DESIGN CHALLENGE
Communicate healthier food information to the blind and visually impaired by focusing on ‘non-visual’ multi-sensory experiences.
Project overview
The project emerged as an experiment to research and address some of the most critical wicked problems confronting society in the 21st century. These include: global warming, environmental pollution, food availability, water accessibility, malnutrition, poverty, terrorism, etc. As disability affects more than one billion people, limiting access to educational and health services, the project started exploring Healthy Eating and Food Information.
methods
Design Thinking co-creating workshops
Empathetic User-Research
User Journey
Storyboard
Prototyping
ROLE
Within a multidisciplinary team of four, I collaborated in the User-centred Research process, as well as in the development of Prototypes, 3d Modelling, and Rendering.
DESIGN TOOLS
Rhinoceros
Keyshot 8
FDM & SLA 3D printing
Rapid Prototyping (Paper, Cardboard)
design process
We applied Design Thinking Methods to our project, focused on generating and testing new solutions for informing better consumptions decisions to blind and visually impaired.
Empathetic UX research
Following Indi Young’s guidelines on establishing accessibility profiles and personas, we specifically targeted people affected by visual impairments, considering a wide range of interaction and adaptive techniques. We decided to focus on scenarios and user journeys first, to then create individual examples of a user in this user group. This helped us to avoid wrong holistic assumptions at the beginning of the creative process and to find problems and bugs.
Facilitated Ideation sessions
Don Norman helped us reflect upon why we need to challenge assumptions, ask ‘stupid’ questions and provoke our initial understanding, which is what Ideation methods such as Challenge Assumptions, SCAMPER, and Provocations helped us do.
Individual design proposal
Objective
The purpose of this proposal is to create a multi-sensory experience to help blind and visually impaired people access healthier food choices. With a specific focus on Human-Computer Interaction and inclusive design, the goal is to design a tangible user interface (TUI) to give physical forms to digital information.
HYpothesis
Use simple physical manipulation and thermoception, a non traditional HCI modality, to immerse the user into the experience itself, rewiring visual sensory informations to other senses. In this way, I believe that blind and visually impaired will be able to navigate informations with their inherent ability of perceiving heat, avoiding visual restrictions.
Concept development
The concept was developed around 3 fundamental principles:
Minimal Functionalism
Unconscious Usability
High Discoverability
Dieter Rams’s conception of functionalism was utilised to minimise the number of required actions needed to effectively conduct the most basic computing activities.
Unconscious usability reduced the complexity of the computing tasks. Considering that blind users are unable to utilise eye-hand coordination, the resulting concepts are focused on meticulous mapping of the interface layout. The idea is to make the interface as predictable as possible, with the use of established layouts and familiar mapping systems.
Simple hierarchical structures and the use of Norman’s affordances characterise the simplistic use of contrast and colours, focusing on creating detectable tangible and visual accents for the visually impaired.
Developmental prototypes
Thanks to a developmental prototype phase I was able to gather multiple insights and specifications to drive the selection of a final design concept: a braille terminal with an integrated thermoceptive filtering wheel.
The idea is to utilise existing refreshable braille cells technology in conjunction with a thermoceptive filtering system to create a one of a kind, multi-sensory braille terminal. With this device the blind and visually impaired will be able to experience food informations on a higher lever, thanks to the involvement of multiple senses and enabling newer non visual, interactive dynamics.
Features
The final TUI maintains a keyboard appearance in order to not overwhelm the users with new, never perceived shapes.
Increased braille cells size as the conventional ones are too small and lead to typing errors.
Thermoceptive hand device to feel nutritional food information from the screen to promote healthier food selection and customisable filtering options.
Use of contrast to guide the visually impaired.
3d Modeling/First rendering
A first rendering session was executed to properly visualise the concept, materials and finishes on a real life simulation. Durable and textured materials where used to subliminally communicate the interface’s layout on a tangible scale. For the body of the TUI brushed aluminium was selected as a strong but light material to make the product durable and portable at the same time. A comfortable rubberised material was assigned to every component in direct contact with the user’s fingers, such as the thermoceptive sphere, the braille cells’ plastic shell and the refresh keys. Noticeable importance was given to the establishment of a black and white high contrast colour scheme to let visually impaired use the device quicker.
modularity
Considering disability and the fact that the idea behind Assistive Technologies is to include a wider range of users, the concept quickly moved forward towards a modular configuration. From a singular standard keyboard, a series of iterative models explored different configurations to accomodate the needs of multiple users. The final concept is based on the idea of dividing the interface in 4 independent modular components, which can be configured as standalone pieces or custom configurations.
Modularity offers numerous benefits:
Include multiple users’ characteristics in the same object, utilising customisation options (e.g. left or right handed can configure the devices in the preferred way).
Price/repair reduction, as the user is able to buy/repair each piece separately.
Infinite expandability, as no limit is set to the maximum number of attachable modules.
Final Renders
Endless Expandability
Aligned with the initial conception of designing for disability first, Thermo TUI was designed to address the specific needs of blind and visual impaired. However, the same technology can be expanded to a broader range of user. Thanks to its modular design, multiple other modules could be further designed to fulfil the needs of other users.
For instance, a traditional qwerty keyboard module could potentially be utilised by regular people, while a mixer module would probably appeal to an avid music enthusiast.
With this in mind, the possibilities of adaptability and further development are endless, limited only by the imagination, making Thermo TUI a fully customisable and marketable design proposal.
