Project Title
“Magic Brush” (or “Easy Drawingboard”)
Project Statement of Purpose
Deriving from our Midterm project “Duet Beat” which shows a sense of care for human, we are particularly focused on the idea of accessibility and availability. After seeing the Xbox Adaptive controller which Rudi has told me about, we decided to make a controller that can help people with disabilities to create visual arts easily. In general, we would like to create a device that has joysticks, buttons, and slide buttons that allows people with disabilities to control the drawing brush.
Project Plan
- Brainstorm and sketch. In this stage, we have to figure out exactly what functions we need, for example, the size of brush, type of brush, color pick, filters. In addition, we have to figure out what are the functions that ordinary people could easily use but people with disabilities could not. (1 day)
- Self-inspection. Before actually building the device, we have to pretend we are people with disabilities and see if they feel comfortable using the gadgets that we proposed before. (1 day)
- Building the device. When building it, we should pay attention to the what types of device can make a balance between functionality and accessibility. (1 day)
- User test. Again, we have to pretend we are people with disabilities and try to find out how user friendly the device is. We can also invite other people to test it. (2 days)
- Finalization. After we collected suggestions for improvement, we have to choose between improve the prototype or to start overall again. (1 or two days)
Context and Significance
My preparatory research is about accessibility and availability. My definition of interaction is that, an interactive design means 1) two or more actors, 2) cognitive systems, 3) the process of input, processing, and output, 4) proper feedback so as not to confuse the user, and 5) available to everyone. And the projects I explored that align with my definition of interaction are the camera function on iPhone and other Apple products. Our project involves two thinking actors, receives input, processes signals, and produces output, and more importantly, it is available for almost everyone. Therefore, our drawingboard perfectly align with my definition of interaction. Moreover, it shows a sens of care for the user no matter who they are.
However, to make our project truly accessible for everyone, it is best for us to invite people with disabilities to test it.