Title | ELECTION IN THE DARK |
Brand | YAHOO JAPAN CORPORATION |
Product / Service | WEBSERVICE |
Category | B01. User Experience Design (UX) |
Entrant | DENTSU INC. Tokyo, JAPAN |
Idea Creation | DENTSU INC. Tokyo, JAPAN |
Media Placement | YAHOO JAPAN CORPORATION Tokyo, JAPAN |
PR | DENTSU PUBLIC RELATIONS Tokyo, JAPAN |
Production | BIRDMAN Tokyo, JAPAN |
Additional Company | DIALOG IN THE DARK JAPAN Tokyo, JAPAN |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Yoshimitsu Sawamoto | DENTSU INC. | Executive Creative Director |
Akira Suzuki | DENTSU INC. | Creative Director / Planner |
Kazuyoshi Ochi | DENTSU INC. | Creative Director |
Togo Kida | DENTSU INC. | Creative Director |
Kenta Isobe | DENTSU INC. | Copywriter |
Masanari Kakamu | DENTSU INC. | Art Director |
Ryota Mishima | BIRDMAN inc. | Designer |
Michihito Nishizaki | DENTSU INC. | Account Executive |
Yohei Takahashi | Dentsu Public Relations Inc. | PR Planner |
Kazuya Watanabe | Dentsu Public Relations Inc. | PR Planner |
Eiko Shimada | Freelance | Producer |
Takuro Ito | BIRDMAN inc. | Director |
Saki Togashi | BIRDMAN inc. | Director |
Takayuki Komatsu | BIRDMAN inc. | Technical Director |
Kazuki Nakata | YAMA | Frontend Engineer |
Masanori Nagamura | BIRDMAN inc. | Backend Engineer |
Mayumi Morioka | BIRDMAN inc. | Researcher |
Koichi Suzuki | Yahoo Japan Corporation | Producer |
Shinya Uchida | Yahoo Japan Corporation | Creative director |
Jun Watanabe | Yahoo Japan Corporation | Creative director |
Masami Goto | Yahoo Japan Corporation | Engineer |
Kazuto Kitakado | Yahoo Japan Corporation | Art director |
Kazuaki Matsumura | Yahoo Japan Corporation | Planner |
Akihiko Maeda | Yahoo Japan Corporation | Planner |
Chikasa Komazawa | Dialog in the dark | Facilitator |
Akira Hiyama | Dialog in the dark | Facilitator |
Yohei Seto | Dialog in the dark | Facilitator |
Hojin Ishii | Niban-kobo Productions Corp. | Producer |
Yoshimune Takamatsu | Niban-kobo Productions Corp. | Producer |
Satomi Inagaki | Connection Inc. | Director |
Ryo Takashima | Niban-kobo Productions Corp. | Production Manager |
Nana Arai | Niban-kobo Productions Corp. | Production Manager |
To present this issue, instead of a PDF, we launched a text-based microsite with every candidate’s information. However, at first glance, this website is in complete darkness with no comprehensible information/hierarchy available. All election information is written in black text on a black background. This site expresses the state for visually challenged, who cannot obtain information despite the information being there. First, the sighted visits the website hoping to obtain necessary election information, but experience inconvenience instead by not obtaining anything. Soon after, the sighted understands this situation “replicates” the current state of the visually challenged, which eventually makes them realize the deepness of this unknown human rights problem. Nonetheless, through special software that vocalizes the non-visually information on the HTML, the visually challenged access the content without difficulty. By switching the positions of sighted and visually challenged, we provided a solution, and raised awareness about this overlooked information gap.
Prior to the Election, the microsite was launched containing comprehensive candidate information. This website has two objectives. 1): To let the sighted people realize this unknown human rights problem. 2): To enable the visually challenged to smoothly access necessary candidate information. To achieve them, we collaborated with various visually challenged people, and their supporting organization, experts in public welfare to ensure usability for the visually challenged. The UX/UI and the “audible experience” of the website improved through numerous discussions by using mockups. The website was checked throughly by using major screen reader softwares used among the Japanese visually challenged to ensure the vocalized information is easily comprehensible. Not just visually, but the website was crafted by its audibility. This website was unique in the sense that it served to function for two targets: for the visually challenged, the information architecture was comprehensively designed to ensure smooth access to necessary information. For the sighted, the website hidered them to obtain information at first, to create a pseudo experience of the visually challenged to further dramatize the disparity which exists in the real world. Moreover, not just the candidate information, but further enriched the microsite experience by adding detailed personal information of the candidates, comparable policy check sheet among various parties, questionnaires obtained from the parties, and specially written columns related to the upcoming election to ensure pleasant audible experience. <Timeline> June 22(THU), 2017: Microsite launch June 28(WED), 2017: Comprehensive candidate information published July 2(SUN), 2017 Election & vote count July 3(MON), 2017: Preliminary election results posted