When Skillshare approached me back in February to collaborate to create a Skillshare class I was both honoured and intrigued.
Coincidentally I had been thinking about expanding my skills and a priority on my list was teaching.
Skillshare is an online learning community of over 7 million students.
It was clear from the start, if I was going to teach anything, it would be about accessibility and inclusive design, i.e. making websites better for everyone, not just the people it’s easy for.
And because I had been thinking about teaching for a while, I already had a list of topics I could talk about.
After a couple of discussion with Jessica, one of Skillshare’s community managers, we narrowed down these 64 topics, to a group of 9–10 topics I would talk about.
Specific topics, where I had focussed it to a single story with a single lesson.
These would all be centred around people with various forms of disabilities and the mismatch we create when we exclude them. With real-world statistics to illustrate how many millions of people are affected by our design choices.
We now had a plan and an outline.
It was time for me to research any gaps in my data and start writing the lessons.
Researching accessibility, and disability, in particular, is challenging because the reality is that disability is a complex interaction with the world.
This makes it difficult to measure some times and as a result, we don’t always have good data.
Something we, as a society, need to address.
After about 40 hours of research and 15 hours of writing it was finally time to record the lessons.
With Lucien as my cameraman, we both had to avoid laughing as I struggled to pronounce simple words, such as “lost,” and complicated words, such as “deuteranomaly.”
I’m still not sure how to pronounce, “deuteranomaly,” to be honest.
The result, however, was ten 8–10 minutes worth of raw materials which would form my lessons.
After a couple of weeks—it would have been quicker if it hadn’t been for my busy schedule—of going back and forth with the editor, those 8–10 minutes had become 1–2 minutes.
What I learned from creating an online class
- Plan, plan, plan and then plan some more
- Filming, lighting and sounds are all disciplines in their own right (and hard ones at that)
- I struggle and lose momentum when I don’t know all the steps beforehand, I need to be able to picture the end product
- Shooting takes twice as long as I think
- Don’t rely on daylight alone
- The English language can be hard some times
A big thank you to Skillshare and Digitano Media for helping shape this class.
We finally arrive at today, where after months of writing, filming, mispronouncing and producing I’m ecstatic to announce;
How to Design Inclusive User Experiences (Ux) for People, where I’ve taken over a decade of knowledge and experience and packed it into a straight-to-the-point 20-minute class.
Get to know some of the real people you’re excluding and practical tips on how to fix it.
If you’ve been thinking about making your user experiences more inclusive, this class is for you.