Transcriber: Maciej Rostropowicz Reviewer: Maria Carolina Aguirre J.
I'm a design researcher in Berlin and in my work
I investigate on the correlation
between design and so called disabilities.
And you know - each of us has certain connotations
with the word disability. And for some reason
most of them are rather negative.
So I asked myself how could we change things
by interpreting disability
not so much as a deficit
but more as an expertise.
I discovered many disability-related
aspects that can actually be transferred
to the design of human-computer interaction
and there is quite a lot we can learn from certain disabilities,
from certain alternative ways of perception, of communication.
And we can bring them to design.
So, based on that we have developed a couple of prototypes
for new interaction systems.
And it's very interesting what they all have
or what they all seem to have in common is
that they do not only serve specific needs
for certain groups of people
- for example; help deaf people to communicate with others -
but they can actually be helpful to all of us.
During my research I've been conducting
several participatory design workshops
with different people - mainly deaf people and blind people.
In one of our first workshops we were
discussing the idea of mobile telecommunication
in the context of deafness.
And one of the most striking issues that came up
refers back to the question of
"How is a deaf person supposed to actually use a mobile phone
when he or she actually needs
both hands for sign language?"
One of the participants addressed this problem
and expressed this problem in a very hands-on, graspable way.
She came up with this little prototype symbolising:
"Hey! I need something, I need a phone that is able
to be hang up wherever I like, whenever I need it."
Which is kind of interesting because don't we all know
many situations where we could need
certain hands-off communication.
For example, when we work in the kitchen or drive a car.
So, that was for me the starting point
to really think deeper in terms of how can we transfer
certain concepts from disability contexts to other fields.
And in another project, with another deaf group,
we have recently developed a mobile application
which enables the user to achieve immediate attention of nearby friends
by simply pointing at the person
pushing a button on your phone,
then the other person's phone vibrates and shows your name,
displays your position so the person sees
"OK, Thomas is standing 15 meters behind me".
So there's no need to call the person, or send an sms
which can obviously be very helpful to deaf people or hard-of-hearing users.
But it can actually be also helpful to non-deaf persons.
Let's think about very loud or crowded environments.
In one of our more recent projects
we're focusing on the aspect of deafblindness.
And, as you can imagine,
people who cannot hear and cannot see at the same time,
don't have so many people to talk to.
So one common way of communication for the deafblind
is some kind of tactile handtouch alphabet called Lorm,
in which the characters are assigned to certain areas of the hand.
And, of course, the conversation partners have to be familiar with that language
and also the physical contact is necessary to speak with each other.
So, we still have a lot of social isolation with the deafblind.
I have developed the mobile Lorm glove which is a communication device
that translates the German Lorm alphabet into digital text and vice versa.
And therefore, we use small fabric pressure sensors
that enable the deafblind user to compose text messages
that are transmitted to the receiver's phone or computer.
And on the back we have small vibrating motors
that allow the wearer to perceive incomming messages
through vibro-tactile feedback.
So now it's possible to send the messages
even over distance - you can send them from one glove to another,
you can send them to mobile phones or to computers,
and, of course, vice versa: you can receive e-mails, sms...
This is something that really helps to support
the social inclusion of the deafblind.
It also enables you to speak to more than one person at the same time.
That was also not possible before.
So it helps deafblind people to gain access to a broader
range of information and to literally get in touch
with a broader variety of people.
So, again, we have something that can be helpful to a certain group of people
but, on the other hand, this group's specific way of communication
could also be an inspiration to other fields.
That's why we're currently investigating
on different areas of operation where such kind of haptic interaction
could be embedded into wearable technologies.
Let's think of machine workers who work in a factory.
Usually they work in a very loud enviroment.
Or let's think of situations
when people either cannot or must not speak very loudly.
Let's say a stagehand in a theatre.
The point behind it is, if we learn to acknowledge
the expertise of disabled people we might not only become
able to come up with cool stuff that helps us make the world
a little bit more accessible, but - and that's maybe even more important
it might also help us to slightly modify
our common understandings of so-called normality.
Thank you. (Applause)