Allistar’s Projects & Portfolio

This was a very interesting first assignment for me. The task involved designing a Time telling device for the visual impaired person. One major problem I see, even though the members of the class can emulate the experience we don’t have the proper test subject - a blind person who’s had to rely on their heightened senses, like touching and hearing. Given that this is my intitail design proposal from class - A watch which covers both auditory and/or tactile interaction.

If the subject puts the watch up to his or her ear they will hear a recording of the time and date, when button is pushed. When the subject runs their fingers over the the face of the watch they will feel the raised impressioned numbers of the hour and minute sequence.

An updated design will next blog accompanied by user testing next blog.

Also, I took the liberty of researching some of the watches and clocks they have out in the market for the visual impaired. Here are some links which reflect the what’s available :

Talking watches for the blind…
http://assistivedevices.net
Lighthouse for the Blind
http://www.lhb.org/content.php?fcn=store&subs=watches
Blind Man’s Watches
http://www.musketeer.ch/watches/blind_mans_watch.html

Most have some audio interface and / or braille approach. Style is something that’s also apparent - never assume because someone is blind they don’t embrace style. After all others can see us.

Question: Are we re-inventing this wheel? Will we make it better or effectively different?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Designing For Constraints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.