A Mobile Context-based Information System for Urban Orientation of Sighted and Visually-Impaired Users presented by Michelle Escobar University of Michigan School of Information
Photo © OliverN5 (flickr.com) New! Show Tonight! Special Offer! Insider Tip! Interesting Building! Come In! Lots of Visual, Serendipitous Information in Urban Environments
For Visually-Impaired people it looks different
Our Answer: Talking-Points location
Talking-Points System
Design Objectives Following a user centered design process Making the device unobtrusive in terms of form factor and user interaction Leveraging community-generated location information
Follow user-centered design processes Early focus on the user Active user participation throughout the project Early prototyping Continuous iteration of design solutions Multidisciplinary design team
Creating scenarios
Simulating the system WOz (Wizard of Oz) study: Human plays role of system interpreting user inputs and issuing appropriate response according to predefined rules modeling the intended system behavior
Other Influences Observational interviews Focus group User testing
Open source software Open source software encourages personalization to meet user’s needs Java CMU Sphinx library FreeTTS
Adoption of an unobtrusive device Assistive technology devices tend to have a high abandon rate Devices that are inconspicuous do not force “disabled” status on individuals
Hardware Components OQO –Bluetooth – Headphone – EVDO/GPRS Internet Connectivity – Small – Long-lasting Battery Headset –Bluetooth – Long-lasting Battery Bluetooth beacon –Durable – Unobtrusive – Unique MAC address
Community-generated location information Talking-Points website Ownership of tags Database accrued from community & other sites
Future Work Limitations of Bluetooth as a location-tagging technology Lack of orientation information impedes usability Textually-submitted content may not be suitable for speech-based delivery
Questions?
Contact Information Talking-Points Google Code: talkingpoints-2/ Michelle Escobar