Interface Design for users with low scholar and low literacy: the ECHO Project

Abstract

This study was developed as a part of the “ECHO: echoing the communal self ” research project, which aims to document self-initiated practices in social housing neighbourhoods in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, and disseminate them in similar social contexts, mainly through an online platform. A considerable percentage of low scholar and low literacy users was detected in the population of these social housing neighbourhoods, the main target audience of the online platform. Considering this problem, the need to study an Interface Design solution that ensures a pleasant and effective usage of the online platform arouse. Based on a deep literature review, a set of Design guidelines were studied, evaluated and outlined, and later tested with a prototype developed for this purpose. The usability tests administered confirmed the efficacy of the proposed guidelines, thus contributing to answer this research projects aforementioned problem, as well as other potential Interface Design instances directed towards this kind of low literacy and low scholar users.