Naavi

Naavi is a navigation system developed for the visually impaired to teach it’s users echolocation. Naavi combines bone conducting headphones with a mobile application to assist users with interior navigation. The project was conceptualized by a team of five students and it was intended to offer an innovative solution to a problem faced by over 250 million people around the world. From August 2015 to May 2016 we performed user research in the form of user interviews, and product research to bring this product from ideation to working prototype.

Team Keen:
Product designer // Reid Price
Visual designer // Stephanie McNicol
Sustainability consultant // Krista Lawless
Engineer // Andrew Hickey
Business Ops // Jordan Leclair

 
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Empathetic Design

When starting this project we were faced with an interesting hurdle: we were sighted people designing for the visually impaired. We immediately started the interview process, and immersed ourselves in the world of our users. A wide range of issues started to appear in the daily routine of our interviewees as we noticed a pattern start to develop, mainly related to independence.

An additional area of research included products for the visually impaired. As we researched and tested these products we became increasingly aware of the technological gap in many of the products. While innovative products for the average consumer seemed to grow exponentially with technology, products for the visually impaired lagged behind.

 
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Feature 1

The Naavi application was designed to be a fun way for sighted and non-sighted users to learn echolocation. We decided to implement an achievement system to keep users engaged, and to create a way for users to visually measure their accomplishments. Visual wave forms give sighted users a way to see visual cues with their associated sound. We wanted to make sure that all users could have fun and participate in the learning objectives.

 
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