HELLO

Welcome to my UX Design Portfolio. I am a London-based UX designer with a background in Computing. I also mentor fellow designers and I love to speak about design.


LINKEDIN.RESUME.BEHANCE.

PROJECT

UX OF READING II – READING EXPERIENCES OF DEAFBLIND STUDENTS

  • Timeline: 1 Week
  • Brief: Design an experience that reveals what happens when we read.
  • Research Method Literature Review & Prototype
  • Team Members: Cat Achieng, Yitong Han (Giada), Huijie Xiong (Rikkie)
  • Key Deliverables: Prototype

Try to imagine being a Deafblind student who attends a regular sighted university. These individuals are a unique demographic with exceptional communication abilities and preferences, with a multitude of challenges that impact their academic, social, and emotional development (Chen, 2004; Vervloed, van Dijk, Knoors, & van Dijk, 2006). 

 

Methods of Reading

Just like sighted people, Deafblind individuals need opportunities to explore, create, question, share, and stimulate their senses on all levels; academically, linguistically, socially, emotionally, and physically. These opportunities allow them to be educated and learn about their surroundings and interact with others who are sighted or non-sighted (Wolsey, 2017). 

Methods Of Communication

PROTOTYPE

EXERCISE 

As a team, we designed an exercise that would allow others to try and understand how it feels to try and understand text when you are a deafblind student. This exercise was designed with good intent and our main goal was for everyone to develop deeper empathy for students who deafblind.

 

Participants were asked to pair up and take turns in trying to communicate with each other using various communication methods.

Prototype Exercise Instructions. Credit: Yintong (Giada) H.

 Guide Cards. Credit: Yintong (Giada) H.

OUTCOMES

FEEDBACK

 This project was designed and carried out with the intent of doing good for the society, however during the presentation that intent was completely misunderstood and not well received. This was as a result of my team mates and I using the wrong choice words and body language.   

As a team we failed to pay attention to the ethics during the designing process of this project and this was completely unacceptable given the sensitivity of our topic.  

REFERENCES

  • Azenkot, S., et al., (2011). Enhancing independence and safety for blind and deaf-blind public transit riders. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems (pp. 3247-3256).

  • Busselle, R., & Bilandzic, H., (2008). Fictionality and perceived realism in experiencing stories: A model of narrative comprehension and engagement. Communication Theory, 18(2), pp. 255–280.

  • Chen, D., (2004). Young children who are deaf-blind: Implications for professionals in deaf and hard of hearing services. Volta Review, 104(4), pp. 273-284. 

  • Choudhary, T., Kulkarni, S., and Reddy, P., (2015). A Braille-based mobile communication and translation glove for deaf-blind people. In 2015 International Conference on Pervasive Computing (ICPC), pp. 1-4.

  • Deafblind, (2020). Living with deafblindness. [Online] Deafblind, UK. Available from: https://deafblind.org.uk/information-advice/living-with-deafblindness/ [Accessed 15 December 2020] 

  • Hamby, A., Brinberg, D., & Jaccard, J. (2016). A conceptual framework of narrative persuasion. Journal of Media Psychology, 30(3), pp. 113–124.

  • Wolsey, J.-L. A. (2017) ‘Perspectives and experiences of Deafblind college students’, The Qualitative Report, (8), p. 2066. [online] Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.507012505&site=eds-live (Accessed: 15 December 2020).