DXP-Iris Wang

This place is all for DXP412 in QUT.

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The development of Tactile painter

Tactile reader:

http://tactilereader.tumblr.com/

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The first poster is the case study poster.

The second poster is the problem analysis poster. 

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There are also relative tutorial for children to learn to draw the images from those books.

Or you can also return to the home page to assess the tutorial section. Different and amazing drawing tutorials are available for you!

Children can follow the step from the tutorial and draw on the same board. This painting board also apply for the touch sensation for the users! They are able to feel and visualize their drawings there! 

Ciick the botton down the board, there are rotatable controlers including brushs , color board, eraser, size controler, home page, saving botton and rabbish bin.

The users are able to color their artworks by using this haptic bottons. These shapes of the botton are the represent objects of the color. This will help the sight-impaired people to a greater degree.

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                                           Tactile Painter

Tactile painter is an mobile appilication for sight-impaired children to learn drawing and painting. The amazing thing of this application is it can change the nomarl images to 3D by applying the haptic technology.

This app offers the touch sensations of the vitrual objects to the blinds for them to feel, control and draw on it. As the blind can visualize the image on their brain, in this case, they can actually ‘see’ the images and draw.

The login page is able for the sight-impaired people to write their names by their hands. 

There are three main parts in this app which are reading part, tutorial part and painting part. 

In the reading part, users can brouse the picture books from its own book shellf. There are thousands of books including picture story book, cartoon book,  famous artwork and educational picture book for the blind children.

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Overview:

Feelor Touch the Color is a color pencil set that comes with a specialized character-form on the head. It’s intended as a teaching aid for blind, preschool children, who are able to grasp concepts of shapes better than mere words or Braille. For example, if they are to color their page a particular color say red; they pull out a pencil with the head shaped as an apple, because apples are red. Likewise a chic stands for yellow, clover for green, and so on…

http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/10/27/when-colors-speak-for-kids/

Project problem/challenge:

This project solve the problem for the sight-impaired people to colour their artworks, especially for those not borned blind. This is because these people have a basic concept about the object and the color of the object. Therefore, they can recognize the colour simply by the shape. For instance, if these people want to draw yellow, they can choose the pencil which with a chicken partten. This is because the chicken is yellow. This information on the pencil help the users to recognize and choose the colour they need. 

Audience:

The audiences of this project are the people how has a visual peoblem, in particular the sight-impaired people, blind people and colour blind people. More specificly, this is design for the children. 

Findings:

From this peoject, I find out the solution of the question about how the blind using colour. They can recognize colour by feeling the shape of the represent object partten. In my tactile painter app, I can indeed create a colour board with different represent partten for the sight-impaired people to colour their paintings. There is no doubt that, the borned blind people haven’t seen the colour. However, they can also using it by teaching and memorizing the colour.

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KID PAINTING APP --HOW TO DRAW

Overview:

“How to draw” is an application for notebook computer and smart phone which can be run on both Android and IOS system. This is a interesting way for the children to practice drawing without having to hunt around for a pen and paper. It's the perfect app if they have always wanted to learn to draw and it's great fun for long-time artists interested in exploring a new canvas.

The problem solved:

The problem this app solved is about teaching children to draw by a more interesting approach and encourage them to get involve in the study. This tool is more smart and more convience due to it can be used by anytime and anywhere without pen or paper. It breaks to several parts for the consumer’s needs. 

Technology/tools used to make the work:

This indeed a web-based application for ipad or smartphone. The technique it covers would includes ui design, ux design, programming and data collection.

Interface design:

The design of this apps’s interface is simple and simulates the real sketch book. The home page mainly devides into three parts which are module, title and sub-module. The colours on this page are only white, black, red and green. It is quite simple and obvious for the users to get engaged in. On the working page, there are two boards there. One is the teaching board and the other one is the practise board. On the teaching board, there is a white board with a video of the drawing step by step and includes three bottons on it which are preview, replay and next botton. On the practise board, there is a guide on the main board and also includes two bottons which are brushes controler and erasers. Then there is a colour board which includes 20 colours and brushes and erasers. 

User engagement:

From the home page, users can choose which painting lesson they need. There is a main catagroze of different contents tutorials which are dinosaurs drawing lesson, dogs drawing lesson and trains drawing lesson. If the users click one of those, there would then shows a sub-modules of the relating lessons. There is also a quick path to assess the lessons down the page--the easy lesson botton. After clikc the start botton, users will assess to the exercise board which includes tutor video and practise board. They are welcome to draw step by step following the video. When they finish the sketch, there is a colour board provide which the users can colour their work and save it to their devices. 

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Blinds can touch to visualize things in their brain

Before considering how can we help the blinds to read images and paint, we need to know what can they perceive the external world. This is because if they can perceive things visually in their brain, it is likely for them to understand the 2D images.

In fact, visually impaired people can picture the surrondings in their brain. This migh because some of them used to see or can see a little bit of the surrondings. However, the other blinds, especially who borned with blindness, also have this visualizaion ability. Morton Heller, who is the expert on blind psychology, claims that the blinds can visualize the objects in their brains by touching things. This means the blinds can actually know what the objects looks like, but with no shadows and no color. This is because the brain region neuroscientists normally think of as the "visual" cortex, rather than being left to languish, plays a key role in the blind's mental mapping process. After touching things, the brain analyize the information from touch sensation then echo as generating spatial maps in blind’s brain. In this way, the blinds can visualize the things they touched just like images what the others see.

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The population of visually impaired people is counted by World Health Organization (WHO). There are 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 million have low vision. 

This pie chat shows that there are nearly 41% people have visual problem worldwide. Most of them have issues with vision life such as reading, watching TV, surfing online or even enjoying the images. These people have less or non experience of the visual world like the others. They have less fun and less happiness than the others due to their vision problem, especially the blind children. They cannot or hard to read the picture book and watch cartoon which brings a lot fun to our childhood. The image is a way we understand the world better and communicate with others. And moreover, image is a way we express ourselves and creating things. However, the blind children have lack experiences in their lives. 

How can we help them?

What can we do with this problem?

How can we make their lives better?

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This is the first try of my poster. This poster is about the case study area.

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There is a similar case which called Tesla Touch.

Overview:

Haptic technology is the technology offering the touch sensation feedback from screen. TeslaTouch is one of the hapic technologies which is able to allow the users to use their sense of touch the screen to feel virtual objects. This computer simulated  technology also allows the users to control such virtual objects, and to enhance the remote control of machines and devices. In other words, tactile touch technology is a technology for the users to touch the visual objects on the screen with simulated objects touch sensation. The simulated touch sensations is created by dynamic friction between the finger and the surface of the panel which based on electrovibration principle. Changes in friction are periodic and result in dynamic tactile textures on a mechanically static glass surface. Depending on signal amplitude and frequency, these textures are perceived as either vibrations or friction. TeslaTouch can be combined with multiple sensing techniques, such as capacitive sensing or FTIR strategies, commonly used in the design of large touch surfaces. 

Project problem:

Not widely using is the main peoblem of this technology. This is because this technology needs special screen to support and a power support problem. It is unlikely to use the battery power to support at moment. This limitation causes it cannot be widely used on smart phones, ipad and the other portable devices. However, this problem would be solved in the future. This technology is still developing. It is not well known especialy in the developing countries.

However, TeslaTouch technology absolutely can help the visually impaired people on visualizing the objects on the screen. It offers them to control the devices more easily and provides them more visual experiences.

The advantage of TeslaTouch is it is inexpensive, lightweight and requires little power than the other tactile touch technologies. In addition, TeslaTouch can be easily combined with a wide range of touch sensing technologies and augment touch-screen applications on handheld devices and larger touch screens like interactive tables.

Audience and impact:

This technology can be used in the museum to enhance visiters’ experiences of the exhibit items which are normally behind glass. It can also allowing visitors who live far from museums to feel objects at a distance, letting visually-impaired and blind people feel exhibits. It also can be used on game design that enhance the interaction experiences of players while they touch to play. It could use on poasters, maps and other images media. And, in particulaly for the visually impaired.

Findings:

From TeslaTouch technology I realize that a electronic tactile painting tool for the sight-impaired people is possible to deleop. There is no doubt that this tactile touch screen technology would be widely used on portable devices. Therefore, the tactile painting tool can exsit as an application for the laptops and those partable devices.

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Overview:

InTACT is a tool for the visual impaired people to draw easily. This tool mainly include three parts, the inTACT sketchpad, pen and the inTACT eraser. This tool is created for the blind creaters to create tactile graphics independently. The creators can draw haptic lines on inTACT sketchpad screen only with the normal pens or even their nails. This is the reason why it called freehand painting tool. The inTACT eraser can erase the lines on sketchpad screen that the creator creates by flatting the texture.

Project problems:

There are three main problems of this blind painting product. In the first place, the problem is that this painting tool is not convenience enough. This is because people have to actually use the board to draw. This means the blindness needs to take the sketchpad and the eraser with them even when they go outdoors. It is unlikely a good idea that the blindness take too much staffs with them. It might produce some problems when they go out. The second limitation of this product is it can only create lines. This indeed limit the diversity of the graphs that the blindness create. The third problem is this painting tool actually needs special paper which costs $24 per 100 sheets. These sheets cannot be second used which cause waste.

Audience:

The audience is obviously the blind creators including the blind students who loves painting.

Impact:

InTACT actually create the possibility that the blindness to paint easily. It encourages the visual impaired people to express their own world by creating graphs. With this product, not only the blind creators but also the blind children have the opportunities to interact more easily with the others. In order to inspire people to paint, the inTACT company holds several activities for the blind creators like the competitions, work exhibitions.They can even play games and learn on that. This product creates a beginning of tactile graphic world.

Findings:

There is no doubt that this exsiting blind painting tool is a good resource for me to study about the smart tactile painting tool. This tool create a way that blind people to sketch the line graphs which is a basic skill of painting. This idea helps me on developing the drawing part of the tactile painter.

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This is the poster 1. There are just the overview and some brief background researches. The case study I will put on poster2.

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Overview:

This is a video showing Terry Hopwood-Jackson who is a blind artist from UK, working on painting. He has created several drawings in color. He uses the plasticine to create the sketch of the objects then puts them on the paper. After that, he uses acrylic to paint with color. He also creates a site about his works to inspire other blind artist to draw.

The problem solved:

Terry Hopwood Jackson provide a technique for the sight-impaired people to create paintings. He changes the concept that blind people are hardly to paint. The artworks he did indeed told us it is possible for the blind people to create arts. In addition, it might also told us it is possible for the blind people to become designers.

Technique and tools:

He creates an useful technique to paint by using traditional drawing materials. Firstly, he creates texture with plasticine to build up sketches of the objects. These sketches are differentiated parts of the painting from other parts. In this case, he can easily establish the painting and identify the different parts of the painting. After that, he colors the painting by acrylic material due to it is less messy than oil. The other reson of using this acrylic is it has tecture that he can actually feel it by touching to help him better painting.

Findings:

From this case, I realize that the blind can also paint by feeling the texture. This can be seen as an outcome process. Different textures can help them identify different parts of sketches and colors. This case indeed help me on the idea of how the blind paint. If we provide special painting pens which have various of textures, it is possible for the blind to draw.

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The first image of the new 2011 Volvo S60 is a painting made by Esref Armagan, who has been blind since birth.

A quote from this web:

 “Like other blind artists, he bears down firmly when sketching, keeping track of indentations.”

Findings:

He actually teach himself painting by learning the track of indentations. In this case, the blindness can feel and unterstand the shape on 2D perspective. 

The finding from this information is the blindness can draw if they understand the sketch of the objects even by memorise them. This means, in my blind painting app, I can teach the blind children drawing by teaching them the sketch and the 2D shape of the objects. Give them the basic understanding of what the objects look like in the picture. 

The aim of this idea is to create a painting tool for blind children to receive the vision world such different types of pictures, cartoons and parttens. And also provide a platform for them to express their own world in visual way.

If we only provide an electoric painting tool for these children without teaching them the sketch. It is making no sense due to the others are unlikely understand what they are painting. This will cause ineffective communication.

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Problems, challenges and opportunities

These are the respones of the questions for poster.

Brief overview:

Tactilepainter is an application which especially for the visually impaired childrento experience vision world by their tactile sensation. What can this app done are:

A. It can change the 2D pictures like the paintings, photos and even the cartoons into 3D tactile sensation that the blind children can actually read them by touching the screen.

B. It can teach blind children painting. How this app works with that is it has a electronic sketch book in it. As the children can read the tactile picture, the app shows them how to draw the picture or the symbol or the pattern step by step with voice. Children just need to follow the step to finish the drawing that the app provide. This process can be repeated until they actually can finish the drawing independently. In this case, the supporting online material library is necessary. Who will upload the painting teaching recourses? Maybe we can learn from "bemyeyes". They actually asking for the volunteers to help the blindness.

C. It provides a platform or we can call it painting sheet for the blindness to paint. The good thing is it's totally electronic without wasting paper and don't cost any money. This painting board has several types of brushes like the other electronic painting tools. People can also setting the size of the brush and even the color. However, I still have a question about the color issue for the blindness. Is it necessary for the blindness painting in color?

1.  specific  problem  experienced  by individuals,  groups,  and communities.

Re: The problem I address is about the ‘vision experience’problem that the blindness have. This means, the blind people donot have the opportubities to watch images and draw due to their disability of vision,especially the blind children who born without sight. These children have lessfun or even less happiness as they cannot read picture book and donot have the chanceto espress their world and thoughts on visual way.

2. The  current  challenges

Re: I mainly divide into several challenges:

How they read and understand 2D images

How they paint

What they understand about color

What interface will convince the blind to use

What is the appropriate content (the kind of image) for the blind children to understand ( the complexity of the images)

What images might interest children including the blind children

How to draw on screen

3. The  opportunities  for  design  intervention

Re: The opportunities for design intervention is the combination of tactile words and interface design. How to make the app interface effectively and simplified for the blind children to interact is the main issue to think form interactive design aspect.

4. Background research on the problem area

Re: see other posts