Humans have a variety of abilities and skills that affect how they interact with products, services, and experiences. These skills include motor, vision, and cognitive skills. Designers must consider the range of their users’ abilities and skills and ensure their solutions are accessible, usable, and learnable.
In this video, William Hudson, User Experience Strategist and Founder of Syntagm Ltd, explores some essential considerations for designers regarding user abilities and skills.
Ability vs Skill: What’s the Difference?
The words “skill” and “ability” are often used interchangeably. However, they each have a separate meaning:
Human abilities are the diverse natural qualities or tendencies that people are born with, such as cognitive processing speed, spatial reasoning, or musical sensitivity. These abilities form a foundation for developing skills, but the expression of ability can vary greatly across individuals. It's important to recognize that disabilities are also part of human variation, and people may develop different learning and skill development pathways. Individuals of all ability levels can learn, grow, and contribute meaningfully with the right support and tools.
Human skills are learned and improved through practice and experience. Examples include communication, problem-solving, and leadership. People build these skills over time by training, repeating tasks, and using them in real situations.
For example, someone with strong musical abilities, such as a heightened sense of rhythm, pitch perception, or auditory memory, may find it easier to develop musical skills, such as playing an instrument, composing, or singing.
Both ability and skill levels can change throughout people’s lives:
Abilities tend to remain relatively stable throughout a person's life. However, certain life events, health conditions, or circumstances may affect these abilities or lead to disabilities.
Skills can be continuously enhanced and adapted, but can also decline—for example, in later life.
Which Abilities and Skills Are Involved in User Interaction?
Skills and their underlying abilities affect how each unique human being interacts with a product, service, or experience. User experience (UX) designers are primarily concerned with motor, visual, and cognitive skills:
Motor skills involve physical movements. In technology design and development, some key physical movements include the use of touch screens, mice, and keyboards. Some of these require fine motor skills, such as moving a mouse over a small target, while others need gross motor skills. Other factors associated with motor skills are hand-eye coordination and reaction time.
Visual skills and abilities include visual acuity, color perception, and light sensitivity. Interactive systems are usually highly visual, making human skills in this area extremely important. People with low vision may need higher contrast or larger features, such as increased text size and line thickness. Some users may benefit from larger screens or magnification tools.
Cognitive skills include short and long-term memory, attention, and executive function. People with less cognitive skills or disabilities may need clear cues of the status of interactions, frequent reminders, and reduced complexity. In this video, Alan Dix, Author of the bestselling book Human-Computer Interaction and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University, explains the limits of our short-term memory and some tips on how to design for it.
How do User Abilities and Skills Affect UX Design?
Users are not alike. Designers must not assume that people taking a role in an organization or social setting form a homogeneous group; this is far from the reality of the situation. People vary widely in their experience and physical and mental abilities.
When designers use tools such as personas or base designs on user research with specific target groups, they must still consider the range of user abilities and skills separate from these tools. Solutions must account for this diversity and be usable, inclusive, and accessible to as many people as possible.
Good UX happens when a product, service, or experience is both accessible and usable. This is why designers consider the range of their users’ abilities and skills in their design choices.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
This point is very important for personas in particular. An inclusive approach is contrary to the philosophy of personas, which are intended to focus on a specific group of people that designers want to delight. In this video, William Hudson, User Experience Strategist and Founder of Syntagm Ltd, explains why inclusive design must be considered alongside personas.
Practical Steps for Inclusive Design
User research: It is essential that you consider the needs of various user groups from the outset. Remember that when you focus on the needs and behaviors of a specific group of users, you are not addressing the range of abilities and skills of all users. This diversity must be considered separately.
Accessibility: Use accessibility evaluation tools and involve users with disabilities to identify and rectify accessibility issues.
Unless you have researchers who are experienced in accessibility testing, it is often more effective to use outside agencies for this specialist task. There are many considerations when it comes to whether a product is truly accessible.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
Team awareness: Ensure that your design and development teams are familiar with accessibility standards and the basics of inclusive design. Share the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) with them or run a workshop on inclusive design.
Inclusive Design Best Practices
Solutions that accommodate a broad range of user abilities and skills are essential for inclusive, usable, and accessible products. In this video, Katrin Suetterlin, UX Content Strategist, explains the important difference between inclusive and universal design.
Unless you are building solutions primarily for expert users, it is best to use simple language and interactions. Always evaluate potential solutions with prospective users who have a range of skills and abilities. Beware that advanced and confident users are much more likely to volunteer for user research than those with basic or limited skills and abilities. Try to engage with a diverse body of research participants.
Allow interfaces to be customizable in terms of presentation. On some platforms, system settings for font sizes, colors, and layouts are enough. However, in some cases, your solution may need features to allow for this customization.
Be aware of accessibility and assistive technology. In some countries, it is a legal requirement to comply with the WCAG 2 guidelines, but generally, you must not discriminate against users with reduced abilities.
Some users rely on assistive technology to compensate for limited abilities. For example, some users may use screen readers to present the contents of a display audibly. Assistive technologies are part of many platforms, but more advanced third-party solutions are available as well. Your solutions do not have to address in detail how these work, but there are some basic requirements in making content machine-readable for assistive technologies to function correctly.
