Notice Me — Giving a voice to inclusivity

SCAD Startup 2020 1st Place Winner

Role: Service Designer + Researcher + Visual & Branding Designer

Duration: 1 week design sprint

Overview: Giving a Voice - This was the theme for 2020’s SCAD StartUp competition, a yearly event where participants only have 1 week to research, design, and pitch the concepts to professional industry leaders from Google, IBM, Adobe, etc. Our team won 1st place out of 40 teams.

The Problem

People, especially the deaf and the hard of hearing, often struggle to catch announcements in public places

Research

We interviewed 2 people and posted a survey online to understand our users. Besides, we contacted the coordinator of deaf services in SCAD. He gave us access to the SCAD students who are deaf and hard of hearing.

1 Interpreter
7 People who are Hard of Hearing

Insights

Deaf and hard of hearing community lack independence in the public space

People get more anxious when they don’t know what’s going on

Requesting for assistance is a burden, it ties them to other groups and makes their process slower

In games and festivals, they want aids to enjoy the equal and full experience

We want to empower people to be more independent
in facing real-time challenges

Home

Results with confident level

Customisable notification

How does it work?

Frequency-based Speech recognition
+
AI Machine Learning Technology 

This system can distinguish if the sound is an actual voice or a voice played through a speaker based on the frequency.  

Through machine learning, this system will catch the keywords and compare them with our database to increase accuracy. Since then, our app is able to prioritise announcements that are essential to our users and provide a personalised experience.

User Cases #2

When you are at a sports stadium... 

User Cases #1

When you are waiting for a train... 

User Cases #3

When you are traveling internationally…

Features

Geo-location

Option to only be notified of announcements at a certain location.

Customisable Notifications

Enable alerts through notification, flashlight, vibration, or all of the above.

Language Translation

Translate when it picks up announcements from in a different language.