Touch and Go
Assistive technology for people with blindness to navigate in the urban environments
Context
Bachelor Thesis in collaboration with i3tex
Duration
6 months (2019)
Role:
Researcher and designer in a team with Sara Brandel
Tools
Pen/Paper, Physical modelling, CATIA V5, Adobe Suite, Google Sketchup
About
My bachelor's thesis was in collaboration with the company i3tex. The aim was to create a concept on assistive technology for people with blindness to navigate in an urban environment. The project involved the whole design process - from analyzing the user needs to develop a new innovative assistive technology that creates value for the user and stakeholders.
Design Challenge
How can tomorrow’s assistive technology for orientation be designed for blind people to enable them to move more independently in urban areas?
Design Process
Understanding the problem
An extensive study was conducted to understand the current situation for people with blindness and consisted of market analysis, stakeholder analysis, and several interviews with experts in this field. The most important insights were:
Unintended isolation
Many people with blindness rely on personal attendants when navigating outdoors. However, the users only have 20 hours of personal attendants to distribute during the whole week. Thus, those hours are mostly used for important tasks such as grocery shopping or doctor appointments. There are not enough hours for other activities such as meeting a friend or doing other activities. This factor leaves people in untended isolation.
Independent travel
A third of the people with blindness does not perform independent travels, and those who are outdoors often taking routes they are familiar with. People feel anxious when taking due to the worry of becoming lost and not knowing where to find their way back.
Challenges in urban environment
The urban environment is filled with obstacles that affect people with blindness. This can be everything from stumbling over scooters to walk into scaffolding.
User study
The findings from the previous research helped us understand the main problems. The process continued with a user study that consisted of interviews to gain knowledge about their preferences of assistive technologies. Moreover, observations were conducted on how they used their assistive technologies in the city. Lastly, a focus group was held to open up discussions about the everyday struggles they faced when navigating in the urban environment. The data on users preferences regarding a new assistive technology was analyzed using the method KJ-analysis.
The user study showed that the users had similar frustrations when orienting in the city. Based on the data collection, different categories were created to formulate the most common needs. Those needs acted as a base when creating different user scenarios to communicate with the stakeholder. Below are some example of the categories.
Overview
How do I get there?
Even though users navigate in a familiar place, they could still be lost. To solve the problem, it would be easier to get an overview of where they currently are and how to get to their destination.
Current Situation
What is happening around me?
In unexpected situations where the artefacts in the urban environment stop working, it becomes a huge problem. For instance, if a red light does not provide audio feedback, sighted people can still see the visual information. However, blind people do not have the same option. Scenarios like this make it crucial to give information to the user on what is happening at the moment and how to continue.
Positioning
Where am I?
The exact position on a technical device is relatively poor for people that have to rely on it. Users need to know exactly where they are positioned to what is described in a technical device. From a real scenario, a user once fell into a canal due to having poor poistion from a device. Every meter counts.
From insights to requirements
All important insights from the user study were analyzed and translated into a functional analysis that contained the device's most important functions. Afterwards, a product specification list was created to act as a base for ideating solutions.
Ideation and Testing
Over 20 ideas were generated and iterated into four concepts. To validate the usability and feasability of the concepts, different prototypes were created. These were used and improved during co-creation sessions with students, a retailer of assistive devices, and the employees at i3tex. The image below shows some initial sketches and conceptual sketches and prototypes of what led to the final solution.
Touch and Go
Touch and Go is an assistive technology to help people with blindness navigate independently in the urban city. It consists of two devices: a tactile map and a removable hand console. The device is inspired by gaming devices and melts into everyday products.
Tactile Map
The tactile map provides an overview of the environment and helps users orient themselves and plan routes. The tactile map also helps users understand their positioning and what is around them. The buttons on the device make it possible to pan as well as zooming in on the map.
Hand Console
The hand console provides feedback on the local environment and has an obstacle detection that scans the object and informs the user. That will help the user understand what is happening in the local environment. To avoid obstacles and collisions, the joystick will guide the way.
Separable devices
The devices can be used together as well as independently. They can be attached via a rail on the edges.
What I learnt
Kill your darlings: We generated many ideas, and that all could be potential concepts. However, it was important to have a helicopter perspective and let go of ideas that did not solve the problems.
Appreciate the gaps: To understand the problem areas and what was needed to create a technical aid, we asked several experts and users to give us advice. They helped us fill in our competence gaps and made this possible.