Designing Navigation Support for Blind or Partially Sighted Community

研究问题：能否开发一种新的低成本触觉界面，以改善盲人或部分失明的专业人士或学生的导航，理解和减少认知负荷。 拟议影响：文本到语音技术大大改善了对书面文本的访问。然而，数据可视化或图形用户界面的日益普及仍然对盲人或部分失明的学生和专业人士构成了重大挑战。空间信息很难通过音频有效地传达，并且现有的触觉界面过大、昂贵且使用起来不直观，并且通常不能与屏幕阅读器完全集成。这项研究旨在设计和创造一种解决这一差距的设备。方法：按照传统的设计过程，本研究将分为两个主要阶段。问题定义、构思和迭代原型阶段。问题定义阶段将包括详细的文献综述，然后收集额外的定性数据，以详细了解参与者面临的特定痛点或挑战。这可以采取观察、背景调查或参与者访谈的形式。需要注意防止抽样偏差，因为盲人和部分失明者群体可能被分割，难以从中招聘。定量方法可用于衡量文献综述和定性研究结果的普遍性。第二阶段将包括构思阶段，然后是可能的解决方案的迭代开发。这将涉及多种方法的组合，包括协同设计会议、可用性测试以及可能涉及日记研究、经验抽样和可用性数据收集的纵向用户测试。

Research question:Can a new low-cost tactile interface be developed to improve navigation, comprehension and reduce cognitive load of professionals or students who are blind or partially sighted. Proposed impact: Text to speech technology has greatly improved access to written text. The increasing prevalence of data visualisation or graphical user interfaces however still pose a significant challenge for students and professional who are blind or partially sighted. Spatial information is very difficult to convey effectively over audio and existing tactile interfaces are excessively large, expensive and non-intuitive to use and often do not fully integrate with screen readers. This research looks to design and create a device which addresses this gap. Approach:Following a traditional design process, this research will be broken down into two main stages. The problem definition and ideation and iterative prototyping stage. The problem definition stage will be comprised of a detailed literature review followed by gathering additional qualitative data to develop a detailed understanding of specific pain points or challenges participants faced. This could take the form of observation, contextual inquiry or participant interviews. Care would need to be taken to guard against sampling biases as the blind and partially sighted community can be segmented and difficult to recruit from. Quantitative methods could be used to gauge an indication of generalisability of findings from the literature review and qualitative research. The second stage would consist of an ideation stage followed by the iterative development of potential solutions. This will involve a combination of methods including codesign sessions, usability tests as well as longitudinal user testing potentially involving diary studies, experience sampling and usability data collection.