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How and when do you deal with edge cases in your design process?
over 5 years ago from Marco Perez, UX Designer
Jan Zheng, over 5 years ago
right true, those should all be baked into the core requirements for sure.
But then how do you explain the pervasive lack of accessibility, especially in most awards sites? Many of them push for cool, bleeding-edge "experiences" without considering basic accessibility.
Too many sites and apps have low contrast, tiny text and other things that make the site look and behave "cool" but compromise usability for a large group of users. I'm a culprit as well, but working to change that.
I think what I'm getting to is — some things we consider "edge case" might be the main case for some users. It's a business decision whether to treat those as main cases or not. (also, this DN reply box is very eye-straining)
barry saunders, over 5 years ago
the lack of accessibility on a lot of sites is a huge problem, but I'd avoid framing accessibility as an edge case.
Providing accessibility is about making sure everyone can access the core function of your product (and frequently a legal requirement, too).
Supporting edge cases is about adding to the core function of your product.
Agreed - and not advocating for edge cases to be ignored. But if the "happy path" somehow allows for a life to be put in danger, or comfort to be compromised, then something is wrong because those are basal requirements and really should have been surfaced early on as part of discovery. A table saw that cuts exquisitely but has no safety features suggests that the default scenario wasn't properly understood through a human-centered design approach.