"Being blind must be difficult living in such a visual world!" Our team threw this question to ourselves and began our final-year project for our undergraduate studies. We thought it would be a good opportunity to learn from a user group that we had never encountered before.
Research
We had our very first conversation with the visually-impaired at the blind massage station in a hospital. Since then, we have met and interviewed people of different ages, profession, personalities, and causes for the visual impairment.
" You said grocery shopping must be so difficult for the blind, but actually it's so easy for me - I just yell out loud for help every time I arrive at the supermarket."
As we dug deeper, we found that even when they share the same condition, loss of vision, some of them live a more active and adventurous life than most of us because they have opportunities to access various resources. "You said grocery shopping must be so difficult for the blind, but actually it's so easy for me - I just yell out loud for help every time I arrive at the supermarket." - Chu Hsin-yi, a counselling psychologist in Taiwan who became visually-disabled due to the brain tumor when she was 17.
Others, however, felt more comfortable to stay in their comfort zone where everyone else is visually-impaired. Going outside and exploring might not be a good option for them since the city was built by the visually-abled. So, how might we make "the outside world" more accessible to them ?
Some insights that were drawn from the interviews include:
- They feel more comfortable to communicate with body contact.
- Static activities, like playing chess and listening to the music, are their main form of entertainment.
- They must be able to touch and hear everything in their sorroundings.
- Most of their friends are visually-impaired.
- For children, practicing dance moves help develop their muscles and moreover, fosters bonding between their peers.
Ideation
How might we increase the body movement and social interaction for the visually-impaired?
According to the insights we have gained, our team decided to design a physical dancing game that let both visually-impaired and visually-abled play together with ease. The players must cooperate to create dance routines, which not only compensates their insufficient amount of exercise but also fortify the connection among them.
We then tried to brainstorm the game mechanics to match the goal. Luckily, one of us is a talented musician who made the music clip we needed for game testing right after we had new ideas!
We came up with various game mechanics and made rapid prototypes to try playing with.
A visit to an ukulele class for visually-impaired children to understand how they learned and perceived music.
" the players could easily sense and affect each other's movements during the dance."
By building, testing, and iterating, we came up this duet dancing game called LET'S DANCE. It contains two pairs of gloves which give out sounds and vibrations to instruct the players to the right moves.
Since the game only continues when at least one of their hands are holding, the players could easily sense and affect each other's movements during the dance. However, in order to success the game and make a wonderful dance ( the game only has two challenges so far - Waltz and Tango ), two players must listen to the music carefully and cooperate well.
Game mechanics
When starting the game, there will be an audio tutorial about the basic operation. The game is controlled by three movements: shake down both hands for saying yes to the option provided, twist both hands for the next option, and let go both hands for pausing the game.
There are three dancing moves which are put in different order in each challenge. The tutorial will make sure the players have mastered these moves to before entering the challenge.
Every challenge is an about one-minute song which consists of three main instruments. The three different instruments correspond to the three different dance moves. When players feel the vibration
cues, they should do the corresponding movement right away which matches the tone. The vibration signals the right time to start the move.
The movement tutorial is a must for first-time players. After the tutorial, the players can access the first challenge and unlock the next one if they reach the required score.
This is how we wished it would look like if the players always make the right move at the right time:
Prototyping & User-testing
"..it was the first time they felt like they were dancing."
We invited some visually-disabled users to play our game by reciting the instruction ourselves and playing the dance music with our phones. To our surprise, some of them had never danced before, and it was the first time they felt like they were dancing.
In spite of the lack of dancing experience, while we kept modifying our language of the dance moves tutorial, they could make the required moves by the vocal instruction we designed.
After this breakthrough, we went further by tying smart phones to each of their hands and making them vibrate when they needed to make the moves. And they made it!
Since our game mechanics was approved, it's time to make it real!
We were really lucky to find Hiroki, who majored in Information Engineering, to help us with the game programming and the electronics. What we needed inside the gloves: Motion sensor / Speaker( we use laptop instead for the exhibit ) / Vibration motor.
The electronic parts should fit in the gloves. And the vibration should be easy to feel.
Finally, we had our last prototype which not only had space to contain the hardware, but also comfortable to wear. The gloves remove the coverage on fingers to let users feel each other's hands. Meanwhile, different embroidery patterns on each pair of gloves implied the identities.
Left: Player 2
Right: Player 1
Evaluation
" It was just the beginning."
There's actually a turning point before we came up LET'S DANCE. During one of the interviews with the owner of a blind massage center, he mentioned that there used to be a local dancing lesson for the visually-impaired but somehow it's stopped. He even asked if we knew someone who could come and teach them to dance, no matter which types. And it gave us the idea of turning dancing more approachable for them by designing a dancing game.
Although our goal sounds meaningful, without actually introducing it into the market, it cannot make an impact.
And since we were studying industrial design with a final exhibition approaching, the outcomes were expected to be tangible and can be displayed in the exhibit.
After feeling relieved that the final exhibition was over, I traced back to our initial goal and started to wonder: Wouldn't it be more influential if we could just find someone to start a dance lesson for them locally? Is it the solution they need?
I know that we could only make a significant impact to people after making extensive iterations and launching it into the public, but as a project for my final-year of studies, I'm very pleased with the whole experience and what we have accomplished.
It was just the beginning.
Our Team
" As a team that everyone all majored in industrial design, we managed to develop our respective strength."
As a team that everyone all majored in industrial design, we managed to develop our respective strength.
Iris is a talented singer, pianist and composer who has an artistic soul. She was the one who put music elements in our design, and kept inspiring us with her sentimental stories and relaxing afternoon tea.
Yi Chun was like a leader in our team who made sure that we were always facing toward the right direction. He is good at structuring our ambitious concepts into some sentences or diagrams that were easy to understand. He helped us think logically.
To fit in between the sense and sensibility, I found myself playing the role in coordinating different opinions and trying to stay positive when we started to doubt ourselves. And I believe when creating something new, positivity is what keeps you moving forward.
I love my team. We had been doing a great job!
