SIVIO
For the project of the seventh module of Industrial Design Engineering, a co-design project with an organization and its specific
users would be created. For this project the organization was Visio.
Visio is an organization that specialises in working with visually impaired and blind people. Visio offers assisted living, rehabilitation services and support and create projects to make the lives of the visually impaired more accessible. The specific project that Visio did was: Living Experience. Living experience is about making the daily life inside of a smart home easier, with the focus on helping blind and visually impaired people develop a product that everyone can use. The specific user that was given was a middle-
aged, a completely blind woman, who has a strong sensitivity to light.
This was a more extreme user, and this was taken into consideration during the design process.
The first problem was that she was not able to cook. She also had problems with pouring the right amount of the right liquid detergent when doing laundry. Some ideation was done to create solutions for both problems. The laundry detergent was quite easy to fix with a special cap and did not seem like a very “empowering” solution, so the choice for the final product fell on a solution for the cooking problem. The concept that was created as a smart induction plate with specially added functionalities for the target group. A lot of ideation was done for the next co-design session.
In the second co-design session the shape of the cooking plate was tested, to see which would be best for a visually impaired person. It was clear that the more rounded dynamic shapes did not work as these did not guide the users hands towards the buttons. The final design was kept simple, with high contrast colours and textures.
