talk about we want to plan for and develop an accessibility affordance. And then we want to figure out how to surface that affordance. So, for example, if say we're creating a time-based media piece and we know it's a say it's a video and audio, we want it to have captions. We plan for it, we budget for it, it's in the schedule, we'll produce the captions. But how do those captions get surfaced? Well, if you're looking at a TV, probably along the bottom, you know, 20% of the screen. But what if you're not looking at a TV? What if it's a media projection across physical space and it goes across the wall and in the sea? You don't put the captions along the baseboards. No, you know, they're not at a good angle of viewing and all of these things. But where do we put them? Well, it really depends on what our design intention is. Is this an immersive thing? How are we going to do it? And we can inform the surfacing decisions by testing the ideas out with a user group. And that just changes literally every time based on the context in which we're operating and the thing we're developing. So the prototyping group is critical for how, like we may have been planning to do, we'll plan to do braille, we'll plan to do all of these things, but how does it get presented in the context in which we're operating gets directly informed by the prototyping group. And that's critical. You know, we don't know what we don't know. And we are informed and we learn more and we get new ideas through these collaborations, literally on every time, on every project and on every instance of engagement. So the fact that this project had such a strong commitment to the prototyping and testing group meant that we were able to validate or invalidate any of these ideas that we had with a lot more effectiveness than would have otherwise been possible.

Sara Brown 30:23

Do you have any funny stories from the prototyping group or you know, just related to some of the feedback they may have shared?

Sina Bahram 30:30

Oh yeah. I mean, like there's all sorts of interesting things. Like um, for example, like one of the one of the objects that's gonna be uh in the museum is um is is is a is a boomerang. And um it was it was gifted to Helen Keller and it's this really cool object. And so like it's just like, well, okay, but how do we, you know, how do we mount something like that? Because you may think, "well, you could just flush it, you know, flat. You can just put it on a on a piece of wood or metal or something like that, and you know, like we just said, you would make 30 inches underneath it for wheelchair access and and give it a braille label and a guide a tactile description and call it a day." But like that's not sufficient because people are like, "but what does the underside feel like?" You know? And so you you really start like getting into these interesting conversations where because we opened the door to moving past the basics, right? So many places stop at, "oh my gosh, isn't it amazing that there's like two touch objects in this whole, you know, 50,000-foot museum?" And and like, you know, you gotta start somewhere, so no shade, but also no, that's not amazing. That's not even adequate, right? And so when you have conversations that go, "hey, we're gonna have touch objects, we don't even have a conversation about that. That's just a foregone conclusion. How do we make these touch objects sing, right?" Now you get to have cool, cool chats, right? And also you get to ask people what would really um what would really resonate with them, right? So there's really interesting conversations that have come out of like, uh, "do you want to be able to feel this? It's really visually apparent, but it's not tactily apparent in the original object. But is it important to feel it?" And then people have different opinions. Some people say no, some people say yeah. And so you dig into it, right? You back to the beginning of our podcast, you ask why, right? And and so, like that was insightful, you know. Um, and I I think that other things, um, you know, we had a project once, I don't remember if it was this prototyping group or not, and we we we were posed a very cool metaphor, and it goes like this if you put two circles um uh, you know, inside of a larger circle towards the top, and then you put a semicircle below it, a lot of us would would interpret that as a smiley face, right? Like that's that's a that's a little pencil drawing of a smiley face, right? Two little dots for the eyes and then a curve, right? But if you made a touch object out of that, you could easily imagine that it's a plate holding a banana and two grapes, right? And so this then really teaches you like, "oh, we don't just take something that's visual and make it touchable." And actually, we learned, I I really love this quote. We use this all the time, and there's this very famous, um, uh, very, very um uh uh prescient uh uh French philosopher about a hundred years ago, and he said, um uh talking to the finger, the language of the eye. So Mike Hudson, uh uh, the previous director of the Dot experience, he taught us that, right? "Talking to the finger, the language of the eye." I hadn't heard that quote before, but oh, does it resonate with our practice? And so that's just shorthand and really a beautiful way of saying, listen, just because you took something visual and you raised the lines and you made it touchable, you don't have a touch object. You just have something that you raise the lines on. But if you want to make a touch object, you got to actually talk to the finger, the language of the finger. And like that's the kind of insights that came out of the prototyping room.

Corey Timpson 34:12

That was even directly relevant to um uh the persona development uh for The Dot Experience, um, like Access Warrior. And I don't remember there's four of them, but all of these personas have characteristics. And one of the characteristics is a texture. And so we did a prototyping session with the different textures because again, speaking of the finger, the language of the eye, sometimes something looks very different, but it doesn't really necessarily feel very different. And so, you know, when we had a catalog of all these uh test patterns, and then when we ran through those and you know, landed on the fixed number, I think it's like four or five. Um, you know, the commentary to come out of those sessions was excellent because you know, the visual navigators were like, "oh, these are very different." And then the tactile navigator is like, "I have no idea where you these feel complete, you know, the same." And you know, so that that those are the types of insights you only get when you work with uh prototyping group.

Sara Brown 35:13

When The Dot Experience opens, what do you hope visitors will understand about what inclusive design can make possible?

Sina Bahram 35:21

I think it's that emotional simultaneity that um Corey mentioned, right? Like he he's a sighted human, I'm a blind one. We walk into this thing together, and we are both having a great time, right? We're both um like able to experience things simultaneously, we're able to appreciate things. It's not just Corey describing a bunch of stuff. Um, it's also not me just being bored because, like, "yeah, maybe there's braille, but like everything's behind glass and there's no real audio. And if there is audio, it's just a talking head video. Like, that's not the vibe here, right?" And so I think it really does an incredible job. Yes, for the visitor. Like, don't get me wrong, that's the most important thing, in my opinion. It's it's it's serving the visitor. But I gotta tell you, like, uh speaking a little bit for Corey, I think the thing that he and I are the most excited about is what it's gonna do for the field, because we can point to it and say, "that's how you do that, right?" And we can also point to it and say, like, "this is the difference. Compare this to this other award-winning museum. Like, both are award-winning, both, you know, I mean, I'm I'm I'm I'm predicting into the future uh for on behalf of The Dot Experience. Uh, it's award-winning in my heart." Um, and uh, you know, like, but but here's how you do it inclusively, right? And here's how you do it without compromising on aesthetics and other things like that, on on learning objectives, on quality, on making people feel welcome, all of these kinds of things. So, like that is really powerful because it goes way beyond the museum, it goes way beyond Louisville, it goes way beyond Kentucky. Um, and it really can influence the sector. And that's a big deal. That's, I mean, that's honestly the most we can hope for.

Corey Timpson 37:17

Yep, plus one, plus one. And as a designer, you know, having worked with so many other designers, um, I'm really excited for the audience to be more accustomed to, you know, for The Dot Experience to raise expectations so that other designers, you know, uh are kind of forced to just be more thoughtful, more considerate, and design more inclusively.

Sara Brown 37:42

Is there anything else you would like to discuss or share before I let you go?

Sina Bahram 37:46

Just gratitude, honestly. Um, really just major thanks to, you know, Joe and the other project partners, um, the the board. I mean, these are these are long-standing projects, right? And there's ups and there's downs, there's economic stuff, there's just all of these different, you know, trials and tribulations that the world throws at you. And it is, look, just, I mean, we're not gonna name names, but just take it from us. It's really easy to give up on access, it's really easy to give up on inclusion. It's really easy to say, "you know what, we did the braille. Guess we're just not gonna do sign language this time." Um, and that happens way more than we would any of us would like, you know, to uh to have it happen. Uh, it didn't happen here. And so I I would say just a note of gratitude because that takes a lot of dedication and it takes a lot of like when things are going well, it's easy to do. It's hard to do when things are frustrating and you're in the midst of construction, and opening is looming around the corner, and there's an engineering issue, and there's a plumbing issue, and there's a whatever, and you still don't go that these are all fires, and we're gonna put them out, and that means we're gonna compromise on accessibility. And that didn't happen here, and so like uh I for for that, uh, just just a note of gratitude.

Corey Timpson 39:10

Yeah, and and same. Um, in addition, I would say gratitude to all the project partners as well for looking at everything that we were talking about in the early days as an opportunity and not as a constraint. Um, because often people be like, oh, that's an additional burden or that's a constraint. And it's really unique when the whole team looks at things as an opportunity to do more and do better. Um, so yeah, gratitude for all those things as well.

Sara Brown 39:40

All right, Sina and Corey, thank you both so much for taking time out of your day to talk to me on change makers.

Sina Bahram 39:46

Thank you for having us.

Sara Brown 39:48

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Change Makers. I hope you have enjoyed learning about the inner workings and the design of The Dot Experience. If you have any questions or an episode suggestion, please send them to me at changemakers @ aph.org. And as always, be sure to look for ways you can be a change maker this week.