Jen Devins, Google, Head Accessibility UX

Jen talks about her journey into user experience and design and then an opportunity to work with accessibility. She considered accessibility from a UX perspective as a champion of the user. Jen describes how research helped to develop training to create more awareness about the need for accessibility. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Info about Accessibility at Blink

(upbeat music)

- Hello, this is Digital Accessibility.

The people behind the progress.

I'm Joe Welinske the creator and host of this series

and as an accessibility professional myself,

I find it very interesting as to how others

who found their way into this profession.

So let's meet one of those people right now

and hear about their journey.

All right well, here we go

on another podcast where I get to meet

an accessibility practitioner

and today I'm pleased to be meeting with Jen Devins.

Hello Jen, how are you today?

- Hi Joe, I'm doing well thank you.

Thanks for having me on here.

- Well, I'm speaking from my home office on Vashon Island

which is near Blinks headquarters office in Seattle.

Where are you talking to us from today?

- Today I'm actually talking to you from Boulder Colorado.

I recently transitioned out here

so still working at Google,

but we have an office out here and we decided to pick up

and move about a year ago to be out here.

- All right well, yeah, I mean you kinda understand Google.

It has a presence all over

but I didn't realize there was a space in Boulder

but that must be a nice place to decide to live.

- Yes we've been very happy.

We missed the ocean a little bit in California

but it's been good out here.

- Well, you men mentioned the Google relationship,

why don't we start with you just briefly talking

about what you're doing today.

- Yes so it's been about, I think seven years now.

I've been in this role where I lead the user experience team

for Google's central accessibility organization.

And our remit is essentially

we have two key focus areas.

And so one is we have researchers and designers

and we actually partner with our engineers

and product managers to create new applications

or assistive technologies specifically

for people with disabilities.

And then the other area

that we focus on is providing infrastructure guidelines,

all kinds of tools that can help teams across Google

ensure that their products are more accessible.

So we do a lot of collaboration and consulting

across the teams at Google.

So it's quite a wide range of things

but been really fun.

- Well, yeah, that sounds like quite a lot of responsibility

things going on and we can dig more

into that a little bit later

but one of the things that is a main objective

of this podcast is just to find out how people

made their way to where they are today,

what their journey was into accessibility.

So why don't you just go back in time

let me know where that first came on the radar for you

and we can move our way back up to today.

- Yeah I agree, it's always interesting to hear

how people got where they are.

And I personally feel like in user experience for sure

the paths to it vary quite a bit.

Mine was actually a little bit more straightforward

I think than most but I started in the arts,

my undergrad was graphic design,

as a kid I always just really appreciated

and was into art.

And so I did really focus

on industrial arts and graphic design.

As undergrad and I started in San Diego

and I actually moved up to San Francisco

to finish off my undergraduate.

And in that environment, I started getting

into just understanding the world of educational technology.

And I really liked that space of combining

some of the arts that I was learning

of how to communicate and convey information,

but doing it from perspective of educating people

in this aspect it was actually more for adults versus kids.

So that was an area that really piqued my interest.

I finished off and just finishing

out my industrial arts bachelor's.

But then after that, I decided to go

and get a master's focusing

in the educational technology realm

where that took me though was back to Illinois.

So I was actually born well, I was born in St. Louis,

but raised in Illinois most of my life.

So I went back to Illinois to get a master's

from the University of Illinois,

and I focused on education with the emphasis

of instructional technology.

So still bringing that idea,

again how to convey information

with the perspective of training or educating people.

And I really liked that.

That was where I had wrapped up my education

and then decided based on the opportunities

and stuff to move back to the west coast.

And there, I did explore

a little bit of getting into academia,

but I ended up taking more of the route

of just getting into industry.

And I started honestly dating myself

as truly just like an old school web master.

So just creating web application for certain businesses.

And through that though just being in the Silicon Valley

area I was able to make some connections

and eventually became an official user experience,

or actually back then we were called

just more interaction designers.

And I started working at eBay

as an interaction designer and a researcher.

And I was very very fortunate to have had somebody

in that space that recognized,

they saw something in me

I don't think everybody saw in the interviews

'cause I don't think they actually weren't great

but there was one person who is still a friend today

Kelly Braun I think she recognized something in me

and brought me on as a researcher initially in eBay.

And so I was really focusing on the users

and understanding their needs.

And then eventually just with my background in design

I pivoted and stayed more within the design field.

So I was there doing my interaction design role.

And from there, as things were moving and shaking

I decided to move to Google back in 2005.

So I've been there quite some time.

And throughout that experience, it was great

because it is a big company that focuses

on a lot of different things.

I was able to go and work on different products

which is almost like working in different companies.

Like just the users were different,

the teams obviously were different,

the goals, even the types of design we needed to do

was very different.

So that was really enjoyable.

And then I was starting to get into design management.

And so that's where I was and they're just kinda...

- I mean, just to check into where you came from so far,

you touched a lot of spots that other people

have found their way into accessibility

except you touched a lot of them,

which is education and trainings often a way

that people come in sometimes exploring academia

which you looked at the user experience area of design

but then you also were involved in research.

You were involved as working with web technologies early on.

So you actually had all these foundational elements

that a lot of people had already done.

So it looks like that was setting you up

for whatever this next chapter

is that you're gonna talk about.

- Yeah, that's a good summarization

and yes 'cause I really appreciated

and felt honored to be a user experience designer

and at least my (indistinct) is always I am the voice

of the user and I took that to heart in all of my work

and as just life goes on my parents were getting older,

my dad ended up having dementia.

I started losing some of my hearing

and life starts happening and you start to realize

that a lot of the technology we were trying to use

just kept getting harder to use

in some areas and aspects for people.

And that just really it just shifted my thinking

a little bit and made me realize

while I kept feeling like I'm the champion of the users,

I was realizing wait a minute,

I'm not the champion of all users here.

I'm just thinking yes kind of prototypical user

and not really thinking about the needs of everybody.

And that all came around the time

where myself and my career,

I was satisfied but I was like, I don't know what's next.

It was fine being a design manager.

I just returned after having children

and wasn't sure exactly where to take this.

And so I was fortunate

in that there was just a need for somebody

at that point in time at Google

I was working in the what is now called Workspace.

So where Gmail and Calendar all that those products live.

I was in that space and they needed somebody

to start from a UX perspective,

thinking about accessibility.

So I decided to try that role out

and brought with that the things that I had been observing

like with my parents and myself,

even just, and the challenges there.

And so really then just pushing on,

okay, this was my entry point here

and my understanding and it drove a passion within me,

now how do I get the rest of everybody

to have that same passion because it is work

and it is a new way to think for a lot of people

and new things to consider.

And so that's where my journey started on.

And I wasn't alone by any means

there were other people in the company

thinking about this, but I felt like the starting point

was how people that were designing and creating our products

they just needed to understand the experience

other people were having.

Like, yes, they might understand their own experience

of using even just Gmail for example

but what is the experience of somebody

that's blind using this?

And so I really started pushing hard

on let's do a research, let's bring users in

and get an understanding of those experiences.

And that's where it started.

- Well, so as you came into that role

I imagine there must have been a lot

that you had to learn about and figure out

relative to accessibility.

So did that come from some formal network

of accessibility education within Google or colleagues

or how did you approach that part of it?

- Yeah, that is a great question.

It was a mixture of things.

Again, I was very fortunate to have a few colleagues,

one engineering had been thinking about accessibility

at that point in time to some degree,

so I had some engineers to just learn

the basics around web technology or web accessibility

and try to dig into that.

And there's obviously great external resources as well

from like WebAIM and stuff.

So I really dug into that to understand how does it work?

Like how do you support it from a technical perspective?

'Cause again outside of accessibility as UX designer,

I always felt it's important to understand

how the technology works.

Like the designs you want to get to, what does it require?

So I dug into that and then I also was really fortunate

that in our area, we had a few folks

that were more on the program management side

that had disabilities that I worked with

and they were focused on accessibility as well.

So it was getting the, they had expertise

in using assistive technologies,

but also them as end users and being able

to talk with them on a regular basis

and just observe and see what their experiences are.

And that's only a few people

but that was a great place to start

and then expand out and just obviously look at or interact

with and reach out to other people.

- And then you started talking

about how you started developing the program

for the work that you are directly involved in.

So what was that like?

What were some of your priorities

and how did that evolve?

- Yeah like I said I really started on understanding

the user and doing research in order

to bring that back to the teams

and convert that into training as well.

So I would say education awareness

getting into the empathy realm.

That's where I started just to gain some traction

get some interest.

And like I said, make people aware.

I think that's where I felt like we needed to start.

And that was useful and took us to a certain level.

But I think quickly after that you realize,

okay all of these teams that were asking

to do this they're aware

and of course nobody was saying no we don't agree.

I think everybody agreed yes this is important.

But then it came to the very specifics

of how do we actually do this?

And so that's what we would dig in more,

like I said engineering was already getting into this realm

of how do you build in the support

within your applications, but on the design side

what are some things that we as designers

can be thinking about early on as we're even just sketching.

So really just trying to break that down

to processes that people can follow.

So that was a key thing.

And then in any large organization

I think the other thing that was very evident

and something we're always going to be working

with is the competing priorities

that any sort of product team has.

And so this is where we definitely realize

like, okay we need more leadership support in this

and to prioritize this type of work

'cause as I mentioned it is work.

I mean, we try really hard

to essentially bake in these processes

of how to think about people with disabilities

throughout your design process and your engineering process.

And we try to really bake it in.

So it does feel like this is just the standard process

but it takes work and it takes especially

when you're ramping up learning.

So it does take that time and we needed people

to be on board to say it's okay

if it takes a little extra time to launch X, Y, Z.

And so that's where it started quickly.

We started to see like the, I would say multi-prong approach

of trying to get the leadership buy-in

so they would prioritize this work

on behalf of the teams and just note how important

it is and then giving the people

that are actually building these products

the tools and processes to help do it.

So we are still in the thick of that.

We'll always be really focused on that,

but it's been exciting to see in the past

I guess seven years or so that I've been in this,

the conversations have changed, which is great.

And it's a little bit more of okay,

they're getting more nuanced.

It's like they're getting past the basics

and like okay now how do I tackle this tricky problems

which is great.

- Is your organization set up with accessibility

where you're involved with onboarding

or spreading information across the whole organization

or is it set up where individual product groups

within Google are responsible

for going after their own resources and finding their way?

- Yeah, it's a little bit of a mixed approach.

So as I mentioned, we're on the central accessibility team

for the company.

And so in that role, we are responsible

and taking our part in much of the creation of the tooling

and those resources but what we have is a hub

and spoke model.

So across the larger teams or organizations across

the company they also have their own

accessibility teams where they are obviously much more aware

of their specific product needs and the users and all that.

And so they are also responsible for their own work.

And I think together I would say

as Google's overall accessibility program,

we do try to collaborate and help each other out

when it comes to trying to get resourcing

and things like that.

We work together where we can on that

but it is definitely like each of these larger organizations

have their own smaller accessibility teams

that are more focused on their own products

and establishing their own accessibility program

that fits with how that team works.

- Well I'm always trying to look ahead a little bit

I kinda look in the past and see where we've come.

I'm not always feeling like we came as far

as I thought we would have when I first started

working on this 20 years ago

but then there's all so amazing things

that have happened with voice interaction

that's been so valuable and technology playing a big role.

As you look forward, are there any areas

where you see gaps that you think accessibility

needs to be attentive to or are there any particular things

that you're really passionate about looking forward

that you're excited about either Google

or just generally for your accessibility work?

- Yeah and I agree on the same perspective,

there's some parts where really we're still talking

about this and then there's some great advancements

and exciting projects and yeah, I think in general,

I'm excited about, in the UX community

and just in general, I think we talk a lot

about an adaptive design approach

and in our team we've recently been talking

a lot about ability-based design

which I think go hand in hand 'cause the idea

at a very high level is that it's less on the owners

of the user to have to tweak a bunch of settings

and stuff to make the experience that supports them.

It's more kind of owners becomes more part

of the application or the product

that learns how the user interacts

and can adapt to them.

And with that approach I feel like it's exciting

'cause it really focuses I think on the creativity

of how do we solve these problems

and from an engineering perspective

as well as design problem,

how can we more seamlessly meet the needs

of different users?

And I wouldn't say it steps away,

it just goes beyond the feeling

of like I just have my checklist of guidelines.

I make sure my contrast is good.

I think people get that but it's not very inspiring.

And so I think just focusing on how do we make our products

more understanding and adaptive of different people's needs

and the way they interact to me seems really exciting.

And with that it is great to see the different modalities

of how we interact with products

like you mentioned a lot of the voice interactive products

that we have, I think are really exciting.

I think there's long ways to go to be really inclusive

of that and understand everybody's speech patterns

and there's a lot there

but it is great to see again these different modalities

that people can interact with products

and now in my perspective it's okay,

we have these different ways

and right now for the most part they're maybe siloed.

It's like you interact with this device with your voice

you interact with this device by touch screen.

But how do we bring that together

and have a truly multimodal experience for users

so that even through completing one task,

you can switch seamlessly between using touch and voice

and eyes I think there's a lot there

that to me, we are just in general,

I'm excited to push on that more

'cause I do feel like when speaking about accessibility,

I wanna push people to think beyond compliance

and just say no thinking this way can actually make us

more innovative and really solve and address

a lot of these problems with people or so.

- Well, Jen, it's been great to have this chance

to follow your journey here to what you're doing

with accessibility today.

And I hope everything continues to go well

and maybe we can meet up in the real world sometime

when that's possible again.

- That would be lovely.

Yeah, I can't wait for that.

Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.