(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020)
Liao, Siran
The hearing-impaired group is a very important part of our society. According to WHO, over 5% of our populations have disabling hearing loss. To those people who love cycling, the loss of hearing makes them more exposed to unexpected danger. However, there are few designers notice this growing vulnerable group. It barely has any products on the market designed for improving hearing-impaired cyclists’ road safety. And during our research process, I didn’t find many projects to investigate these people’s needs. This project is focusing on improving road safety for deaf cyclists. By conducting user research and user-centered design, I draw solid design criteria and designed a haptic wristband with a detachable radar detector to provide rear-end traffic to users. Our project is just a start, I hope it can eventually raise the public’s attention to the hearing-impaired group.