Wearable for the Blind
Aida
I was on a team of three and we were asked to design a wearable and app. We designed Aida, a wearable assistant for the blind and visually impaired. It describes the world and guides the user through it. It recognizes faces, objects and obstacles. It’s recording device, camera and storage unit all in one. To pair the wearable, we designed an informational and storage computing app.
Problem
Individuals with low vision or blindness are missing a valuable biological component for their daily lives.
Our Solution...
Conducting research at the Savannah Center for the Blind and Low Vision, conducting interviews and some point of view tests.
While focusing on social, navigational and informational impairments, our design will aid the visually impaired by improving their quality of life through a wearable and mobile interactive solution.
Our design will ultimately enhance its users’ confidence in achieving
day-to-day tasks, and allow them to feel more integrated within
their communities.
...is Aida!
What?
Aida is a wearable device with a companion cloud computing mobile app. It observes, understands and describes the environment to the user, providing useful information with the right timing and in a discreet way. Aida is able to read and scan texts, recognize faces, objects and much more.
How?
Aida is powered by a cloud computing app downloaded to the user’s smartphone. The wearable earpiece is connected to the mobile device via bluetooth. The wearable is a combination of state-of-the-art optics and power efficiency.
The user can activate each functionality through simply speaking. The headset has two buttons: a customizable button and an awareness button.
Device Features
Personal Assistant that has growing and learning capability
GPS and Navigation
Records Images, Audio and Video
Face, Text and Object Recognition
Spatial Awareness
On/Off/Sleep Toggle and Volume
"Hot" Button (Physical Button that user can customize to any feature)
Spatial Awareness Button (Physical Button to initiate Spatial Awareness feature)
App Features
Find Wearable
GPS and Navigation & Save Locations
Determine Voice of Wearable (device name, speed, language, gender)
Level of Assistance
Fingerprint Security
Customize "Hot" Button
Save and Send all Records
Save Identities (add / upload)
How the users interact with Aida throughout their everyday lives.
Each user has different experiences, thoughts, feelings and pain points. These charts helped us with the overall development of the wearable and allowed us to have a “zoom in” and “zoom out” process.
Personas and Customer Experience Maps
Device Design
Aida is composed of a wearable headset and a downloadable app that is IPhone and Android compatible.
The headset sits comfortably on one’s ear. The device holds the camera and the small speaker, while the app contains all your personal information. The app includes all the images, audio and video that you take with Aida.
App Development
Sitemap
This the basic layout of the app and its channels and folders.
This was our first step of panning out the application.
Flowchart
The flowchart is a way panning out how our users would interact with the app.
This helped us with how the blind or the low vision users would go through the app and what their mindset would be before we started wireframing.
Flowchart for the Ai
This chart explains and shows the way our users would interact with the physical wearable.
This was a challenge because there is no one-way of interacting with the AI or initiating the wearable's features.
Final Wireframes
Movie Sketch
Our intention for the movie sketch was to create a heartfelt film to illustrate our product’s features while capturing the audience’s attention.
We started the film by storyboarding, and then filmed and edited.
Thank You!
Daniel Cheon
Shabnam Kashani
Clarissa ter Maat
