Running your finger through Xiaowei Wang’s model is a playful and effective way to learn your way around.
When ‘shown’ Wang’s first functional model, former photographer Hannes Wallrafen cried out with laughter. He had great fun tracing corridors while hearing reverberating footsteps, opening doors (‘cloinck’) and hearing what is inside: canteen (cutlery and voices), office (purring printers and ringing phones) or toilets (‘flussshhh’) to name a few. Wallrafen, who lost his sight in late adult life, was delighted to find out there was even a smoking room in the building. He had just experienced a tour through an architectural model, guided only by the interactive sound system Audigator.
Models to make blind people acquainted with buildings are already in use; for example, at the Parliamentary building in The Hague or at the medieval castle Muiderslot near Amsterdam. What Wang’s Audigator adds to the 3D map is simply sound. He developed the system for the Geluid in Zicht (Sound in Sight) foundation, initiated by Wallrafen.
For Wang, who graduated last month from the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, the assignment was a dream come true. As a child, he was fascinated by hifi systems and the sounds they produced. He loved to play around with headphones and amplifiers. As a designer, Wang has a passion for products that can serve all people in a wide range of environments, without the need for specific adaptations.
“This project is a perfect combination of my ambition and interests,” Wang writes in his thesis.
The prototype sound system consists of a webcam, which traces a finger cursor (a coloured band around your index finger) and a distance sensor for the input. A computer links the localisation to a map and produces the associated sounds, which play back through four speakers surrounding the architectural model. The model has two floors, of which the top floor can be rolled back. It’s position is detected by the distance sensor that tells the computer which map to consult.
Besides being more fun to explore a model with sound than in silence, Audigator nearly halves the time people need to explore the model (243 seconds versus 411 seconds in a test with 22 blindfolded people). More important: people using Audigator retain the information better and are significantly more accurate in finding their way around, especially when more complicated tasks are involved.
There’s only one thing Wang regrets about the project: he would have loved to test the system on other blind people, in addition to Wallrafen. But time was up.
Xiaowei Wang, ‘Improving Auditory Navigation in Public Buildings for Blind and Visually Impaired People’, MSc thesis supervisor: Dr René van Egmond, Reinier Jansen (MSc) and Hannes Wallrafen, 17 January 2012
