Empowerment through understanding

Challenge

Visually impaired people in China's urban areas alone are estimated to number over 2 million. To meet their needs, the Disabled People's Association (DPA) in China asked one of the top telecommunications to provide mobile phone services and products to its blind members across the country, services and a product tailored to their unique needs.

This meant our client would need to develop a phone with a standardized, non-visual interface - something that did not yet exist on the Chinese market.

Before starting the project, we had to understand the needs of blind people and the support network that enables the visually impaired to be included in society.

Process

As a first step, we wanted our client to learn from the successes and failures of products for the blind available on the international market.

Then, after gathering market and product information, we engaged in an ethnographic study on our target user's living patterns and current ways of using technology. We gained perspective by observing blind participants and those in their support network performing routine daily tasks. This let us tease out common factors in how the blind approach technology.


Together, we discovered critical success factors for the product and services we would need to create.

We found that participants in our study of day-to-day life were highly adept at living independently. One common factor was that they draw astonishingly accurate “mind maps”, enabling them to repeat complex tasks. This involved breaking down tasks into a series of steps, linked together in a sequence. Any way in which we could aid this process through our design would have a great impact.

For the visually impaired, mobile devices and computers are already a very important link to society. They use them to perform tasks such as accessing information services, shopping and getting directions. They also used these tools as a means of avoiding isolation by allowing easy contact with family and friends.

Outcome

Combining mind maps with faster, more intuitive interfaces was the main inspiration for what would be called the Jiu Gong mobile phone design. Based on the ancient principles behind urban design, and also the classic games of Go and Sudoku, the new device incorporates an interface based on a three by three matrix - Jiu Gong.

While this device was designed for the visually impaired, its simplified interface and features will be intuitive for everyone. Recently, this concept became an award-winning device and is playing its part in empowering the users it was designed for.