I am currently staying overseas as part of the Tobitate! (Leap for Tomorrow) Study Abroad JAPAN program.
During my time abroad, I had the opportunity to meet children with dyslexia and the teachers who support them. I asked them to try out my reading support app, RC Line, and received valuable feedback and impressions from real users.
Until now, I had developed the app based on my own experiences and research. I also followed Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), aiming to create a simple and intuitive user interface.
However, once I saw people actually using the app, I realized that reality was very different from what I had imagined.
Who Is “Intuitive” For?
The most memorable lesson was that the interface I considered intuitive was not necessarily intuitive for children.
The structure and design patterns of Apple's standard iOS UI components felt completely natural to me.
In reality, however, many children could not understand them without explanation. In several situations, they only became comfortable using a feature after someone explained how it worked.
Looking back, I realized that much of what I considered “intuitive” came from years of using iPhones and iPads myself.
Following Apple's guidelines is important, but that alone does not guarantee that a product will be easy for its target users to understand and use.
Children Learned Faster Than I Expected
What surprised me, on the other hand, was how quickly the children learned once they understood the basics.
At first, many of them hesitated or struggled with the controls. But after a brief explanation, they began changing settings on their own and experimenting with new features.
Before the sessions, I had worried that the app might be too complicated. In reality, once they understood how it worked, they adapted remarkably quickly and actively explored settings that suited their own preferences.
There Was No Single “Best” Reading Setup
Before leaving Japan, I assumed that there would be some common patterns among settings that dyslexic readers found comfortable.
In practice, preferences varied dramatically from person to person.
Some children preferred a gray background, while others chose a light blue one. Some changed the highlight color to yellow, while others switched the font to a serif typeface.
A few even selected combinations that made me wonder, “Is this really easier to read?”
This experience taught me that the goal should not be to create a single “perfect setup” for dyslexia. Instead, it is far more important to allow each person to create an environment that works best for them.
Teachers Often Understood the Children Better
Another thing that stood out was that the teachers often understood each child’s needs better than the children themselves.
While I sometimes struggled to explain the app to the children, the teachers quickly understood its purpose and began suggesting settings tailored to each student.
This experience reminded me that when designing assistive technology, it is important not only to consider the end users, but also the people who support them, such as teachers and parents.
The Feature I Expected Least Became the Most Popular
One of the most interesting discoveries as a developer was that a feature I had not expected much from turned out to be surprisingly popular.
RC Line includes an experimental feature that allows users to control pages using eye blinks.
To be honest, I thought it was an interesting idea, but I assumed that very few people would actually use it.
Instead, many of the children were immediately curious about it and began experimenting with it on their own.
As they became more comfortable, they started asking for additional capabilities:
“Can’t it go back up as well?”
“Could it do this kind of action too?”
These questions highlighted an important lesson:
The features developers believe are valuable are not always the same features that users find valuable.
That was one of the strongest realizations I took away from this experience.
The Importance of Learning From Real Users
The most valuable thing I learned was the importance of challenging my own assumptions.
As someone with dyslexia, I believed I already had a reasonable understanding of reading difficulties through both personal experience and extensive research using the internet and AI.
However, I discovered that even among people with dyslexia, the challenges they face and the settings they find comfortable can vary greatly.
Likewise, interfaces that seemed intuitive to me were not always intuitive to my target users.
This experience reinforced a lesson that many designers and developers talk about, but that I truly understood only after experiencing it firsthand:
To build something genuinely useful, you must put it in front of real users, observe how they use it, and continue learning from them.