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Thesis
Aug - Nov 2021
Objective Intelligent Eyes (OIE!)
My thesis journey made me realize that many neglect how people rely on sight to perceive the naturally occurring information in food, which is color. Unable to read natural information such as colors, poses a challenge for color deficiency users as it potentially handicaps them from making safe food decisions. My project first simplifies the understanding of color deficiency, by utilizing local image data, and recognizing image pixels to determine the best match for the food product in front of their
mobile camera.
Background
Colorblindness is usually known as an inherited medical condition that causes users to not identify and differentiate colors by their eyes correctly. They can visually still perceive like non-colorblind users. Colorblindness is the result of rods and cones residing in the retina, located at the back of our eyes. The rods are responsible for detecting the lightness and darkness of a setting. The cones detect the color of red, green, and blue before sending the signal to our brain to perceive the color our eyes are looking at. For users with colorblindness, it simply means that one or more of these color cones are not functioning normally or missing.
Early Explorations
My journey started out with identifying the semantics of colors, and while identifying the subjectivity of colors, colorblindness became an anchor that sparked curiosity in me. The scientific elements of what causes colorblindness, and its commonality in our daily lives, became an area of opportunity to explore.
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User Research | Secondary Research
To help empower this group of users and allow public members to empathize with them their needs. Here are some benchmarking examples ranging from the technological assistance, digital application, and physical application category:
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Technological assistance
Enchroma. Glasses selectively filter wavelengths of light at a medically defined point, where visual confusion and excessive overlapping of color occur. The lens is layered and helps increase the contrast between red and green, which allows the wearer to perceive an enhanced color vision. It is also an assistive wearable that took more than a decade of clinical research to help resolve part of colorblind users' vision pain points.
Digital application
In digital applications, colorblind simulators are presently found on many developers' forums and interface designing tools to enable designers to empathize with what colorblind users experience. Due to the introduction of inclusive designs, simulation for colorblind quickly became an anchor for designers to pay more attention to while picking colors.
Physical application
ColorADD. A system was designed and developed to use symbolism to help recognize colors based on three primary colors' graphic symbols. Mixing the symbols creates a new color composition that most are familiar with in the color wheel that we perceive. The iconography used can be viewed objectively, where users are required to abide by its application.
User Research | Primary Research
An interview was done with 5 participants ranging between ages 18 to 25. The congenital condition of these participants is that four belonged to red-green colorblindness, and one belonged to hue and shade deficiency. The interview was conducted to enhance the understanding of colorblindness and uncovered more information regarding the said subject. The interview results will be used as an anchor for possible interventions that can help better empower and empathize with the conditions of a colorblind user.
The initial hypotheses before conducting the interview were: Firstly, colorblind users see colorblindness as a disability that prevents them from being normal. Secondly, online tools already create a good level of empathy to assist colorblind users in having a better experience in their daily routines. Making non-colorblind users better aware of colorblind users’ conditions. Hence they require minimum interventions.
The research questions are outlined in the following three topics.
- Context: Personal journey with color deficiency
- Experiences: Recognising colors in their daily routine with color deficiency
- Views: Universal opinion on colors
Context:
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Describe your daily routine with your congenital condition.
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What does it feel like?
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Share with me a time when you had the worst encounter with not being able to 'see' colors.
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What was the experience?
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How was it addressed?
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What do you hate about not being able to see colors 'normally'?
Experiences:
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What are some ways you use to differentiate colors?
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How did you uncover this technique?
Views:
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What was the 1 memorable (good or bad) phrase you heard as a red-green deficiency user when you picked a color combination (i.e for your clothes, your room, etc.)?
Research Findings
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Synthesised Findings
Independence
Most of the users have a point of dependency. They would usually use senses other than sight to inspect their food or risk it.
Assurance
Most needed perception assurance before they consumed their food. Some would even go onto the subreddit thread as a source of support.
Education
Most are often tested or teased for their friend's ignorance.
Opportunity Statement
How might we design an assistive device for people with color deficiency that is readily accessible to assist them in vetting their food conditions when they need it?
Conceptualizing
Types of an assistive device
Food shopping opportunities
Early Prototyping | Food Explorations
Early Prototyping | Filtering + Indicators
This series of experiments targeted ways we can introduce unobtrusive assistive devices into users' daily life.
The study includes but is not limited to using pH meters, temperature sensing devices, and gel filters
Early Prototyping | Portable Filtering
This series of experiments targeted ways we can introduce mobile assistive devices into users' daily life.
The study includes using 3D-printed mobile clips with gel filters.
Early Prototyping | Wizard-of-Oz Chatbot
Have participants send photographs of food to check the 'condition' of the food products (manually).
The Pivot | Machine Learning
Phone camera as another medium to help manage the users' colour perception.
Design Development Phase
aka the 'Final Boss'
1. Journey Mapping | To find out journey gaps for potential intervention
Key opportunities for more dependent users
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Build confidence
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Increase their cooking pool by providing
defined assurance
Key opportunities for less dependent users
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Develop competency in identifying the condition of
a food product
2. Proposed User Flow | To propose how users will use the application designed
3. Paper Prototype & Low-fidelity Wireframes | To propose how users will use the application designed
4. Scanner Interface Development | Exploring the interface design of the food scanner
5. Interface Development
User Feedback
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Too conservative and formal
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No relation to food / unappetizing
What was improved
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Colour studies
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Visual language studies
What was improved
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Colour studies
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Visual language studies
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Persona development
Back to users
Participant 1
Participant 2
Participant 3
What was improved
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Increase visual contrast using additional visual patterns
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Increase visual contrast without solely relying on colours
Introducing an assistive device for your eyes
aka the OIE!
Personal emotional rating to this project:
Thank you for reading!
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