TouchGuide
A braille navigation device + App for people with visual impairments
Navigation is a highly visual task. We constantly take in spacial feedback from our surroundings to navigate through the world. For people with visual impairments, their sense of sight is lost, making travelling to unfamiliar places a taxing experience. As a result, the visually impaired are often dependent on others or ride-sharing services when going to new places.
Despite many the many technologies available, navigation for visually impaired people remains an extremely challenging task. A problem we have identified with traditional navigation aids is that the audio instructions are given in a segment-wise fashion, making it difficult for them to build a mental map of the whole route. This results in uncertainty, and easy disorientation.
Our aim for this project was to help give these individuals more freedom in their travel and help to increase their independence.
Our Solution
To help the users create a visual map of their routes, we designed a tactile-braille device which allows users to "feel" the path ahead of them. The device can be attached to either a wristband, or a white cane, in order to increase flexibility. The watch is connected to an app that allows users to input their routes and provides complementary audio instructions. The 3D prototype below was made by my team member.
The user will stay at the bottom-centre, while the dot path changes around them. The braille will update every two seconds.
The scale for the viewable distance is adjustable, for different stages of the user's journey. At pre-journey, the scaling wider will allow the user to gain a better overview of the path ahead. During the journey, a closer scale will be more useful for maintaining orientation
This is a close up of the device. There is a power on button and screen change button at the top. The scroll dial on the side is for changing the scale. It also comes with two additional screens (Clock screen + Distance to destination).
App Component
I aimed to design a layout system that allows the user to navigate by instinct rather than mostly relying on audio feedback. As shown above, I used a minimalistic design, with large buttons in distinct locations and a fixed menubar to help the user memorise screen locations.
To create an accessible and usable app, I conducted user testing with different screen and navigation layouts. I also researched existing blind-navigation apps and iPhone accessibility features, including voice-over and braille text input, to integrate into the app. I also picked up Adobe XD prototyping which includes a speech-to-text feature to ensure that my prototype could accurately portray the features of choice.
Next Steps
If we could continue this project further, I would love to create a working physical prototype and test it with people in the visually impaired community. A valuable lesson from this course was to design with people rather than design for people, which we could not do in the scope of this project. It would be essential to see if our concept is something the blind community needs at an early stage and unravel its holes and disadvantages before progressing further.