Konceptframtagning av ett tekniskt hjälpmedel för personer med blindhet: Utvecklat för orientering i stadsmiljö

Abstract

Visually impaired and blind people face lots of difficulties when walking in urban cities that can, at worst, lead to injuries. The anxiety and stress concerning accidents and the risk of getting lost lead to involuntary seclusion due to insufficient escort and assistive technology. Despite the rapid technological advances, the range of assistive technology is limited. This project seeks to analyse the user needs and explore how new technology can shape innovative assistive technology that creates value for the user. The guiding question for this project was “How can tomorrow’s assistive technology for orientation be designed for blind people to enable them to move more independently in urban areas?” The project has been carried out at Chalmers University of Technology with the consultancy i3tex as outsourcers. i3tex works with product development within the field of medical technology. This project does not include patent research, cost-evaluation, blueprint or production possibility. In order to identify a problem state, the process started with a pilot study. It appeared that orientation in urban areas was a problem for the target group where it nowadays is no excellent assistive device that fits this purpose. Based on the chosen problem state, user studies were made to involve stakeholders' and users opinions and preferences. This resulted in a product specification with two categories: global and local surroundings, which give information about overall and nearby obstacles. An idea generation was made together with co-creation from stakeholders and users which generated four concepts that went through the evaluation and resulted in one concept. The final concept is called Touch & Go and is a device consisting of a dynamic tactile map to give the user an overview together with a separable handheld controller that uses sensors to guide the user around obstacles towards the desired route. The final concept is visually presented with photos of 3D-models and renderings of CAD-models and the result should be looked upon as a suggestion among other possible solutions to fulfill the user needs. The prestudy and the concept development are considered to be a solid starting point for i3tex to initially research the possibility to develop assistive technology for the target group.