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Hope Tech Insights fosters what made us grow: user-led decision-making, co-creation with individuals with disabilities, and re-imagining of legacy systems.

Our research started with product testing but soon had to expand to workplace access, stigma, co-morbidities, mental health, insurance, and social systems across borders to gather all the information we needed to develop an inclusive assistive tech product.

With Insights, we not only hope to cultivate this knowledge but more importantly advocate for upholding of the UNCRPD on enterprise levels. As an assistive tech manufacturer, we are especially aware of the work that will need to be done for articles 9, 19, 20 and 27, through direct feedback from our end-users.

Moving on from doing accessibility work on the side to working directly with persons with disabilities: I joined Hope Tech as UX Researcher to support the development of their latest assistive tech device, the Sixth Sense.

My research is focused on blindness and low vision. In collaboration with Hilfsgemeinschaft der Blinden und Sehschwachen Österreichs, I recruit participants for interviews and user trials where we test the desirability and ease of use of the hardware. These conversations are valuable insights for our product and development teams in the UK, Kenya and Australia.

My first corporate position as a full-time UX/UI designer was a head-on dive into responsibility for the online experience of business customers.

Right from the start, I have been involved in our in-house user testing program. On a monthly basis, usability tests are organized and carried out with up to 6 participants. Whenever my calendar allows it, I help with the selection of participants, recruitment, and protocol. That is unless I have any designs of my own I want to test, which requires more time for preparation of prototype and interview guidelines.

Accessibility is what got me interested in UX in the first place and it remains a topic near and dear to my heart. At A1, I got the chance to talk more about my passion and expand my knowledge on it through working on the internal accessibility guidelines and participating in diversity strategy. Through identifying common grounds and minimum requirements, we aim to establish a minimum of WCAG AA on the whole website. Although we would love to go for AAA straight away, it’s a long process of re-working existing content and code, which has to start with promoting awareness and sharing knowledge about best-practices and resources with designers, developers, editors and software testers.

At the Department of East Asian Studies, the main task of my internship consisted of summarizing reports, in order to present the core information in an easy to comprehend and visually pleasing layout, both in word and excel documents.

The documents are now available for students as part of the compulsory course 'Praktikumsbegleitung' and I have received positive feedback from my junior students.

For reference, please contact Antonia Miserka, BA MA antonia.miserka@univie.ac.at

After passing the eligibility exam, I received industry-standard flight attendant training concerning flight safety and customer service. Through NIKI's student program, I was part of the active cabin crew for 3 months during high season.