Accessible and Inclusive Persona and Product Practices from the Sunflower UX Team

Accessibility and inclusion are closely interrelated. Teams creating products to improve the lives of underrepresented and underserved users in particular need to consider accessibility and inclusion in designs from day-zero. The Sunflower UX Team works in tandem with our Sunflower Lactation and Health Education product lines to create culturally competent CMEs for healthcare professionals that support rural, LGBTQIA+, and marginalized communities. To better serve these people (our users), Sunflower UX actively sought out ways to minimize barriers and excessive cognitive loads across their designs and processes. The result is designs that are intentionally accessible and inclusive from the start and throughout the journey, rather than adapted after they are developed and ready to ship, allowing for a smoother user experience.

In this session, we will explore in depth the process and lessons learned by the Sunflower UX Team through a case study format. We will follow the persona creation process from research and brainstorming to visual design, the ongoing improvements in internal communication and the creation of the company’s website from wireframe to launch, tree testing and iterations. We will see the impact of research insights, which led to a number of changes while the products were in development, long before they were ready for release. This included an overhaul in brand colors with improvements in color contrast, a change in terminology, improvements in website accessibility and navigation, introduction of new tools for team use and intentional personas to convey research findings in a more accessible, representative way that illustrates snapshots of a marginalized patient population while minimizing bias.