TACTILE HORIZON

Designers

• aradhita maheshwari
• jiaqi yi

Project Description

Tactile Horizon is an interactive artboard designed to empower individuals with diverse abilities to create visual and audio-based art through touch. Inspired by nature and inclusivity, this project features a tactile interface with felt elements representing natural scenery, connected to a digital display. Users can interact with elements like the sun or moon to transform visuals and sounds, creating a multisensory experience. Combining technology and creativity, TouchScape bridges barriers to artistic expression, offering an accessible and personalized medium for self-expression.

 

Timeline

• 09/24/2024 Milestone 1: Brainstorm different ideas
• 10/01/2024 Milestone 2: Visit the HeartShare Centre
• 10/08/2024 Milestone 3: Narrow Idea
• 10/08/2024 Milestone 4: Rapid Prototype
• 10/10/2024: Milestone 5: User Test
• 11/11/2024: Milestone 6: Final Prototyping
• 12/12/2024: Milestone 7: Building

 

Weekly Updates

Questions to Consider:

1. Could a blind person use and understand my project?
2. Could a Deaf person use and understand my project?
3. Could a Deafblind person use and understand my project?

09/26/24

Brainstorming

We aim to design and create a multisensory room for HeartShare, an organization that empowers children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorders, through comprehensive services. These services encompass education, life skills and vocational training, employment, residential support, case management, recreation, individual and family support, as well as health care.

Our project focuses on developing two interactive experiences, specifically designed to engage users with diverse intellectual and developmental disabilities. Both experiences are thematically inspired by nature, which we intend to incorporate into a tangible, indoor environment.

1. Interactive Art Piece: This component will allow users to engage with a touch-responsive board, where their interactions will create unique digital art, displayed on a screen in front of them. Each creation will be personal to the user and will be printed for them to take home as a keepsake.
2. Multisensory Box: This box will respond to different gestures by producing corresponding sounds and light effects. The sensory outputs will be tied to natural elements, such as the sounds of waves, wind, and birds. Both experiences incorporate multiple sensory modalities and are designed to provide meaningful engagement for neurodiverse individuals.

10/03/24

Finalising Design

1. Problem:To create an activity room at Heartshare Care Center in Queens to create a recreational space for neurodiverse and disabled individuals.
2. Observation:After visiting the center and brainstorming as a team, we realised we wanted to incorporate multiple senses with a primary focus on visuals as the group we are working with have limited sensory modalities
3. Ideate:During the visit, we were offered to build within two spaces. The larger has big windows and natural light while the smaller room has no windows or lighting. Based on the spaces, we decided to create two projects.Room 1: Projection Mapping + Sound: We aim to incorporate the nature outside within a limited space for people to enjoy the outdoor in an indoor setting! For the same, we will be using projection mapping within the entire room and tie it with different fragrances. As each season changes, corresponding sounds and fragrances come outRoom 2: Interactional Artboard: Here, we want the real outdoors to reflect inside. We hope to get rid of the curtains and create an airy space in this room.The artboard will allow people to touch and material and connect it with P5js so each touch creates unique visuals on the screen, making a beautiful art piece. 
4. Things to ensure:

• We also need to ensure that people at the height of the wheelchair view as much as other people do.
• We want the interaction to be instinctual, robust, and safe in all means.
• ADA Guidelines and consult an OT before installation

10/10/2024

Protoype + User Test

To prototype the multisensory artboard, we decided to use p5.js, a creative coding platform that allows for interactive visuals. We developed multiple options for users to test by simulating touch interaction through mouse movement. By moving their finger on the mouse, users can create unique visual patterns, exploring various interactive elements and sensory feedback. This prototype helped us refine the user experience, allowing us to test different design features and determine how users respond to visual output based on their interactions.

Link to the Sketch

Link to our Testing Script 

During our user testing, we received valuable feedback on how to improve the artboard’s personalization features. Users expressed a strong desire to have more control over aspects like color, shape, and size to make the art feel more unique and reflective of their individual creativity. This feedback highlighted the importance of offering customization options to enhance the sense of ownership over the creative process. By allowing users to adjust these variables, the experience becomes more personal, empowering them to express themselves in a more meaningful and tailored way.

10/17/24

Analysing Data

Last week, we started brainstorming on the interviews we did and used the sticky-note approach for it. We began by listing down our key insights on post its and then categories them into larger umbrellas. 

Findings	Actions
Change in Visuals	to create more appealing visuals  to incorporate different colour schemes  introduce more patterns
Emotions or Feelings	feeling of calmness must be maintained
Control over creation	options to change colour, pattern, shape, size > as our theme surrounds nature, we can incorporate different seasons, geographies and weather conditions.
Keepsake	for people to make prints which they are proud of and would like to keep in their own space
Touch	to create an intuitive looking board to introduce textures and other elements
Extra Addition	introduction of haptics and sound as new elements to grasp user attention

Tweaking our interaction slightly: 80% use of webcam as it adapts to the people on wheel chair who can not reach out. 10% use of a Button as it’s good but might be broken and hard to fix. Rest 10% use of touch Screen as it’s also a good alternative but needs to be designed and costs much more.

Visual Design and aesthetic ideas: 

This idea starts with a webcam as the most feasible way to interact. Based on the nature concept, the art board should present the world outside of Queens and the view from the window. When considering what peace means to them, the night sky is a great option (this can also be expanded to include the sea, ocean, etc.). To make it interactive, picking, counting, or moving stars would work well!

Here’s a list of interactions that seem appealing:

1. Counting stars in the night sky
2. Moving the sun and moon to change the time of day
3. Taking a trip and moving around

10/24/24

Prototyping

For this week, we started prototyping our ideas physically. We used FSRs (Force-Sensitive Resistors) and connected them Arduino to create a basic circuit. After successfully doing that, we decided to build the circuit and connect it to p5js. 

To test out our ideas, we tried to use two sensors and played with the colour and shape. We connected one sensor to blue and the other to a circle. Based on the pressure, the colour changes to different intensities of blue and similarly, the size of the circle increases and decreases. 

After being able to create a circuit, we decided to experiment with the artboard. We tried using the sensor under different materials to see what textures are suitable. 

We concluded by using three different textures and mapped each of them to different colours on the p5js sketch. Our final prototype for the class had three different sensors on the board mapped to RGB. As each are pressed the colours on the screen would change.

 

10/31/24

List of items we will be using for the project

S No.	Item	Quantity
1.	FSRs	15 pcs
2.	Arduino nano 33 iot	3 pcs
3.	Fabric Yarn	10 mtrs
4.	Base Material	1 mtr
5.	Wires & resistors	1 pack
6.	TV Screen	1
7.	Printer	1
8.	Micro USB to USB A	1
9.	Wooden Board	1
10.	Miscellaneous	1

11/07/24

This week’s progress is more on the digital end. We tried to figure out more visuals for how we want our project to look like visually and code it. Coding and de-bugging has taken most of our time. We were able to make little progress on that front. 

We are playing with materials for our board as well! We are thinking of using tufting to build a board for different, thick textures. 

MVP 

In this basic prototype, we will be introducing three more sensors. Each sensor will be linked to a different texture, visual and sound. Textures TBD

S No.	Texture	Visual	Sound	Added
1		Ocean/River	sound of waves
2		Mountains	Rocky sounds
3		Trees	sound of breeze on leaves
4		city	sound of traffic
5		field	sound of wind
6		Rain	sound of rain

 

11/14/24

Mapping weather and scenery with each other

	winter	summer	fall	spring
mountain	mountain/winter	mountain/summer	mountain/fall	mountain/spring
tree	tree/winter	tree/summer	tree/fall	tree/spring
ocean	ocean/winter	ocean/summer	ocean/fall	ocean/spring
field	field/winter	field/summer	field/fall	field/spring

 

5 W’s Chart

Source: Velasco, Carlos and Marianna Obrist. Multisensory Experiences. 2020.

Components	Questions and considerations
Background (Why)	Why do we want to design this interface?
Impressions (What)	What impressions do we want the user to feel when interacting with the interface?
Events (When)	What is the user’s journey?
Sensory Elements (How)	What sensory modalities should we select and why? Are there trade-offs? Who might be excluded?
Designer/User (Who/Whom)	Who is the designer? For who are we designing?

System Diagram

Code

https://editor.p5js.org/YiJiaqi/sketches/kovwHPLBC 

Final Presentation