Capstone

Topic: Navigating tools for the visually impaired when travelling

What is the issue you want to address?

More than 20 million people in the U.S. live with visual impairments ranging from difficulty seeing, even with eyeglasses, to complete blindness. Vision loss affects almost every activity of daily living. Walking, driving, reading and recognizing objects, places, and people become difficult or impossible without vision. Thus, technology that can assist visually impaired people in at least some of these tasks may have a very relevant social impact.

Significance

·         About 444,400 Australians aged 55 or more are visually impaired, which represents 9.4% of the 4.7 million Australians in that age

·         Visual impairment is an important health issue because it can affect physical, functional, emotional and social wellbeing, and reduce quality of life.

·         Nearly half of them will not go out alone

·         Opportunities are using current technology to help the visually impaired to navigate

·         Safety concerns, as recently a blind woman was sexually assaulted on a Sydney train

Who will benefit? This design will benefit the visually impaired people, to live independent normal lives. To travel independently to new places with confidence, with the assistance of electronic travelling aids.

Target Market: Research has shown

	Pros	Cons
Cane	Economically, cheap	Known regular routes New routes can be dangerous
Guide dog	Increases safety	Owner needs to direct High costs and maintenance
GPS	Smart phone, cheap accessible	Lacks knowledge of landmarks unrealiable
Electronic travelling aids	Increases independency Many routes Allows way finding home	Can be distracting Difficult to use

Approach

How does this project suit for your abilities or interests?

·         Family history of glaucoma, uncle and father with mild cases

·         Admiration those with visual impairment and their ability to live normally

·         I have the ability to research, understand,

·         Looking at the empathetic design to help the well being of others

·         In the future I want to design valuable, useful objects with the use of newest technology

The actual needs of this population must drive the development of this technology in order for it to be truly useful and likely to be widely adopted. To this end, blind and visually impaired users must be involved in all stages design, research and development.

·         Empathy tools- blind folded, foggy glasses

Why? An easy way to prompt an empathetic understanding for users with disabilities or special conditions

·         Experience prototypes- Quick prototype concept using available materials and use it in order to learn form a simulation of the experience using the product

·         Five whys?-“ Ask why?” questions in responses to five consecutive answers on why GPS navigating won’t work

·         Fly on the wall- Observe and record behaviour within its context without interfering with people’s activates

·         Personal inventory- document the things that the visually impaired find important to them as a way of cataloguing evidence of their lifestyle

Pet mobility

israeli industrial designer nir shalom presents his canine prosthetic as part of 'thinking hands', 
an exhibition in ventura lambrate at milan design week 2011. the device attaches at the hips of 
small dogs with disabled rear legs and allows for increased mobility over other dog wheelchairs
due to the dynamic and more independently moving supports.an elastic knee joint is set backwards,
allowing dogs to access stairs and lay down and sit up on their own. 

Peer comments

Patrick Dunns: http://patrickdunnindustrialdesign.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/blog-post_9990.html?showComment=1382428878243

Rowena Goodall: http://rowenagoodall.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/blog-post.html#comment-form

Felicia Levina: http://feliciaides1122.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/pss-voice-translator-travel-gadget.html#comment-form

Matt Patene: http://mpatanestudio3b.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/final-presentation.html#comment-form

Kevin peng http://kevinpeng3373311.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/goal-keeper-product-service-system.html?showComment=1382430485414#c8819210777427152745

Plant share

The big idea

The Plant share system grew from the idea that it should be possible to find plants, seeds, crops in your local area, given by neighbours who also garden. We all like to replace ornamental plants or try a new vegetable variety. As citizens, we also would like to get solidarity access to the food produced by vegetable gardens.

The avid garden allows has plants to offer. This may be plant that has multiplied, perhaps which doesn’t fare well in the garden conditions, or extra seedlings and seeds too. We don’t always know with whom to share this surplus of plants, and more than often than it ends up garbage in compost.

Plant share pot aims to solve both of these problems helping people find new plants for you and giving you the means to provide your own. This system targets household residents with the goal of creating a community around gardeners. The system includes a reusable plant pot provided by the council and an online mobile phone application. The mobile phone app integrated with augmented reality helps in way finding of plants available in the community, while also helping users take more accurate photos to help identify the plants size. The reusable pot is made from a decomposable that has a lifespan of 5years. handle helps users transport the plant efficiently and can be safely hung on the doors. The pot engages users by emphasizing potential benefits of the planet with friendly illustrations and instruction. Each pot has a unique ID which allows users to the pots history.

Root Pots last for multiple seasons of gardening and will generally begin to break down after about 3 to 5 years. They are designed to allow roots to breathe. Root Pots are not tapered like plastic pots, so they stand up well to strong winds and heavy harvests.

•     Made from 100% recycled material.
•     Root Pots are both reusable and biodegradable.
•     For soil & soilless gardens.
•     Allows water to evaporate more evenly.
•     Auto-prunes roots & prevents root circling .
•     Allows evaporative cooling in hot climates & provides thermal insulation in cold climates.
•     Creates a dense & fibrous root structure.
•     Compact storage

Interesting aquaponics garden system

Week 5

Scott: I think you should design a better pot with handles, a way to hook to doors, using a app to measure the plant and with strong branding.

Oun: probably too many products, the spade is too novel, 

Reflection: I'm going to focus on the pot making it easy for everyone to get from the council and then use the app to make things easier to search for plants.

Biggest Urbanized agriculture

Cuba has one the biggest urban agriculture in the world due to oil cuts meaning transporting vegetables was expensive. Advantages