How to Make the User Experience Positive and Effective for the Person with a Disability Using Assistive Technology

To fully model the perceived experience of a user, practitioners should include a set of repeated objective and subjective measures in their evaluation protocols to enable satisfaction and benefit analysis as a “subjective sum of the interactive experience.” It is also well known that if the UX of a product is assessed at the end of the design process, product changes are much more expensive than if the same evaluation were conducted throughout the development process. In this study, we aim to present how these concepts of UX and UCD inform the process of selecting and assigning assistive technologies (ATs) for people with disabilities (PWD) according to the Matching Person and Technology (MPT) model and assessments. To make technology the solution to the PWD’s needs, the MPT was developed as an international measure evidence-based tool to assess the best match between person and technology, where the user remains the main actor in all the selection, adaptation, and assignment process (user-driven model). The MPT model and tools assume that the characteristics of the person, environment, and technology should be considered as interacting when selecting the most appropriate AT for a particular person’s use. It has demonstrated good qualitative and quantitative psychometric properties for measuring UX, realization of benefit and satisfaction and, therefore, it is a useful resource to help prevent the needs and preferences of the users from being met and can reduce early technology abandonment and the consequent waste of money and energy.