Improving the hearing aid for the deaf

A PhD student in Cambridge has been doing some interesting work in the field of hearing and hearing aids.

It has been known for some time what causes hearing loss but there have been two issues surrounding hearing aids which caused users problems; The first is that we have always needed the patient to tell us during the test what they can and cannot hear and so hearing aids have always needed to be fitted when the patient reaches a certain age. The second problem has been that hearing aids have just generally amplified the sound which has meant that the region of the ear that do not work still get this sound which is wasted on them.

However Dr Kluk believes that by measuring patients brains during tests whilst the patient is asleep she can work out the hearing ranges patients can and cannot hear without asking them.

For more information and the technical jargon of this, visit: http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4736476.stm

Linux on your Ipod

For anyone who has read the Ipod manual, and some Mac Hacks, this next line you will already know. On the 'Ipod' (not nano/mini/shuffle) you can install mac os 10 (provided you have the dvd) with a watered down gui! Why escapes me and I have never had a big Ipod to experiment.

For others of you into this sort of thing, this won't surprise you: You can install Linux on the Ipod from http://ipodlinux.org/Main_Page

Now, this isn't new news in reality but what I didn't realise until tonight was they haven't screwed around with the permanent ROM in the Ipod in order to get this to work, which I found surprising and it really does beg to question how long before we can walk around with ipod size devices that are the main unit of our PC minus the media drives and ports that we can just 'dock' at places and use shared peripherals such as keyboard, mouse and monitor and undocking just puts you pcpod into sleep mode? (which MacOSX users will know is far superior to the sleep functionality of Windows).

I personally reckon there would be a good market for this, maybe not massive and maybe not in public domain, but absolutely for major corporate customers. For example, over the summer I worked as a SAP admin/programmer for Cadbury Schweppes and there about 75%+ of the workstations were centrino laptops with desks cluttered with docking stations, keyboards, monitors and mice. This was done in order to enable all office staff to work anywhere on any Cadbury Schweppes site anywhere in the world (infect it went further than this, all employees that needed to be contactable (so basically everyone with a laptop) had a company mobile which about 70% of all calls were made to and from (I even saw the phone bill being delivered, lets just say it was delivered in boxes as envelopes were never going to be strong enough to hold that much paper) and the whole network was setup to be global in that I could access any server anywhere in the world and I could plug my laptop into any Ethernet port on any site anywhere and the dhcp there would give me instant access to the network without any modifications to my laptop). Anyway, back to the point, they could replace all those laptops with a device you can drop in your pocket, improving their security and component lifetime no end and for when you are on the road and need a 'laptop' then a carcass you just stick you pcpod into is going to be more cost effective than giving everyone a laptop because you would only need a tenth of the quantity of carcasses compared to having each one a full blown laptop

EDIT: Damn, just thought another cool HCI project...If this product gets invented mark my timestamp on this blog post, I'm claiming royalties!

The questionnaire results so far

Many thanks to those who have helped us out so far, we have had over a hundred responses since Tuesday and this trend will hopefully continue. We have no intentions of closing the survey as we want to see just how much of an audience we can cover.

Perhaps some of you are wondering "What relevance have these questions in light of your project?". Well, our project is working with the same kind of technologies that is behind these devices and we needed to understand the limitations their users have found. Particually, how accurate they find the click wheel, just in case a similar approach is better than a turning bezel along with, is it possible to memorise a big chunk of menus in the way they are currently laid out on devices (this is a very important speed issue for users, having to listen to over 100 products in an aisle slows them down and gets them in the way of other shoppers so memorising chunks of the menu is important, or menu design needs to have an upper bound limit of entries). We also need to know if using a powerful processor is absolutely necessary in our device and this also gives rise to the question of battery power.

I will now try and put my thoughts on the results so far and how this helps us in our project:


Do you or have you ever owned an IPod?

Yes (28) - 26%
No (skip to question 4) (78) - 74%

This question was introduced for two reasons, the first was to see how much of our audience had used an IPod personally, the second was to allow survey users to feel 'safe' not answering the IPod questions if they couldn't.

Overall this statistic surprised me. Considering that Apple dominate the mobile music player market, this shows that the market possibly isn't that big to begin with, despite the Nano being one of the best selling Christmas items of 2005.



How easy do you find navigating the music menu WITHOUT constant reference to the screen? In other words how easy do you find it to memorise the menu layout of the IPod?

Easy - I can get around well without peeking at the screen (7) - 23%
Not bad - I can get around quite a bit, but sometimes get 'lost' (6) - 20%
OK - I can work my way around where I currently am, but going to other menus needs a screen viewing (10) - 33%
Rather hard - I know one or two options surrounding my current selected choice, but thats it (3) - 10%
Terribly hard - Every change needs my eyes on the screen! (4) - 13%

This has been a very important finding, for some parts of our menu system we have figured it would be better to have 'click' sounds and only announce where you are in the menu after a brief pause, so as to allow users who frequent parts of menus (and thus memorise them) to get through these parts quickly. The finding here illustrate that changes between menus must always be announced and perhaps there should be settings options that allows the user to always have voice announcements instantly or to have the majority after a brief pause.

Of course not all menus can work like this and once in a shop or venue the 'add-on' menu will vary from place to place so these menus will have to be fully announced but in a supermarket, having all items accessible is infeasible (considering that most supermarkets stock thousands of different things) so the menus needs to split in a way similar to the Ipod - Brands, Categories and 'What's around my current location'. We'll discuss this more once we fully figure it out.




When using the IPod, do you ever have difficulty in trying to get the click wheel to respond?

Never had an issue - Works whenever I brush my finger over it (12) - 41%
Works everytime - But sometimes its too responsive and goes past/under my desired menu/volume location (9) - 31%
Works nearly all the time - But sometimes I need to re-adjust my finger because it stops responding (6) - 21%
Works most of the time - But others seem to have a better grip of the idea than me (2) - 7%
I can get it to work half the time - Just haven't quite grasped the technology yet (0) - 0%
Less than half the time - Help me! (0) - 0%

The majority of users seem to get on fine with their Ipod click wheels but considering how many find they are not always precise I think the turning on our device is best kept as a bezel.



Do you or have you ever owned a PDA/Smart phone?

Yes (37) - 35%
No (skip the rest of the questions) (69) - 65%

As with the Ipod, these devices appear to have a very niche market area which isnt big. It's inclusion here is pretty much for the same reasons as the first question.



What operating system does it use?

Windows CE (4) - 10%
Windows Mobile (8) - 21%
Symbian OS (12) - 31%
Linux (2) - 5%
Don't know/other (13) - 33%

This question was asked because we wanted to see what OS the majority of our questions below referred to and also because we wanted to see if their was a clear leader in the field that we should be using for the system, the results have proved their isn't.



How big is your device's built-in memory?

1-32 MB (16) - 46%
33-64 MB (4) - 11%
64-256 MB (11) - 31%
256-1024 MB (1) - 3%
1024+ MB (1GB+) (3) - 9%

And of this memory, how much are you using?

1-25% (4) - 11%
26-50% (8) - 22%
51-75% (14) - 39%
75+% (10) - 28%

Is the amount of memory sufficient to your needs

Sure - Got everything I want on there and room to spare (8) - 22%
Sure - Its a bit full, but there's more than enough room for my usage and I dont plan on adding to it (7) - 19%
Well its kind of enough, my applications sit on the memory but I keep all my files on removable flash memory (8) - 22%
Not really - I've filled it and have some of my applications and all my files on removable flash memory (7) - 19%
Are you kidding me?!? - I have to keep a load of my stuff on my huge removable flash memory! (6) - 17%


These three questions have helped us determine how big software and files tend to be on PDA's and whether our device was going to need a whole 8GB of storage and if so, was the demand for these sizes of storage meaning that prices were reasonable. It would seem 32MB of memory is the cheapest at bulk buy still and this seems to be sufficient for most peoples uses



How responsive do you find the device? In other words, how long does it take the device to complete an execution you request of it?

Rocket Speed - Does the task and finishes it faster than I can tell it (6) - 17%
Jet Speed - Fast at most things but complex things like movies and music it struggles to be fast at (13) - 37%
Car Speed - Its fast with stuff like word processing when its loaded, but loading the program is the issue... (15) - 43%
Snail Speed - I type in a word and wait for the thing to catch up! (1) - 3%

We asked this question because we wanted to find out what people thought of current PDA speeds in the face of ours needing to be pretty much real time responses to requests. From our results I think the faster we can get the processor to go, the better!




Lets talk about the amount of time you can use your device before the battery becomes too low (without recharging before it gets to this stage!. How long is this with your device?

I barely get away from the socket... (up to 2 hour) (1) - 3%
Gets me to lunch (3-4 hours) (5) - 14%
I get through the day (12-14 hours) (10) - 27%
...and the night (18- 24 hours) (5) - 14%
It gets through the weekend with a breeze (48-72 hours) (11) - 30%
Gets me through work all week (5-6 days) (2) - 5%
Goes further than that famous brand with the bunnies...(1 week +) (3) - 8%

This was a very important question because we really needed to know how long realistically the device could go on standard PDA batteries as a few hours was useless to us but we cannot have the device the size and weight of a brick, but the results here are quite promising. Ideally our device would take 48-72 hours to fully use up the batteries and many of our results show current PDA's to be in this bracket. Many are also in the 12-14 hour bracket which is worrying if this is due to heavy use of PDA resources (such as music listening) as our device will be just as demanding.



Finally, what do you use your PDA for?

Business use - Appointments, contacts, notekeeping (23) - 27%
Student use - Timetable, lecture note taking (12) - 14%
Social use - Music/Video storage/playing (24) - 28%
Travel use - Route planning/driving (8) - 9%
Mobile communication (non-voice) - Internet, email, instant message chat (18) - 21%

This question was asked so we could understand the results (i.e. fast battery usage with music/video play would be understandable).

Questionnaire time

The difficulty of a general questionnaire is our target audience are not general users and building them a questionnaire is diffcult and very time consuming. However, we finally have general questions we need answering, so answer away!

http://multivote.sparklit.com/web_poll.spark/9981

Looks like we're in demand!

Just come across a great article by Damon Rose, the blind editor of the BBC Ouch! website for disabled users.

In it he talks about his false 'independence' when trying to find shops or pubs in town and how he has to go through a ritual of vulnerability when attempting to get passers-by to help him get around.

Of independence he writes:
We don't talk about it, we deliberately kick it to one side, but if we're left adrift on the street not knowing where we are for a small or long amount of time ... we could find ourselves in danger or at least very frustrated and tired at wandering around far longer than necessary. Hence when your victim is in range, holler "excuse me" and then leech every possible bit of goodwill.

And then later on:
Goodwill is out there. We undoubtedly need it in certain circumstances even now in 2006. It ain't clever, it ain't pretty, it doesn't do your self esteem many favours. But until there is a decent electronic navigation device made freely available, like the current GPS systems but preferably far better, then for visually impaired people at least we need to find our own way through.

Which I think nicely sums up that for at least one blind person our system should (hopefully) fill that need exactly.

I think we'll be attempting to get in touch with Damon for his thoughts once our prototyping is complete.

Smart watch - interface designs

As previously discussed, the watch face must be clearly designed so that a blind or partially sighted user can activate required functions intuitively and without aspecs of the watch design getting in the way. Certain features must be thought about carefully to account for the user's inability to see what buttons they are pressing, for example.

The suggested interface for the watch is, as previously discussed, a rotating bezel for selecting menu items inside a menu, and select/back buttons for traversing menus. As visually impaired users will want to avoid digging through countless menus all the time for access to the most menial of functions, several of the most common ones can be provided as dedicated large easy to activate buttons on the watch face.

I'd also recommend a 'lock/unlock' feature to avoid the situation where the user accidentally activates some of these buttons or the rotating bezel. A suitable sugggestion for this may be to squeeze two buttons mounted on either side of the bezel to trigger the lock on or off as this is an easy operation for anyone with
their finger and thumb, but hard to do accidentally.

Here is my first suggestion for a watch interface:



There are some points to be made about its features:

• The select button is positioned so that for most users who will be wearing the watch on their left wrist, their right thumb is already going to be very near the select button once they've finished rotating the bezel with their right hand. The functions of these buttons could be swapped in software in the case of a left-handed user or one who wears their watch on their right wrist.
  
• The back button is positioned on the opposite side of the watch for intuitiveness (it's the opposite of selecting a menu item).
  
• Buttons 1 and 4 are bevelled inwards into the face. Buttons 2 and 3 are bevelled outwards and raised. This will enable the user to determine which button is which by touch.
  

Suggested functions for the four buttons are as follows:

1. Speak the time. This is a common and important feature on watches for visually impaired users. The audio ouput could be either to the headset device, or to a speaker elsewhere in the watch face.
   
2. Directional guidance (inside supermarkets etc) on/off toggle switch.
   
3. Unknown (input from other team members required!)
   
4. User-definable. This button could be attached to any menu item the user regularly needs to access, as a shortcut.
   

Rotating the bezel should automatically put the watch into 'menu selection' mode and read out current menu items when the user stops rotating the bezel.

Future research work with this prototype on the target audience will hopefully enable us to decide whether these are suitable functions and indeed if this is a suitable watch face layout at all.

Smart watch - directional guidance

One of the principal features of the watch is its ability to guide the user around the environment using tactile responses rather than slow and cumbersome voice prompts (although this will still be an option through the connected headset).

Talking with Mike Sharkey, our resident visual impairment expert, we discovered that any tactile guidance system must be discrete and easy to ignore if the user desires more control. Also, as per earlier posts, we won't be able to deal with object avoidance or other primary guidance due to being unable to determine features such as the slope or texture of the ground. These functions will still be left entirely in the user's control with their cane or guide dog.

Instead we will concentrate solely on 2D directional guidance for the user around a complex environment such as a supermarket's aisles.

The back face of the watch will have a ring of pressure pins, so that the strap of the watch holds them against the user's skin. If the brain of the system, using GPS location, has decided that the user needs to turn in a certain direction then different pins around the ring will activate to put a slight pressure on the user's wrist and inform them of the direction to turn in. The pins can be analagous to the points and subdivisions of a magnetic compass.



So if the user needs to make a 90 degree turn left then the three pins around the W end of the ring will activate (three pins are used to give greater width of the area of skin activated otherwise the user may miss instructions). As the user turns left, the activated pins move around the ring until the three around N are activated. At this point the user is facing in the right direction and the pins will deactivate (so as not to numb the skin through overuse). If the user strays off course, more pins are activated until they are facing in the right direction again.

Of course all of this functionality must be able to be turned off easily by the user. The ability to do this will come in a later post.

Auxilary Components Pt2

When using the interior navigation system for supermarkets, the navigation aid provides only basic infomation such as aisle location, and infomation like "You are now at the baked beans section" is provided, But this because this system operates on a less than totaly accurate location system it cannot provide detail information about individual types of products at a location ie Heinz vs HP beans. To get around this some form of short range identification device that can connect to the navigation system was needed.

Initially RF tagging, was considered but this was outright deemed too expensive and problamatic because of the close proximity.

After some discussion it was realised that there was a system already in place that could deal with this problem, in the form of a barcode scanner. Which only adaption that would be required was the conversion from text output to audio output which could be handled by the device brain. The only really major issue here was data storage of the information regarding every product, as a business is not likely to reveal this information in any easily accessible form because of a competition, the barcode reader would have to be able to accept some form of seperate data storage device, which could be given out by staff when visiting a store then returned at the end of the visit, idealy flash memory is best for this type of data transfer. This also gives the advantage of the device been designed primarily for our system and been generic at the same time.

Auxilary Components

Two of the components of the system that have been discussed in passing during out group development discussions, but not really directly referenced in our blogging, are the Head set device, which is quite essential to the audio component of the device brains and infomation retreival, And the barcode reader for instore identification of products and uploading of data to the.

Both systems already exist with some generic designs so very little adaptation to the needs of our target user group is needed in the overall design.

Firstly the headset design, with the recent explosion of bluetooth capable communication devices there has been a great influx of new headset designs moving away from the large bulky RF/IR wireless headsets and the more standard wired inner earphones and over ear headphones. While classic inner ear headphone and earpiece's were part of our early concept's for the device, After gathering info from the target user group it was realised that idealy the user's hearing should not be impaired if at all possible. Initial thought was to use a system similar to noise canceling headsets, but this was deemed too bulky and after more discussion, deemed not to provide the level of hearing accuracy needed for the target group. The Second concept of a headset design that came up in discussion was similar in design to current bluetooth mobile headsets, as the ergonomic's of there design fit quite nicely into the requirments of our users and is easily adapted to fit the needs for the product.

More Specifically the headset consists of, a generic mobile bluetooth headset.(we will be using blue tooth and device pairing for general connectivity of the devices components and it is ideal for short range data communication). This is then cut down by removing the mic component as this is not needed in our design, though if used in conjuction with a mobile phone it might be pertinent to retain it. The basic design of the the remaining ear piece is then changed to suit the need of not directly impairing the users hearing, this is acheived by moving the audio output (speaker) compont of the earpiece forward and away from the surface of the ear allowing clear passage of normal sound. The audio output is then orientated in relation to how the headset is worn, to project sound into the ear cavity from its new position. Directed sound projection will allow for the user to hear output while, not been loud enough to damage hearing or for other to be aware of any noise emmission

The brain again - The bits I missed out...

Ok this is a post to finish off what the unit I described does and to bring to the world all the proposed features and uses of our device, some of this post will touch and cover stuff we have already said, other bits will cover new ground.

As can be seen by the posts, our device is intended to be a electronic guide for the blind, the device is designed to work in tandem with current blind motion helper devices (guide dogs and walking canes) and to replace current human guidance to/from places and around places (such as supermarkets).

In the outside world (outside of buildings) the device will guide people to locations using GPS such as already mentioned GPS services, this will be a precise as previously mentioned. A later post with the smart watch will explain how the system gets its route destination information. For now all I need to say is the system will guide the user to that location and inform them when they are there.

Other features the system will have in the outside world will be the ability for the device to interact with traffic lights. Currently some UK traffic light controlled pedestrian crossings (called Puffin crossings) include a device on the bottom of the user input/output unit which turns when the pedestrians can cross and even though this is a good feature it has several limitations:

• Firstly, its distribution, only recently have Puffin crossings been introduced and there is no wide scale upgrade plans nor requirements to do so for current pedestrian systems and as such almost none of these traffic lights are available, for example, almost the only one you will find in the vicinity of the university is at the Selly Oak station car park crossing.
• Second, these devices can only work with one such user at a time, this may not cause many issues but this can cause them still
• This system is very vunerable to vandalism, especially as more people discover the new features of these sorts of pedestrian crossings

With our a device, a unit could be placed at the top of the traffic light (or each side of the road) such that anyone within a 2-3 metre square area of the device will be informed by the traffic light that the button has been pressed and that they should wait. This system could then monitor all Via devices that stay within its area whilst waiting for the system to go green (this gets rid of the issue of people walking past the lights) and inform them once the man goes green at which point it can monitor their progress over the road in pretty much the same way the current Puffin system does except using the Via device instead of its own infrared system.

In the internal world (indoors) the system will guide users around using a local gps system inside the building. The discussion of the smart watch will focus on how this works and its features. What I am going to talk about here is a feature we have left out for a while. In emergencies in these buildings (when the fire alarm starts), using the internal GPS the store system and Via can guide users to safety (safety being the their nearest fire exit).

Though the brain is a very important part of the product, it will not be the products sole component, the other component necessary will be blogged about in detail very soon but here I will discuss them briefly:

• Smart Watch - This will communicate with the brain using Bluetooth or something similar and will inform the brain of the users input. On its back (pressed against the users skin) will be a system that helps direct the user as an alternative to being narrated to.
• Headset - This will be designed to allow users to hear the outside world whilst receiving information from the brain, again this will be based on Bluetooth or something similar. Unlike the brain and Smart Watch, the headset will not be a compulsory unit because as some blind users are also partially deaf, for those with an induction loop system they can set their loop to the T position and the Via brain will communicate with them with a headset.

More posts on these components will follow in the next few days

A design prototype of the brain

Be warned, this picture is not to scale nor actual ergonomic design. I'm afraid I lack the ability and the money to afford the software to achieve a more realistic prototype picture so the GIMP will have to suffice!

The picture has explanations of various features I think are necessary. This is as far as I am going to take this tonight, I will comment more when my brain starts functioning again, sometime tomorrow.

P.S. The bigger version is available on my server (look at the links to find a route to it)

P.S.S Where I say 'Standard Batteries' I mean the devices standard batteries which will probably be Li-ion based.

P.S.S.S edit by Mark: here are photos of the comparably-sized Nokia 2650 to give you some idea of the dimensions of the brain device.

More detail on the iPod-style navigation

The iPod is renowned for its stylish looks and good attention to design and usability principles. Most menu navigation is performed using the 'click wheel', until recently designed by Synaptics who also make the touchpads in many laptop computers and based on the principle of these touchpads but with movement in only one dimension (a circle which can be rotated in either direction).

This translates well to the possible idea of a rotating bezel around the face of a watch. The idea is that rotation of the bezel or click wheel is equivalent to scrolling up or down a menu depending on which direction you rotate in. Clicking a physical button, rather like a laptop touchpad mouse button, allows the user to select the current menu item. It's intuitive and relatively easy to pick up.

An older equivalent is the Nokia 7110 and its Navi™ roller, which scrolls up and down and clicks like a wheel mouse. However this was designed primarily for WAP browsing and once this had flopped, the Navi™ roller was dropped too.

Clearly for blind users some changes will have to be made. The 'select' button will have to become raised out of the profile of the watch face (much like the 3rd and 4th generation iPods before the 5th generation flattened the button). We may want more than one button on the watch face as well, each dedicated to one specific function in addition to the single dedicated menu select button, as relying on delving inside menus for commonly-accessed features will not be desirable for any user let alone one who can't see what menu they're on.

Names of menu items will need to be spoken. Current blind talking watches do this well with a loud speaker on the watch face, which can easily be moved nearer to the user's ear in a noisy environment if the user is having difficulty hearing, simply by raising the wrist.

Obviously the user will not want to spend 30 seconds scrolling through each menu and having each item spoken to them one at a time as they scroll through. My suggestion is that as the user scrolls the menu selection changes proportionally to the amount of scrolling done by the bezel. The bezel should click each time a menu item is transitioned to give some idea of progress through the menu.

People are quite capable of memorising the approximate layout of a menu given practice. Nokia phone menus are a good example of this, and a good converse example is Microsoft Office with its irritating collapsing self-reorganising menus (an old HCI post of mine) so it's reasonable to expect a user, after using the device long enough to be familiar with it, to be able to locate menu items in terms of 'numbers of clicks' or, more likely, just scrolling the bezel approximately one quarter of the way around clockwise (for example) to where they remember the desired menu item being.

Only once the user has stopped scrolling (indicated by a pause of eg. half a second) should the current menu item be spoken. The user can then press the 'select' button to confirm, or continue scrolling knowing that the desired menu item may be just a couple of clicks away from where they thought they are.

Any comments on this idea? Leave them after this post. Then we'll have to come up with some suggested designs for the watch face incorporating all this if we can get a workable consensus on the design.

iPod sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_wheel#iPod

'The Brain' - In more detail

Ok, this post is going to be dedicated to the device that will act as the brains of the device, the one where we mentioned Monday will be similar to my Nokia 2650.

First off, its aesthetics. As per the Monday post, this device must be of similar dimensions to a clam shell phone, so the following size and weight criteria apply as maximums:

• The unit must be no more than 90mm long, 50 mm wide and 25mm high
• The unit must not weigh more than 100g (But this may need to be sacrificed in the light of necessary power versus usable time, this will become apparent as you read this post)
  

So why these restrictions? Well its important that the device easily fit into the majority of pockets or a handbag, etc because the device needs to be something the user can keep with them at all times without it getting in the way of their lives and it also needs to be 'forgotten' so using a phone as a base ideology suits this perfectly. Of course, leaving it in a handbag maybe a bad idea as it requires being with the person in order to guide them to the device needs to be able to dropped into a pod that can be attached to a belt or clipped onto some item of clothing, perhaps it should come with its own belt to be wrap around the waist in a similar fashion to a bum bag.

This requirement for it to be similar to a phone gives rise to the need for it to be shaped ergonomically (on the outside) with no sharp edges so that it doesn't hurt the user, it also needs to shaped so that it can be used with the additional accessory pod (perhaps the term 'cradle' is better). It needs to be made of a durable, light material but in the case of an accident it must cause no or almost no injury to the user.

It needs to run off a battery with a relatively good usage time, preferably a day or two and the battery needs to be in a compartment that can be easily accessed for battery changing, just in case the user can't charge the battery, they can at least carry spares. Having a battery compartment means we need to take special care designing a battery which allows blind users to quickly change the battery unaided and without getting it wrong first time! So the battery needs to be shaped so that it only goes in one way around and side around (unless both sides of the battery have contacts!). I think here, for ease, the battery and its compartment casing should be one unit, similar to how it used to be with older phones before the introduction of separate backs to shave pennies off the production costs.

The unit will need plenty of storage to store the software that contains the voice system, gps client, cache of stores contents when you walk through the door (maybe) and such. The storage would need to be permanent and non-volatile (i.e shock proof and not need constant power to keep it 'remembered'). Hard drives are ruled out by the shock proof factor and weight factor so the best option would be NAND Flash memory which is shock proof and non-volatile. This is used by many devices currently such as USB sticks and the iPod Nano because of its non-volatile benefits over hard drives and its speed and power consumption benefits over CMOS memory. Currently the product has storage capacities form 256MB to 8GB (from Micron) and this will more than likely increase with time and the device can obviously have more than one chip.

On top of this memory, the system will need DRAM random access memory because flash memory (and hard drives) are not very fast access and as the device will be working in real-time access speeds need to be kept to a minimum. A 512MB to 1GB DRAM with a clock latency (delay) of 2 to 2.5 ms should be fine.

Of course, all of this needs a brain...a quick look around current GPS PDA's has shown that the Intel Xscale 200 MHz ARM processor is currently more than sufficient for GPS/PDA devices but I feel with all the features of our device it will require more than this but the Xscale chip has excellent power and heat efficiency, so we'll keep to that. We can either double the processor to 400MHz (using the Intel PXA255) but I feel that the real time element will require more than this so I think the 624 MHz Intel PXA27x family will be much more useful.

As for the GPS side of things (GPS will make up the building and outside world navigation) this can be based on the core internal components of almost any GPS system, like the following.

The unit will also need a Personal Area Network technology to communicate with the headset and smart watch, some thing like a box standard Bluetooth would work here.

As far as software goes, the device could either use something like Windows Mobile or Symbian OS or some custom form of Linux depending on best performance and compatibility with software development for the various components of the device. More on the devices software for its features later.

Apologies for the lack of posts...

...But we have been busy! Today I will try and explain in more detail some of our planned device design, most of what I will post will have already been discussed by the group, hopefully in the next few days we can fully cover all the components of the project!

Device prototype specifications

After many discussions we have bargained our way down to what the device should and shouldn't do.

We have a problem with research in that we can't ask a vast target audience. It's fair to say that we have a very small market. The difficult thing is we can't just go out and build a haphazard online questionnaire as we'd need the entire target group to be able and willing to access it on their computers - not such an easy assumption to make with blind people as the target! So any feedback will need to be obtained manually by ourselves.

We're looking at having two different working environments. Both are very similar to each other but with different requirements for features such as accuracy of information.

1. Outdoor world navigation and location information
   
2. Indoor navigation and information eg. in a supermarket or theatre
   

The outdoors environment is very similar to what is currently available through GPS navigation devices. Its route planning/navigation systems are similar to current car route planners such as TomTom: Relatively low accuracy (metre-resolution) although our target accuracy would be to at least get the user to the right door of a street or outside the desired shop entrance. This would require slightly greater resolution than that currently available, in the range of half-metres.

The new Galileo GPS system currently in testing will provide the desired resolution.

Another use will be for feedback about current statuses of traffic lights at pedestrian crossings. There will be another post about this later.

Indoor environments such as in a supermarket will allow the user to obtain high resolution locational information about their surroundings such as the route to a particular aisle with the desired shopping items, or locating a seat in the theatre. This will be done using a localised GPS system installed inside the buliding due to the much higher accuracy of locational information required (10s of centimetres), which current and near-future space-based GPS systems are unlikely to achieve.

There will be up to three parts of the device depending on the user's needs:

1. The main processing part, which will have dimensions no larger than (for the sake of something easy to visualise and photograph) Dan's Nokia 2650. The weight is about 100 grammes max. which we feel to be reasonable. More information about its features and photographs of the similar-sized phone will appear in a later post.
   
2. The input device, based on a 'smart watch'. The front is a standard blind/partially-sighted user's watch with a button for a speaker to speak the time and a bezel ring around the outside for control of the guidance functions, similar to an iPod control ring, with a small number of further buttons on the 'face' for selection and menu navigation. The back plate contains a ring of pressure actuators for directional guidance. More information, schematic diagrams and 'screenshots' in a later post.
   
3. The headset for voice output. This will connect to the main processing device using Bluetooth or similar technology and enable voice feedback on menu prompts from the device. Importantly for a blind user who relies on their hearing much more than a sighted user, hearing of the outside world must not be obstructed by the headset so a device that sits just off the ear and permits external sound to pass through is essential. More designs and information to follow.
   

NB: This post was made during a meeting with all three of us contributing to its contents

and now for something completley different...

i just like this article, its a good reminder that disability is an obstacle, not something that makes someone inferior

Blind sportsman attempts dive record

Ethics: Big Brother is watching you!

I stumbled accross this website last night looking for stuff on cctv style cameras to help us with our device design and a quick read through it reminded me of the morals lecture and stuff I've thought about CCTV cameras for a long time, though I am not a thug and would not carry out the suggestions on the site!

This website is a bit of fun though, it's all about the various ways to destroy a CCTV camera, all tested of course. I personally hate the Big Brother effect of CCTV because for me it has never changed anything. I have never seen CCTV prevent crime, reduce crime, nor help people suffering crime as they are suffering it, the only time the camera becomes effective is when it makes someone money.

For example, me and a friend were up at New street a few weeks back taking pictures of various things around city centre and one of our first stops was the bull ring, now there were plenty of activities happening around us that interfered with people shopping but within 5 minutes of the CCTV seeing us with cameras the bull ring security staff were breathing down our necks asking if we had passes to take photos and because we didn't we had to get off the bull ring land and would have to wait until the next day to get a photo pass from the marketing office should we wish to take pictures of any part of the bull ring, and from what I have read we are not alone in what we encountered, the only thing you are allowed to take a picture of is Bully.

Now, don't get me wrong I've seen cameras used very effectively on roads for motoring crimes but they have not been even half as successful in public areas, people my argue with me on this one saying they have provided good evidence in court after the crime but all I have to say to this is, these cameras were sold to the public as a method of preventing and detecting crime in the first place, not its aftermath, it too late then. Also, it will be 13 years this year since James Bulger was brutally murdered, he would have been 15 now, CCTV watched him walk out of the shopping centre with people different to those he walked in with, yet did it help him? I think him not making past the age of 2 tells us how useful CCTV was for him.

Also, there is another reason I hate the Big Brother effect, its not because I'm paranoid or I have anything to hide, its because every camera eventually ends up being an excuse for less cops on the street, and if you ask anyone in any defence organisation from the police to the army they will tell you that your presence puts the fear into people and makes the difference, not a secret, hidden away intelligence system. A person in the uniform with the baton, cs spray, handcuffs and the walkie talkie that says "try anything my friend and one click of this button and 10 of my colleagues will be helping me stop the misery you cause, with extreme pain to yourself if necessary" will always be a better deterrent than some officer sat in a chair miles away where no one can see them.

Website: http://www.rtmark.com/cctv/

I've been looking for this for a while

It's kind of relevant. It talks about how the future of gadgets may lie in the elderly as the focused topic, especially when you consider the "baby boom" era (for many of us, our parents) are going to be reaching that bracket in the next 10 years or so and with the last UK census showing that the average number of children per married couple has dropped from 2.4 to 1.1 you can see how the pressures the American associations (in the article) forecast they will suffer in the next few years can easily translate into the NHS and the like here.

for those who are not bothered about reading it, I'll sum it up quickly...

the article discusses that their maybe a shift of gadget design to help the elderly with the problems and disabilities they gain with age because without it the 35 million baby boom era people in America, of which, 5,500 are turning 65 everyday will bankrupt the already overstreched (some class it as already broken) Medicaid system in America (are similar but seriously more underfunded version of our NHS) when they are all trying to get treatments for their conditions. Of course the UK, Japan and most of Europe are preparing for this but I think this is relevant to us when you tie this with the current RNIB campaign called Open Your Eyes which talks about the 2 million Britons who are currently at risk of loosing their sight needlessly and this number is bound to increase as our baby boom era get older and many will ignore this campaign and become reliant on technology for the blind and an NHS system which doesn't have enough people paying taxes into to keep properly afloat.

Here's the articles if you want more:

BBC News: Rosy outlook for gadgets for elderly
RNIB: Open Yours Eyes campaign

Other HCI: How handy is that hand?

Being, a gamer at the core I tend to use alot of input device's with a computer, keyboard, mouse, joystick, gamepad, headset with mic, and some more specialised gaming devices like the nostromo speed pad
Now at first glace you'll just think another physical input device (excluding the headset) they just appear to be normal direct input devices, but take a second try that joystick or mouse in the opposit hand to normal, how confortable does it feel. With quite alot of products it will feel rather arkward using them this way, but most left handed users have to put up with this problem with higher grade equipment, fortunately in areas where group computing facilities are available, equipment tends to be hand independant(not sure if thats the right phrase there) and generic so problems don't really occur, especially as the keyboard tends to be generic bydefault. But these generic products pale in comparison to the quality of their right hand only counterparts, a serious design oversight in modern times.

Now though other devices are used for games input through out the community, most experienced gamers tend to stick with a keyboard and mouse, why?, well they're so highly adapative devices to everyform of gaming enviroment that can be encounter, and tend force generic traits across control setup of games, most noticable is the WASD, this has almost become an iconic image for gaming, 4 key's that are most commonly used for movement within games no matter the genere or style of play.

Questions, questions and more questions

Looking back at the interview and posed questions, I'm begining to think we've developed tunnel as to the projects goals, when we really should be open to new idea all the way through.

We're also making quite alot of final decisions already on a very small ammount of research within the intended user group. This will ultimately push the project in the wrong direction, ie a product tailored to a specific individuals needs rather than a device that can be used by the majority. Though specialisation is not a bad thing and something to consider further down the line I think we need to take a step back and do some more ground work based around existing products.

We should look at coming up with a general questionaire that can be distributed easily en masse or put up on a website for a large number of people to fill out. I've noticed this from a number of groups and it seems the best way to obtain a good range of info.

Specifications and features of the device

After many discussions we have bargained our way down to what the device should and shouldn't do.

We have a problem with research in that we can't ask a vast target audience. It's fair to say that we have a very small market. The difficult thing is we can't just go out and build a haphazard online questionnaire as we'd need the entire target group to be able and willing to access it on their computers - not such an easy assumption to make with blind people as the target! So any feedback will need to be obtained manually by ourselves.

We're looking at having two different working environments. Both are very similar to each other but with different requirements for features such as accuracy of information.

1. Outdoor world navigation and location information
   
2. Indoor navigation and information eg. in a supermarket or theatre
   

The outdoors environment is very similar to what is currently available through GPS navigation devices. Its route planning/navigation systems are similar to current car route planners such as TomTom: Relatively low accuracy (metre-resolution) although our target accuracy would be to at least get the user to the right door of a street or outside the desired shop entrance. This would require slightly greater resolution than that currently available, in the range of half-metres.

The new Galileo GPS system currently in testing will provide the desired resolution.

Another use will be for feedback about current statuses of traffic lights at pedestrian crossings. There will be another post about this later.

Indoor environments such as in a supermarket will allow the user to obtain high resolution locational information about their surroundings such as the route to a particular aisle with the desired shopping items, or locating a seat in the theatre. This will be done using a localised GPS system installed inside the buliding due to the much higher accuracy of locational information required (10s of centimetres), which current and near-future space-based GPS systems are unlikely to achieve.

There will be up to three parts of the device depending on the user's needs:

1. The main processing part, which will have dimensions no larger than (for the sake of something easy to visualise and photograph) Dan's Nokia 2650. The weight is about 100 grammes max. which we feel to be reasonable. More information about its features and photographs of the similar-sized phone will appear in a later post.
   
2. The input device, based on a 'smart watch'. The front is a standard blind/partially-sighted user's watch with a button for a speaker to speak the time and a bezel ring around the outside for control of the guidance functions, similar to an iPod control ring, with a small number of further buttons on the 'face' for selection and menu navigation. The back plate contains a ring of pressure actuators for directional guidance. More information, schematic diagrams and 'screenshots' in a later post.
   
3. The headset for voice output. This will connect to the main processing device using Bluetooth or similar technology and enable voice feedback on menu prompts from the device. Importantly for a blind user who relies on their hearing much more than a sighted user, hearing of the outside world must not be obstructed by the headset so a device that sits just off the ear and permits external sound to pass through is essential. More designs and information to follow.
   

We need some headings...

I've been thinking about this for a few days now and I currently feel that our approach after the brainstorming session has mimicked that of a substances diffusion in water, i.e. we've gone about some things with no general idea of a heading. Therefore I think we should split the project up into 3 groups as follows:

• Device design - This needs to cover design information from shape and placement on body right through to how it will be powered and how it communicates with the other devices it will work with. This will need to work in conjunction with the other 2 paths
  
• Working alongside, integration and replacement of current technology/methods - This needs to cover current approaches to problems, finding their strengths and weaknesses and then looking into ways the device could work with these or replace them. I think its important here to establish the limitations of our idea and where other devices need to replace it due to these limitations (e.g. in the middle of nowhere we cannot expect a matrix of cameras to guide the device
  
• New areas of interest - This needs to cover areas which have traditionally not been covered by devices to help the blind, such as in-built panic alarms and whether these could be beneficial or detrimental to the user and/or the device design. Also why and how we could integrate these ideas into the device. This can include how the device is "informed" of where the user wants to go and how it could work along side standard devices such as burglar and fire alarms.
  
  

All this does depend of course us showing that this device would be worth the hassle inventing in the first place...I think we need a questionnaire for a group of the target audience!

Also, I'll upload the meeting audio to my ipod for a listen tonight

On a lighter note...

It's important to remember that just because we are producing a device for blind/partially-sighted users, that is not just one well-defined section of society. The only thing we can take for granted is that the target audience will not be able to see very well.

There is no 'one size fits all' thing here, so we need to be just as thorough in investigating the needs of users as we would be if we were focussing on a device for sighted people. All blind people's needs and capabilities are different.

And of course, just like sighted people, some unfortunate people are handicapped with plain stupidity...

"Other disabled people make me cringe" (BBC Ouch)

More from the interview

The interview with Mike, a partially-sighted cane user, was very helpful in redirecting the development of our product.

First of all he told us that for some people keeping a guide dog simply isn't practical due to their lifestyles. Mike is a student who works in hospitals and goes out a lot in the evenings. Leading a fairly hectic lifestyle and living in the city too, all makes it rather "unfair on the dog" as he put it.

He described his cane in detail. It sounds like an incredibly well-designed and simple piece of equipment. Emulating this in our device will be a challenge!.

Positive aspects:

• The rolling tip at the end is useful as the cane can be dragged across the floor rather than tapping.
  
• Three dimensions of movement allows excellent perception of the surface in front.
  
• It's got a comfortable rubber grip.
  
• It folds up very small to a pocketable size.
  
• It's light.
  

Negative aspects:

• The cane bends quite easily, particularly if the user is walking fast and hits something hard with the cane. This is a trade-off between strength of the material and the weight of it. Our device will have to be light as the user will not appreciate lugging something cumbersome around!
  
• The tip can get stuck in cracks or holes in the pavement, causing sudden stopping of movement and maybe even jabbing the stick into the user's stomach.
  

We asked Mike how important it is to him to know the surface he's walking on. He said it is very important - his depth perception is poor and he needs to know if there are steps in front for example. It's useful also to know the gradient of the ground. If he suddenly reaches a quick drop-off or hill it can unbalance him or cause him to stumble. Actual texture of the surface is not quite so important, but still helps with balancing. If there are steps in front and you're not aware of it, that's the easiest way to break a hip!

Our original idea for a hand-held device using force feedback to guide the user as a replacement for a cane or dog looks like it will be lacking in this key area of ground perception as the cane allows incredibly simple and effective three-dimensional perception. Our device would only provide two-dimensional information and omits the depth thing completely. So at the very least we have to use the device alongside an existing cane or dog.

With this in mind, Mike was also critical of the idea of having to hold the device in your hand as with a cane in one and the device in the other, you have no free hands to push your trolley or carry your shopping. As Dan said earlier, a device attached to the user or possibly to the cane will be necessary.

My design thoughts have changed...

After a brief interview with someone who is partially sighted last night I finally came to find what our device idea had been lacking which I just couldnt see that was needed (but I knew something was missing...)

My previous design ideas lacked the ability to give the user ground shape and depth perception which is absolutley necessary. After a few more queries I found that the device would need to be used in tandem with a walking stick but not be part of the stick, my current idea is a device that is strapped to the wrist using velcro. More on this idea will follow from me and Mark.

Also, we took some pictures and recorded the audio of the interview which is available here (but please be gentle as that webserver is connected to a cable modem!)

Redone Brainstorm Sheets

Just tweaked so they're easy to read.

Original Idea



Via Idea