Design x Catherine Idylle
Interaction Designer at Google
Illustration by Bonnie Kate Wolf
Interview conducted by Sarah Thompson on July 17, 2020
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Catherine Idylle. I am French and Vietnamese. I was born in Paris and I lived in Texas for a lot of my life. I went to school at Princeton, where I studied Neuroscience and Psychology. I was interested in how people think, how people behave, and how I could help them. I decided not to go to grad school because I wanted to do something concrete right away, and it turned out it was design, where you could just apply what you learn through research.
Since graduating college four years ago, I’ve been working at Google. From the beginning, I started working in accessibility. I’m currently on the Central Accessibility team working on Lookout, an app to help blind and low-vision people recognize objects and texts in their surroundings.
What was your journey like becoming a designer?
At Princeton, they didn’t offer design classes when I was there, but I always had an inkling for design. I used to make Neopets websites, so that’s when I learned HTML and Photoshop. In college, I remembered that inkling and continued pursuing it. To learn, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and Sketch tutorials, and then I tried to copy what I saw.
Was there any specific moment when you realized you wanted to pursue design?
I took some interesting classes on health psychology, medical anthropology, and the psychology of poverty. A lot of the things I learned in class inspired me to become a designer. For example, if you redesign the FAFSA form to be more accessible to everyone, more people would actually get their grant, go to college, complete college, and go on to do great things. It’s the concrete impact that psychology and design can have on people’s daily lives that got me interested in design.
“It’s the concrete impact that psychology and design can have on people’s daily lives that got me interested in design.”
How has your background in psychology impacted your perspective as a designer and the design decisions that you make now at Google?
A lot of people think that having a psychology or neuroscience degree is extremely relevant to design, but it’s actually not. What I mean is that there are basic things about psychology, like how attitudes and behaviors are different and what implicit bias is, but when you’re making mocks, those things don’t explicitly matter.
What actually prepared me well for my job at Google was my background in research, writing literature reviews, and being able to comprehend and explain academic papers. These weren’t specific to my major, but were more about design thinking, and that was way more helpful in creating robust designs for my specific users.
You previously worked as an English as a Foreign Language teacher in China. Did that experience carry with you into your design work at all?
I wasn’t expecting to teach so much, but since I do a lot of evangelism for accessibility, I’ve ended up teaching a lot through my work now. Having actually taught, and not just running through a slide deck, was great in preparing me for training fellow designers. What’s really nice about teaching this time is that there’s an authentic learning environment without grading and homework. Making things easy to understand and being patient and non-judgemental has been really helpful for my role at Google.
Why do you think it is important that all designers consider accessibility in design and designing more inclusively?
I’ll start by defining the different terms of accessibility and Inclusive Design. Accessibility is specifically designing for people with disabilities, which can be temporary, situational, or permanent.
Then there is Inclusive Design, which incorporates accessibility, as well as other facets of human diversity like gender, age, race, and socioeconomic level. There’s the iconic ramp example: a building with only stairs isn’t accessible to wheelchair users, but a building with a ramp can provide access to wheelchair users, parents with strollers, bikers, and many others who couldn’t access the building before. For a tech example, a video with closed captions is a more inclusive experience because it provides different ways to consume content, especially for users who have hearing loss, are non-native speakers, or are simply in a loud room. Inclusive design is basically figuring out several ways for people to participate in an experience.
Finally, there is Universal Design, which people also tend to conflate with Inclusive Design. Universal Design is pragmatic in the sense that when you aim to design for the majority of users, but you’re inevitably going to leave some people out. For example, although the average shoe size for women could be size 8, you’d be excluding everyone who’s different if you make only size 8 shoes. Inclusive Design is providing all of the other options that aren’t for the “average” user. It’s more work, but it’s also just better for everyone.
I’d say that a balance between all three types of design frameworks is the best approach. Designing more inclusively is just the moral thing to do. From a more organizational and business perspective, Inclusive Design can lead to more sustainable outcomes, so you’re not retrofitting things at the end. It saves time for designers and engineers later on and ultimately creates a better product for the company.
Should designers design as inclusively as possible, or focus on a specific group of people that’s usually left out? What does it mean for a product or design to be inclusive?
That’s a great question that I don’t think anyone has been able to answer clearly. I see a lot of bigger companies trying to do both, by making their core products more inclusive but also by making technologies that do focus on specific populations. In general, whatever you’re designing, you should try to be as inclusive as possible. You can’t always predict who your users are going to be or what potential contextual or permanent disabilities they might have.
“You can’t always predict who your users are going to be or what potential contextual or permanent disabilities they might have.”
For example, if a person is cooking but needs to look at a recipe on their device, having voice control would be helpful for both the user with a temporary disability, and the user who is blind or low-vision. Being multimodal is the best way to guarantee that you’ll create the best design for all users and conditions.
How has it been working in accessibility and conveying the importance to other designers, engineers, and so on and so forth to think about accessibility in their work?
To be honest, it can be a challenge at times, but it is ultimately so satisfying and meaningful when I am able to reach people. That’s why I spend so much time evangelizing and teaching accessibility. Even during my free time, I’m thinking about how to teach more people.
That’s how I came up with a deck of cards that I now use for my trainings. It started as a fun accessibility exercise for my team, where I wrote contextual disabilities on colored pieces of paper, like riding a bumpy train or using a device at night, and we had to brainstorm solutions to design for those problems. My team enjoyed this activity, so I kept on evolving it. I eventually had a whole team of volunteers join me to evangelize the Inclusive Design framework for creative technologists at events like Google I/O, Grace Hopper, and SF Design Week.
At Google, you’re currently working on Lookout, an app intended to assist the blind and low-vision community. Could you tell me a little bit more about the work you do for this application?
Lookout was created to help blind or low-vision people with everyday tasks where society hasn’t adapted to them yet. For example, sending a blind person physical mail isn’t effective and can be annoying, especially if it’s important paperwork. Lookout can read documents, recognize currency, and describe your surroundings. It’s been really educational designing for people who have limited or no vision. I’ve been learning new things like sound design and pushing old design patterns to their limits for our users.
What do you believe are some of the challenges that UX designers face today? And what is some advice you would give aspiring designers?
Becoming a designer can be daunting, especially if you didn’t go to school for it, but you can always teach yourself and catch up.
“Becoming a designer can be daunting, especially if you didn’t go to school for it, but you can always teach yourself and catch up.”
I didn’t go to school for design, and that’s okay. Instead, I learned online and from actual working experience. This way of learning is no better or worse than some of my colleagues at Google who went to school specifically for design. Even if I feel behind on something, I can always catch up, and there is always more to learn. Normally, I spend half an hour everyday learning something new.
I think it’s great that the new cohort of designers is actually more versed in Inclusive Design and accessibility than designers in previous years. Partially this is because some schools are teaching it in their curriculum. I would actually encourage aspiring designers to deepen their knowledge about different facets of human diversity. I think we’ve seen in recent times that race, gender, and all these human facets, can lead to a lot of exclusion. Finding out ways to combat that not only is the right thing to do, it will also give you a distinguished portfolio that’s timely and really pushes your design skills.
A challenge that designers face today is just advocating for themselves and the work they do, to other cross-functional roles who might not see the value in considering inclusion or accessibility. It’s important to make a strong case for your design suggestions and collaborate efficiently by showing the value of good design, based on research. The best practice is to evolve with your team with education, training, and communication, whether that is explaining how to work with UX or how to be more inclusive of all users.
Is there a project that you worked on involving accessible design that you are particularly proud of or that has impacted you?
Google has an event every year called “Accessibility Week,” where we have all these events about education where we invite speakers. We invite guide dogs, we do blind olive oil tastings, or we sit in a wheelchair and try to navigate the campus. It’s a really cool week.
We also do a sprint week where we work on a project that we believe might be helpful. Once I worked on improving closed captions. After I presented my research and design solution at the end of the sprint, this guy came up to me and thanked me. He told me he has hearing loss and wanted to learn more about the project over lunch. I just thought that was so cool that someone saw my work and thanked me for it. It meant a lot to me because at Google, you don’t always get to meet your users. Billions of people use Google and sometimes you don’t really know that someone really enjoys what you created.
Rapid fire questions:
What is your favorite thing to do in your free time?
Nothing! I love relaxing. If I have to be specific, I’d go to the sauna.
What is your favorite book or podcast?
I’m currently reading Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. It’s all about women, and it’s written in this slice-of-life way. It’s a really cool read.
For podcasts, I love Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. He’s just so silly, but he gets pretty deep with his guests. I think it’s a pretty universal podcast that anyone can enjoy.
Who or what inspires you?
I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube vlogs. These days it’s hard to be motivated, so watching mundane activities can be calming and inspirational.
If you could live anywhere, where would that be, and why?
Realistically, I’d go back to Paris, since I’m from there and I miss it. But otherwise, I’d want to live in a country where I’m not part of the culture at all. Turkey comes to mind. (I also love that there are cats all over Istanbul.)
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Can my words be my cats’ names? Panther and Noisette!
