Pursuit of Opportunity: Co-Create 2020, Chennai

January 10–12, 2020 @ Animaker Office Space, TIDEL Park, Chennai

So after a month long series of semester exams, I was looking forward to an energizing break by exploring new fields and picking up a couple of new skills. It so happened that Mehar informed in TinkerHub community chat about an upcoming event at Chennai: Co-Create, a three day workshop on how to develop assisted technologies for differently abled individuals — to lead their lives with dignity in an increasing challenging world of limited opportunities.

Are you interested to make an impact through technology?

Co-creATe’20 is an immersive 3-day workshop where we teach you how to apply the Humanistic Co-Design Process to empathize and create innovative technological solutions to assist folks who experience the world differently. We are led by Dr. Kyle Keane, Lecturer and Research Scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Participants with the vision and skill to make an impact using technology and a background in Business/Design/Engineering/Science are eligible to apply.

Also, things conveniently supported my inclination as:

• My Dad was going to Chennai that weekend for work so I had company.
• My Mom lives in Chennai and it would be nice to meet her at her place.

Thus, I packed my bag and set off to see what this rather interesting event had to offer (spoiler: a lot indeed!)

Day 1

Reached Chennai by 5.30 AM. My friend Baibhab Mondal who studies at SRM University agreed to join in the session when I informed him about the same. PS: Baibhab is a really cool guy to hang out with.

Thanks for accompanying me mate

We reach the venue at 5 PM at TIDEL Park via a taxi ride from Chennai Bookfair at YMCA Ground. From the gate, we were properly guided to the venue and checked in.

If I had to describe how the venue (Animaker Office Space) was, it would be a single word: AMAZING! With excellent layout and designs on the walls, the interior design and various sections empower those in the space to be creative and positive.

Krishna Murthy, the chief organizer of the event, welcomed us with his warm smile and charismatic spirit — encouraged us to explore every aspect of the space. Harsh and I immediately moved to the Foosball table!

The event shortly began — by 6.30 PM. Kyle and Anna introduced their team from MIT (I mean, ‘The MIT’) to us. Sujithra explained to us what Humanistic Co-Design was all about — to understand user needs and to effectively discover the functions to provide. For example, a glass must be easy to hold and drink, thus we observe curved edges at the end that we use for drinking.

We engaged in two activities:

• First one demonstrated situational disability where we imagine to be on railway station listening to music, thus missing crucial updates to platform changes for certain trains.
• Second one demonstrated indirect simulation where we experience how it feels being deaf in the same scenario, by putting plugs in our ears. In this case, we truly felt restless and uneasy due to inability to understand.

Kyle explained that talking to differently abled people, we can understand how they cope up over time in these circumstances. For example, in the same railway station scenario, Deaf people say that they rely on the eye moment of the masses to realize an update is being communicated via the microphone. They subsequently inquire about the same.

Certain new keywords were also introduced, such as Temporary Disability (eg: fractured arm), Secondary Effects (eg: skin sores due to extensive duration on wheel chair). Anna mentioned how she took care of her father in his old age by being patient with him and giving him the time to finish his actions on his own instead of doing it for him and making him feel of less value. This independence is important for their emotional well-being.

Take care of care taker

According to the team, disability falls on a spectrum.

After Dinner, we explored the different projects that MIT Team brought along projects to demonstrate the challenges faced by differently abled people:

• Glasses tapped with paper to demonstrate blurry vision, limited angle of vision and other visual challenges.
• Wheelchair to experience to difficulty controlling it to move between varying surfaces.
• Using a mirror to redraw a drawing — compelling us to readjust drawing with inversion of axis.
• Tactile surface to help visually impaired folks to understand shapes.

I returned in the evening thinking about the relevance of this session in today’s world — of how developing asisstive technology by simulation and survey can help create more valuable results.

Day 2

A few pictures of our co-creators.

Parents dropped me at the venue in the morning.

After a filling breakfast, we initiated the session at 10.00 AM. Kyle informed us that our co-creators would be present today. They are specially abled and we have the opportunity of working together to create a product that helps them in a certain way (no matter how small it may be). We were reminded to be careful of the following points:

• Do not offer help unless they ask for it.
• Talk directly to the person and not the helper.
• Get to know the person and then discuss the disability they face.
• Don’t play with the walking stick/wheel chair that they depend on.

In batches we interacted with 9 groups — some were visually challenged, Deaf, and other challenges. We were able to understand their backgrounds. I was surprised to learn that there were 3 keralites in the group — I inquired of the locality they belonged from. What I observed in all of them is extensive patience with our questions and great positivity despite their challenges.

After lunch, we started to discuss and form groups to create products. Varatha and Bharat invited me to join their team to create a Refreshable Braille Device that beats the cost of the current implementation (priced at $2000). A refreshable braille is a device that changes the projection of points of braille for each different page on the screen — like a Kindle for the visually impaired. We decided to device a Google Cardboard version of VR headset — limited functionality but cheap for quick experience.

Varatha explains how Selvi’s board to write helps her and thus felt inspired to pursue this project. Kyle specially supported us by sharing his views about possible substances to use.

We explored different implementations:

1. Use pistons to project braille points on the device screen according to the input signal. But the force we need to supply would need to be magnetic or hydraulic — challenging to implement at this scale.
2. Use a roller system to move the surface from top to bottom, refreshing the screen accordingly. We could use a clay sheet to hold the balls that we use to indicate each braille point.
3. Use a roller system with a metallic sheet with circular depressions to hold the balls well enough to avoid locking in, and accidental dropping out of the socket

And many other alternatives. When we felt it would take time/ be hard, we reminded ourselves the success of Team Aakaar. These students from NIT Warangal tried to develop engaging shape based games for blind children to experience geometry instead of avoiding it. To learn more about them, please read the article present in the link below:

'SRiXWarangal is nurturing young talent'

The team from the same is as seen in the image below:

That day I returned by suburban train to experience this mode of transportation. On the way I thought about the enthusiasm that Varatha had for this idea and how we could present this tomorrow using cardboard or any other material.

Even without the sound of the kicks, they had the kicks playing the game!

Day 3

Aaron, Varatha and Bharat discussing implementation options

Reached via city bus to TIDEL Park. I like how there are numbers for buses — which can easily be looked up online to check it if will stop at the point we wish to deboard. In Kerala, the conductor shouts out loud the route and the same is written in Malayalam on the front — quite challenging for non-localites to understand. Kerala can learn from Chennai in this matter I suppose.

A short workshop on Design Process was taken in the morning:

• Stage #1: Discover> To identify opportunities to co-create, understand user needs by interacting with them
• Stage #2: Define> Reframe the opportunities
• Stage #3: Develop> Shortlist most effective ideas that benefit those in need of it.
• Stage #4: Deliver> Periodic prototyping to identify risks would help understand potential risks and scope for improvement.

We continued planning till lunch. We decided to build with the following specifics (Figure 4 shows a rough diagram):

• Roller system with styrofoam layer to effectively hold the balls when dropped into the sockets.
• bursh-like structure at other end to remove the balls from the other end, and transport it to input gate via a conveyor belt.

We continued to cross check our ideas with the team from MIT. Inputs from Aaron and Mark helped us understand the implementation practicality. They seemed quite intrigued by our approach of dropping the points from above rather than projecting it up from the surface.

After lunch the presentations continued. Below is the presentation made by our team.

Below is the short yet incomprehensible explanation I provided for the technicality of the product.

On popular request, below I explain in more clarity as to how this works:

There are numerous python packages available that converts textual input to digital braille characters.

These characters have an equivalent braille Unicode which you can correlate to understand which bits of the 6 digit code represent which positions of the braille character as shown in figure 1.

Thus we extract the equivalent unicode (6 digit braille dot value)and pass it to the corresponding pins on the Arduino board.

The corresponding signals are passed to the gates of our device and thus open (1) and close (2) according to the input signal.

First loop we print the last 2 bits of the braille dots, i.e, the bottom row of the braille character. Then we print the middle 2 bits to correspond to the middle row. Finally we print the top 2 bits to correspond to the top row. The process is as illustrated in figure 2.

So to summarize, the control flow is as indicated in the flow chart shown in figure 3.

Braille

(Figure 1) Source: Wikipedia

(Figure 2) Step by step process of representing the ‘w’ character.

(Figure 3) Flow Chart

(Figure 4) Top and Side view of our proposed device

We received good feedback on how we are exploring a new view and must prototype it to see if it is good for production. Kyle explained challenges that the Blind community faces, the Fittle Project and several other points.

We got to see other ideas — from using QR Code to seperate out the clothes that belong to a blind person from the rest, to software application that enables the specially abled ones to seek help. Each team examined the User Journey and specially noted the key highlight points of support to provide for the user.

Overall

I had to leave a little early due to a train at 7.45 PM to Kerala. Looking back, I am grateful that I attended this event and learned from it as much as I could about effective product development that meets user needs by providing the necessary functions. I am so grateful for attending this event.

Thank you Kyle for radiating the positivity and showing what care feels like :)

Resources:

Design Innovation Learning Modules - Modules

Humanistic - Home

I would highly recommend you to attend a Co-Create session and grow!