2023 Galleries
The Spark Gallery pages are one of our most popular design destinations, with thousands of visitors each year. Check out some of the latest Spark entries, in the galleries below.
Galleries // 2023 Spark:Spring Student // Felt
Felt
Winner - Gold
Competition: Spark:Spring Student
Designer: Jessica Kwon
Design Type: Product & industrial
Company / Organization / School: Harvard University
Team Members: Jessica Kwon, Alexandra Weiner, Julius Stein & Priyanka Pillai
There are over 15 million people in the world who have severe deafblindness. Most of these people have to rely on human translators to communicate. Even with a speech-to-braille reader, people with deafblindness often feel left out when they cannot understand the subtext, or underlying emotion, of a conversation or social setting. Through thorough research and testing, our team designed a three part system called Felt that allows the wearer to understand the three components of conversation: presence, text, and subtext. The armband would give haptic feedback to the wearer's forearm on the different emotions of the conversation. The detachable braille reader on top of the sleeve would be a speech-to-braille reader to convey the text of the conversation. The pin, worn on the wearer's chest and equipped with a camera and microphone, would detect emotion using computer vision and machine learning, as well as collect speech for the braille reader.
JUDGES COMMENTS:
Refreshing concept that enriches communication for the deaf blind. ,,Very rarely is a solution designed to nurture experience beyond utilty for this user so this is an innovative solution to a significant but rarely considered challenge
