Change the environment, not the person.
Change the environment, not the body.
—Rosemary
The goal of the project was not to solve everyone's problems. The goal was to help take the problem out of the hands of the teacher and to empower the students to excel further.
Target Audience
Hard of Hearing
The students want to connect better with the class, and contribute more to the discussion.
Source: CDC
Anywhere from 25 to 35% of children with unilateral hearing loss are at risk of failing at least one grade level.
Visually Impaired
The Primary goal is to be able to take notes on an application that can then be read back without outside support.
Source: CYP
7 out of 10 students with a vision impairment attend mainstream schools.
Secondary Users
Dyslexic
Dyslexic: A disorder that involve difficulty interpreting letters, and other symbols, but that do not affect general intelligence.
Solution:
Provide a typeface that has been designed to be easily read; the Dyslexie typeface. Every letter is uniquely shaped, eliminating the common reading errors of dyslexia.
Dyslexie
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Colorblind
Affected with partial or total inability to distinguish one or more chromatic colors.
Solution:
We chose a color palette that is least affected by the different types of color blindness.
Normal
Protanopia
Deuteranopia
Tritanopia
Color Palette
This is how the application might look to a student who has a form of color blindness. Red-green color-blindness effects 95% of the color blind community, and the other two are less common. The application includes the ability increase contrast to help where the colors might fall short.
User Journey Map
High Contrast Icons
High contrast icons help those students who are visually impaired see them. There are also optional icon labels that make the application easier to use for screen-readers.
Note taking Process
Adding Note
Start Recording
Real Time Transcribing
Highlighting
Snap to Grid
Real Time Transcribing
The application listens to what is being said, and then in real time transcribes that onto the application. The microphone pulses at the bottom and the wave at the top slowly moves to the sounds. This is a visual representation to confirm to the student that the application is listening.
Motion Gestures
Features like highlighting are snap-to-grid to create quick, easy interactions for an application that is fast moving.
Note taking Tools
Search Notes
Take a Picture
Add to Notes
Add a tag
Nested Menu
Whiteboard Photographs
The sidekick application can photograph a whiteboard, then increase the contrast and take out the background to add a cleaned up image to the notes. The wave stays consistent at the top to verify notes are still being taken.
Additional Features
Settings Page
Folder Structure
AI Chatbot
On-boarding
Share & Delete
On-boarding
Eases into it
The on-boarding process slowly changes the application to better suit the needs of the student. It will ask about type size, contrast, color, sound-sensitivity, and typeface. The student can adjust them as they feel necessary.
More Changes
If a feature is overlooked, the student can make additional changes on the profile page.
AI Chatbot
If there are any questions, the student can click on the message icon and talk to an AI Chatbot. This features slightly adjusts the app as needed. It can answer questions like where things are, search for keywords in notes, and give feedback to the designers, so we can create new features for the application in the future.
Potential Extension
Think Bigger
Originally a phone application, I started to think about how this application might expand into a desktop or ipad application.
Make a difference
A larger screen gave me the opportunity to add more features and more flexibility with size of the elements.
