— ABOUT

Project at Aalborg University

— DATE

December 2016

Problem

With a focus on physical interactive design, we carried out research exploration into how visually impaired people experience entertainment and what physical interactive products exist to support these experiences. We found that music was continually mentioned as part of strong, positive statements, affirming its powerful effect on people. And, many visually impaired people not only enjoy listening to music but also play it themselves. The motivation behind this project was therefore to support exploring music creation without the possibility to base the interaction on vision but on the two most dominating senses of the visually impaired to create a natural interface: touch and hearing.

Approach

Designing a tangible interface that can support visually impaired people in exploring music creation.

Through the initial research exploration of a digital ethnography of the visually impaired online community, interview with members of the Danish Association of the Blind, and investigation into related products and technologies, we established persona, scenario, and design requirements that would frame the ideation process. Studies were conducted to determine how well different aspects of the prototype performed.

Results

A physical prototype was developed named Hive. A tangible tool for explorative music composing designed for the visually impaired. It consists of a Hub device and smaller devices called Cells.

The Hub functions as a controller interface for the general audio. The user is able to control the master volume, the tempo, as well as playing or pausing the audio. Placing a Cell into the center of the Hub enables the user to record and store a sound into the specific Cell. Other different Cells are available with their unique sound and instrument functionality that can be configured in the Hub.

The selection of different Cells all provide a distinct type of tactile attribute for identification and connecting them to the Hub or another Cell already connected will add their sounds to the overall music composition.