Ph.D. Research
Lusha`s ph.d. research
ENHANCING THE TRAVEL EXPERIENCES OF PEOPLE WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENTS THROUGH APPLICATION DESIGN
1.1 Personal Motivation
There is a specific personal background to this research. I was raised by my grandparents in their home in mainland China. My grandfather was a renowned professor of ophthalmology, specialising in ocular fundus diseases. I witnessed hundreds of patients making a special trip to my grandfather’s home and I continually observed the profound appreciation expressed by his patients after their vision had been restored. It made me realise how critical the faculty of sight is to everyone, and it raised my awareness of the suffering faced by those people with visual impairments.
Having graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a Master degree in Industrial and Interaction Design, I was previously an industrial designer, creating consumer products for companies such as Polycom and Belkin at Pip Tompkins Studio in Los Angeles. On a business trip to the CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas, I encountered hundreds of electronic products which were being presented at the show. It made me realise that designers have to invest considerable effort into designing products to enable them to enhance their quality of life. However, only a relatively small number of products are designed specifically for people with visual impairments. Consequently, this motivated me to assess the needs of people with visual impairments with a view to bringing enjoyment and fulfilment to them. This would also address the issue of the reduced quality of life they currently have compared with sighted individuals. To enhance the iOS applications to be developed, which will be referred to as ‘apps’ in this study, I decided to investigate the psychology related to visual impairments.
I became interested in this specific area of travelling from my past experience in designing a digital traveling website based on Google Night Walk (with Frog Design in New York City).
The key research question
How can the travel experience of people with visual impairments be enhanced through a mobile application?
My first visually impaired interviewee in Los Angeles :)
“When I traveled to the suburbs, my friend only told me that there was a forest, waterfall and river in front of me. That’s boring and nonsense. ”
“Yes, I really want to travel abroad by myself. I have never tried it before. No matter how difficult or what the result is, I would like to have this experience at least once.”
Some of the experts involved in this project are shown in the following.
User Journey
The software be used for this Ph.D project.
This research was a great way for me to look at a product from not only a researcher or designer's point of view, but from a developer's as well. I have worked closely with mobile developers before in my previous projects, but it was a whole new ball game to develop my design into an app from scratch that actually dive into hybrid app, Swift, and Xcode.
Conducting user testing
Final App Design
“Audio description” (AD) was critical for my project because I wanted to make the travel app similar to a local companion for the visually impaired. The American Council of the Blind (2003) stated that audio descriptions can offer the visually impaired a verbal description of the visual matter to help them to access information and knowledge while travelling. The following is one of the sample of audio description in this app. Please play and check.
With their permissions, the following is one video clip from the user testing.
Enabled VoiceOver function on iPhone to use the app.
