Innovating through Inclusive Design Workshop
Hong Kong, 31 August 2008
Team D
Issues
Mandy is a student who has hearing loss. She loves swimming but her hearing aids are not waterproof. Because Mandy can feel the beat of music, she would love to be able to just listen to music or use it as a means to pace herself.
Concept - Smartsuit
The team came up with the smartsuit concept, which would exploit new materials and technological possibilities to integrate a music player and hearing aid into performance swimwear.
The teams' smartsuit comes with a pair of ear buds with a soft seal exterior that are waterproof and Bluetooth enabled and could be used both in and out of the water. The smartsuit is made of solar fabric and has embedded controls sited at the hip which would allow the wearer to download and listen to their playlist through sound or vibration alone. They could adjust the volume or switch between sound and speedometer mode. In swimming mode there would be a further choice between relaxed, fast or real workout mode while listening mode could be adjusted to normal hearing mode or slow down mode.
A motion sensor would provide a power source and there would be an iPod dock incorporated in the zip. The team envisaged that the suit would retail for $149 US and have 1GB of memory.
The team created male and female prototypes that were modelled by Mandy and Daniel, a product designer from VYech.
