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