Context: University Project: Design Research
Tasks: User research, UX concept, Interface Design, Coding, Usability testing, Prototyping
Awards: Universal Design Expert Award 2018, Universal Design Consumer Award 2018
"Louisa, please show me all doctors within two kilometers."
The user starts with a flat display. After asking to show his current location, the street and his location evolve on the map. He is now able to press on a street and the name of the street is played via audio. Afterwards he can ask for doctors around him and the points of interest appear and are displayed higher than the streets. By pressing and holding a POI, the user is able to elevate it even more and therefore highlight and save it.
As a blind person, I want to be able to perceive my environment in a tactile way, in order to experience information outside of my reach and my hearing distance.
After researching a couple of technologies we focused on two main approaches for the vision of our final product: Ultrahaptics and Shape Displays. Ultrahaptics is a haptic technology that uses ultrasound to create the feeling of three-dimensional shapes and textures. It felt like the perfect technology for our usecase. The problem was, that none of us had ever experienced it and we didn't know how we should prototype the feeling. On the contrary, shape displays were more tangible. The concept behind it is that the display consists of a large number of rectangles, which can be moved up and down. It is therefore possible to create a three-dimensional structure that can be experiences in a haptic way. Since Shape displays seemed more feasible to prototype, we decided to simulate this technology.