On exclusive design
Delivering products that make life faster, easier, and more fun. Founded in 2000, Q42 consists of 100 Q’ers, including over 80 developers. Since 2022, they have been part of ARC Arise Consulting, an umbrella company that connects them with other companies in various disciplines, such as Fabrique, with whom they collaborate for design. They have offices in Amsterdam and The Hague. Their clients include HEMA, the Rijksmuseum, Philips Hue, De Mol, and Hack the Planet.
Q DNA:
- Accessibility is a priority
- They fight for the end user
- They’re driven innovators, always seeking to use the latest technologies to make life better, easier, and more fun.
- W00tcamp: A day dedicated to creating something crazy to experiment with new technologies in unconventional ways, learning the limits of these technologies.
- Passiedag: A day to pursue their passions.
- Jumpstarts: Initiatives to kickstart new ideas.
- Bedenktijdjes: Sessions where people can share what they've been learning recently with their colleagues.
Accessibility
Q42 is always striving to truly understand the perspective of disabled individuals to develop as selflessly as possible. The WCAG rarely encompasses enough standards to ensure that a website is safe and usable for disabled people. This is so situational that you cannot just make a checklist to cross off all the points needed for accessibility. Thankfully, the WCAG is constantly growing and becoming more specific, as well as being used more often.
Q42 wanted to show us three cases where they applied exclusive design: designing and developing for a very specific target audience. I've described my favorite here.
SenseMath
They worked with Visio (an expert center for visual disabilities in the Netherlands) to create an app for blind individuals to navigate mathematical equations and illustrations. Math is typically visual, with equations and graphs on paper, but what if you’re blind? They collaborated with two blind individuals who pushed themselves to the limit to create the best app possible. Previously, blind people had to use swell paper, where the graph would be raised above the paper, requiring them to feel out the graph with their fingers. This process would take several minutes, while sighted people could understand the graph in seconds by looking.
They demonstrated several graphs represented in sound, which was fascinating. The sounds they created made sense according to the graphs they were meant to represent, meaning the sounds matched the visual representation of the graphs. Every subtle change had to be audible. They worked with an incredible sound designer who helped them test and develop the right sounds to represent lines in a graph!
Reflection
Honestly.. I don't even know what to say, I am in complete awe of the Q'ers and what they've done. The spectrum of work they provide is so broad and it feels like they truly develop with love. SenseMath is an amazing project, and so are all the other ones they displayed to us. I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that, when they played the audio for the graphs, I could roughly imagine what it was meant to look like. They're innovators and truly an inspiration. They've taught me not to accept non-sense as bad. Often times, there is some truth to it. This is a valuable lesson not only to remember but to apply actively.
