Katalys
Background
IBOS – Digital Jewellery is a collaboration with KEA’s Wearables Lab, the company IBOS – institute for the blind and partially sighted, and several 4 member teams from KEA’s 5th-semester students. The focus of the project was to design digital jewellery, also called wearables. Digital Jewellery is a jewellery that has an electronic component that makes the jewellery multi or meta-functional. For example, the Apple Watch has electronic functions that extend outside the realm of an article of jewellery and of those of a normal watch.
Project Brief
- Carry out ethnographic research about and in collaboration with the blind and partially sighted through superuser volunteers from IBOS.
- Explore innovative digital solutions that focus’ on interaction, play, empathy and social interaction-based.
- Design a digital piece of jewellery that is attractive for the sighted, blind and partially-sighted.
Tools
- Ethnographic research
- empathy-based, user-centred design
- Interdisciplinary collaboration, Software design, product design, electrical engineering)
- Pecha Kucha pitch
- proof of concept
- Brochure
- 2d Visualisation – Poster
- 3D Prototype
Team
Chen, Catalin, Kristine, Emil, Nathaniel
Katalys Bracelet & Noomi's Apartment Game App
Research
The team gather their research data via superuser presentations, a workshop attendance, interviews, ethnographic probe kits, blind & partially simulations and several other methods. A major insight gained from the research was that the blind and unsighted valued human interaction, friendship and intimacy above technology that might presume to make them less dependent on human agency and a “better standard of living.”
Persona Development
Guided by the research our team focused our efforts on exploring how we might use a) jewellery and b) digital jewellery in a meta-functional capacity’s to ‘initiating and sustaining relationships’ a large and common pain-point among the blind and sighted impaired users we interviewed. To get at our conclusions we created a persona based on the demographic profiles and an empathy map. We developed design drivers, adopted a point of view (POV) and created a mood-board. Then started sketching. Noomi, a superuser was chosen as the persona.
Ideation
Our team then began the ideation process of resolving what to make and why? How it should look, feel, and function? We generated productions plans and material sources. Created, 2d illustrations and 3d sketches, then revised them to better suit the target user.
Prototyping
After several week of ideation around what to create. Then several iterations of how it should look, feel and work. Our group settled on a digital bracelet that provided access to a thoughtful and exciting game that levelled the field between the sighted and unsighted worlds, and equally addressed the pain of ‘initiating and sustaining relationships. The game was designed on Rhino 3d, rendered in Keyshot and then 3d printed and assembled.
