<aside> 👩🏻‍💻 Last project that I and my team did in Apple Developer Academy.

The team consist of 5 people and my role is as the UI/UX Designer. The project took place for 3 months, from end of September 2019 until early January 2020. We also had the opportunity to join the Apple Entrepreneur Camp in October 2020 with this project.

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Big Idea

Hearing Impaired

Essential Question

How to help people with hearing impairment communicate?

Challenge

Help people with hearing impairment communicate and understand audio information.

Research

There are a total of 6.234.380 Indonesian citizens above ten years old with hearing impairment (depkes.go.id, 2015). We were fortunate enough to be able to work directly with the community and gained some insights into the barriers they faced. From research and interview, we found that:

• People with hearing impairment have language limitations; they prefer to communicate using sign language than speaking directly or writing. However, many people do not understand sign language, so they have an obstacle in social interaction. They can't communicate seamlessly.
• It is hard for them to get access to visual information in public places because most information is in audio format, so they have to ask others. Same as in the class, they struggle in understanding what the lecturer says, so they rely on their hearing friends to keep up with the lessons.

Synthesis

Limitations in listening and speaking cause Hearing Impaired people to have difficulty in communicating, especially with Hearing people. They feel more comfortable communicating using sign language because it can convey expressions, but many people do not understand sign language. In addition, some people often speak too fast, making it difficult for Hearing Impaired people to read the lips movements. Hearing Impaired people also cannot hear public communication, so they have to ask other people around them. Therefore, we need a tool that can help Hearing Impaired people and Hearing people communicate effectively, and also help Hearing Impaired people know and get access to public information.

Hence, we want to create an app that can help the Hearing Impaired to understand audio information and help them to communicate easily with Hearing people.

Process

The project started with ideation and research, me and team discussed for several days to decide which problem we want to solve. Then the choice went to Hearing Impaired, which is based on my personal experience where I encountered a hard time communicating with Hearing Impaired people during an event.

From there, we started to reach out to some communities, and finally, we were able to interview them to gain more insights and validate the problem that we found directly to them.

Next, we started to define the solution and created the app design, from wireframe into hi-fi design with prototype.

We got the chance to do user testing on our app idea and design. Fortunately, we received positive feedback, so after doing iteration and finalizing the design, we started the development process of the app.

Lastly, we did a user testing session again for the developed app, and we did iterations and improvements to the app based on the result.