questions we need to ask in the meeting(s) with target audience

• What are the drawbacks of existing systems?
  
• Why are these drawbacks?
• How could these be improved?
• What would you like to have in the future that could be helpful to you in conducting the activities of your daily life?
• What kind of guidance system do you feel is best and why
• How much time should does it take to learn how to use current aid devices?
• How much time do you think it should take to learn the system proposed?
• Why would you use the proposed device over what you currently use, or if you wouldnt, why not?

If i think of anymore I will add them

How the system will "see"

My plan for the system to see consists of a small matrix of cameras looking down into the area, with enough cameras to cover all blind spots. Places such as supermarkets will be split into de-centralised processing units about the size of an aisle where a server would "control" all units within this area but no other area, the reason for this is two-fold, it offers better performance over a centralised processing approach in a situation where performance is vital and its modular design means that breakdowns are not so detrimental to the system in the area as a whole compared to a breakdown of a central server. The servers would be linked though, not for "seeing" purposes but for information purposes, the system would setup as a distributed system where each server informed its neighbours what features/interests/products where within its visual boundary so the systems could know where you desired destination is and devise a route through each area to your destination, much like how a network routes packets to their destination.

Exact details of how this works will be presented later

Other features the system will have for seeing will include a link up with pedestrian crossings where the system can inform users when it is safe to cross and also a link up with home computers where users can set their plan for the day and the system could make route plans for that, etc

brainstorming session spider webs

Here is the spider webs of the brain storming sessions...

One for the original idea:

Original Idea

and one for Via:

Via

Methods of Guidance

I've been having a think about how best to guide the user around the environment, avoiding obstacles and other people.

I'm assuming we have maybe some kind of overhead all-seeing camera system (an "eye in the sky") which we will have to work on the practicalities of later. There are a few current ways to guide a blind person as to when to turn left or right, or to stop:

• using a guide dog which follows its own path. The blind person holds a rigid lead and as the dog moves about, the human detects this and instinctively follows it.
• using a human guide. Similar to the guide dog, only the blind person may hold onto the elbow of the guide and move about as they do.
• self-guidance using a cane.

All of these share the feature of instant analogue (see below) feedback. Much like separate carriages of a train or parts of an articulated lorry are attached to and follow each other perfectly around bends, the blind person and guide (whether dog, friend, or cane) move as a single unit but with the sense of sight simply in a separate 'unit' or carriage.

The question is, how do we effectively achieve the same ability to guide the user with instant feedback from an electronic piece of equipment?

• a voice system saying 'go left' or 'go right' or 'halt' (optionally in a cheesy digitised American accent). This has major drawbacks:

1. Processing of the sound and conversion into movement of the user is extremely slow compared to other methods.
2. In a noisy environment such as a supermarket sounds from an electronic speaker or earpiece can be missed.
3. The instructions from the device are digital. Simply saying 'go left' is not much use as this could mean any of: turn slightly to the left to correct your course, make a 90 degree turn out of an aisle, or even jump left to avoid an oncoming obstacle. 'Analogue' guidance - some way of implying the amount of turn - is needed.

• force feedback motor (currently my favourite idea). A series of gyroscopes inside a handheld, belt-mounted or even arm-mounted unit can be shifted so the unit literally pulls the user in one direction or another. A sharp push backwards can signify 'stop' and gentle pulls to the left or right indicate the amount of turn in that direction required, in much the same way as a gentle pull from a guide dog or assistant.

I'll keep having a think about other methods and we can see what Mike has to say when we see him on Monday about all this, too.

A scenario

Ok, you're a blind or visually-impaired person who, like all the rest of us, needs to do their weekly shopping.

One option is to use an online shopping site such as Tesco's excellent Access site (http://www.tesco.com/access/) which interfaces brilliantly with screenreaders and is generally a very accessible and nice-to-use site. However online shopping isn't everyone's thing, and indeed we need to reach out to the possibly large number of blind people who don't even use computers on a regular basis. How many sighted people do all their shopping online each week?...

The other option is to make your way to the nearest store using either your cane or a guide dog if you have one. Once in the store, finding the items you want whilst avoiding other customers and obstacles isn't an easy task (even for a sighted person) and given how supermarkets love to change the layouts of their displays at a moment's notice in order to increase sales, could leave a blind user very confused when suddenly what they thought was the fruit and veg aisle turns out to be lingerie...

I have a number of blind and partially-sighted friends who have agreed to talk with us about the difficulties they face doing tasks like this that many people take for granted. Mike is a partially-sighted student at Birmingham University. His sight is good enough to navigate without a cane in daylight but indoors in a crowded environment is more of a challenge. Even if he is able to locate an aisle on his own, there is no way for him to find the actual items he's interested in or the prices, special offers etc. without asking a nearby customer or assistant.

Using a cane in a crowded environment such as a supermarket can be awkward too. Mike recalls with much amusement the episode where he inadvertantly ran his cane up a girl's leg, thinking it was a lamp post, until the resulting scream told him otherwise. The visibilty of the cane is a big feature of its usability as it warns people to steer clear and give the user space, however not everyone is observant and a quick clip round the ankles from a blind person in a hurry is not uncommon in a crowded supermarket.

So we seek to address these issues - and any more we come across through our talks with Mike and friends, the RNIB, and our own head-scratching:
- Effective personal guidance in a closed environment (like a guide dog but electronic)
- Obtaining layout and product information of unfamiliar environments
- Learning of a user's buying preferences
- Details of special offers
- Obtaining information on supermarket items immediately surrounding the user
- Efficient route planning to pick up all items quickly
- Visibility to surrounding people
- Location information

Effectively, "to enable a blind or visually-impaired person to shop completely independently". And I'm sure we can expand the idea to more than just shopping.

The Electronic Guide (Dog)

Well after deep thinking and playing with our original idea we decided to leave it and pursue another idea, an electronic guider for the blind for particular use in highly popular, busy locations where guide dogs users have to be further assisted (by humans), such as in supermarkets (where dogs can't understand what you want, nor work out/know the layout of the store to help you).

We have plenty ideas for uses and features to incorporate into the device, along with design ideas but as we are not blind we are not too confident in deciding what device design/operating method would be beneficial in this situation, therefore we are to ask a blind friend of a team member on how this device could be best suited to blind users. We also plan to look through RNIB publications and possibly ask the RNIB themselves on what would be the best design approach for such a device.

The next few posts from here will explain its features and over the next few days we plan to look into its design further. For now, I will leave you with the name of the idea, Via, Visually impaired assistance.

And so it begins

Well what can I say, another year older, another year clocked up on the course, back to HCI and back to its blogging. Slightly different this time though.

So what am I here to say? Well during the first lecture of this module an idea sprung into my mind for a possible new technology that could take some current technology through to the next step for some people. After explaining my ideas to the group (which they seemed to like) we took it beyond the scope I had imagined for it and lateral thinking on top of this brainstorming has given us some great ideas for it.

That's as far as I am going to discuss about this project for the time being, once as a team we have a better understanding of where we are heading with this I will bring in posts that discuss the idea and research surrounding it.

Anyway, that's enough for now.