DBA Design Challenge 2003

Eye Speak / Lewis Moberly

Leisure venues are places of fun and social liberation where communication is enhanced by the music, atmosphere and general environment - but the key pleasurable ingredient of communication can be hampered by the very elements that make such places enjoyable. Noise can drown out speech, body language is open to misinterpretation and universal pictograms are limited in what they can convey. Lewis Moberly have looked at how such symbols can be further developed into a visual language that would facilitate non-verbal communication in noisy environments aided by a wearable communications device.

Some User Issues

• "When I approach the ticket counter and they have a glass panel, I can't understand."
• "Sometimes the loop system is not working." Caroline Appleby
• "Whatever you come up with needs to be very cool and very slick." Matt Brown
• "There are a lot of deaf people out there who want to speak to hearing people but they are too shy." Troi Lee, organiser Deaf Raves.

How Does It Work?

Lewis Moberly have developed an inclusive language of symbols to enhance the ability of those with or without hearing impairments to get about or get together in environments where ambient noise or broadcast sound makes communication difficult. Their product concept is for a small electronic device that fits into the palm or slots into a pocket. Signs, symbols and pictograms can be accessed from a database of categories via the touch screen and arranged in syntax to form sentences. The design team have drawn on existing vocabularies ranging from Makaton to universally recognised signage and added abbreviations, numerals and some new visual concepts. To aid legibility, the onscreen characters are in black and white.