Navigaid - our project

Project course context

Navigaid has been developed as a conceptual prototype in a course at the Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. The assignment given was to identify and develop, in a cooperative design process, a technology that could increase or facilitate a specific user group¹s access to public spaces. The project group is interdisciplinary and the seven members come from computer science, electrical engineering and graphic design.

The project group decided to work with visually impaired people. The presumption was that many visually impaired people want to take an active part in our society but find themselves, to some extent, excluded from many public places. Today, partially sighted or blind people require assistance to gain full access to public places such as public transportation and shops.

Design process

Co-operative design - a reference group

Collaboration with users is essential in a co-operative design process. A representative reference group consisting of members of the user group, i.e. visually impaired persons was created with the help of The Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired. Initial interviews with members of the reference group provided us with indispensable information that helped the identification and assessment of significant problems the users may have in their everyday life. Navigation in public places proved to be one of the major difficulties. Therefore the objective of the Navigaid project became to develop and design a prototype or a technology that would facilitate navigation in public environments for visually impaired persons and thus increase their access to public spaces.

Workshop 1

Along with literature studies, the information from the interviews served as a basis for the preparations for the first workshop. The reference group was given a variety of scenarios and situations in which orientation is vital. These scenarios led to a vivid discussion on navigation in public places, available aids, community travel services and society’s attitudes towards visually impaired persons. The reference group communicated that it is difficult to go from one place to another without assistance and that even the smallest changes, in a familiar route, can cause major problems. The problems the user group faces are of various natures: it is difficult to know one’s position, the direction in which one is moving and how far one is to go. The sudden appearance of obstacles such as road work and outdoor cafés is an additional difficulty. After the workshop and brainstorming sessions within the project group it was decided that the project should focus on outdoor navigation.

Deepening our understanding

In order to come up with a solution to these problems the design process progressed with another workshop, several brainstorming sessions and other activities such as contextual inquiries and field studies. During these activities various ideas for solutions where proposed. An idea that appealed to both reference group and project group alike was to combine directions with a positioning device. The reference group did not want an additional “thing” to carry around. Their explicit wish was that this new functionality would be integrated in cellular phone which is extensively used by visually impaired people.

Vision problems vary from person to person and it became apparent that the directions needed to be structured in levels of detail. This will provide directions with more detailed information for those who need it, without it being an obstacle for those who didn’t need the same level of detail.

the packaging

After having identified the problems and formulated plausible solutions to them the co-operative design process came to focus on the outer design of the device. If the device is to be useful for its intended users it must fulfil certain exterior requirements. The reference group suggested that the device should be the shape of a small cellular phone with a large display. Colours and structure can be used to attain an optimal contrast that will further facilitate the use of the device. It was decided that the device should be black and yellow since this is a combination that offers the best contrast and has been successfully used for other products intended for visually impaired people. The reference group also suggested that the device have optional synthetic speech and voice control functions so that the directions could be provided in spoken form.