According to Norman (The design of future things, 2007, p.168-169);
"We need the best designs possible, ones that are sensitive to people, that follow all the best rules of human-centered, activity-centered design."
I put some serious thought into this bit of information given by Norman. Our design needed to be sensitive to the possible users needs. Not like the previous designs I have found in researching that are one track orientated towards one problematic such as so the user can send message via a braille keypad.
I researched some more designs of mobile devices for the blind and partially sighted: -
Universal phone for the blind
http://www.designlaunches.com/gadgets/universal_phone_for_blind_as_well_as_sighted_people.php
The b-touch
http://www.wallacek.com/wkusumo/cellphone-for-blinds-by-zhenwei-you/
All of the above seemed in the concept stage. If you look at the links you will see that the BSR looks similar to a grenade as such but it sits in the hand like a joystick grip. I thought about the menu items and functions the first idea could have I wanted to install these ideas.
- A small but high resolution screen
- A touch pad so a stylus could be used to navigate the menu with certain strokes on the touchpad.
- A braille keypad for totally blind users and braille readers.
- A screen reader would also be installed in the phone so that the user could surf the web etc productively.
With this in mind I started to shape my prototype out of polystyrene with the help of a set of mini rasp files and sandpaper. The following images are of me shaping prototype 1. I will not show full images of the prototypes as these will be saved for the main presentation date.
I finished prototype 1 succesfully. You will see this in our main presentation. I found that the gun handle grip linked to violence too much and that a touch screen and high resolution colour screen could be implement like the Nintendo DS does which would save space. I decided on a new idea but with the same functionality.
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