Espy
How do you design something full of technology, for someone who's never grown up with it?
2017
The project brief was all about accessibility.
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"Design a smart product for the ageing population (65 years +)"
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At first this doesn't seem to lend itself to trying to design a product that is as accessible as possible, however attempting to design a product that needs to be full of modern technology for a generation that has had to adapt to it, not grow up with it, you begin to realise the importance of its accessibility.
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The real starting point for this project was to identify a problem area in the agin population. With four grandparents who all need glasses, researching those with visual impairment seemed like a good place to start. It is well known that eyesight only gets worse with age, however from my point of view I had no idea what effect this had on daily life, and so this is what my research aimed to find out.
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To view my entire research report navigate though the slides bellow or click
on the link to download a PDF version.
Having conducted my research the real takeaway point that I gained from it was how regularly people had to say to themselves...
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"Where are my glasses?"
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So in a way this was the real problem that I was going to try and solve. I wanted to create a product that stopped people having to say or think this. There where two ways in which to do this:
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Produce a product that meant the user always knew where their glasses where and so never thought this.
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Produce a product that meant the user no longer needed glasses and so could never loose them.
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Bellow is a slideshow of rough ideation sketches, more developed explanatory sketches and final marker render of the idea I took forward to be developed.
Click the attachment bellow to download a PDF of the full ideation report.
The final idea that was taken forward into the development process was a location system that enables the user to track their glasses around the home.
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To view my entire development process and report navigate though the slides bellow or click
on the link to download a PDF version.
All of this resulted in Espy. Espy is a personal items location system for the around the home. It is able to track any item that the user wishes to keep track of using RFID tags. It has been developed to be as accessible to as many people as possible with the use of human factors considerations.
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Bellow are some renders of the final product.
Click the attachment bellow to download a PDF version of this report.
Click the attachment bellow to download a PDF version of this report.
