Health App for Tanvas

for APS111: Engineering Strategies & Practice I

with Shahzeb Ahmed, Jihoon Chung, Julie Ha, Yuchen Jiang, and Victoria Vastis

from September 2018 to December 2018

We explored the applications of TanvasTouch® surface haptics, then applied it to design a way to convey physical activity information in the Health app for visually impaired users.

Teamwork Strategy

We created a team charter to agree on our goals & measures of success, people & responsibilities, strengths & skills, challenges, personal meaning, ways of working together, and contingencies. Since we are all first-year engineering students, we were equally new to this design process but those of us who had more prior leadership experience took on the role of Leader.

Design Process

Define the problem

We recognized that Tanvas needed a use of their haptic technology and they want to improve the touch screen user experience for people with physical impairment. Regular touch screen apps for the blind featured buttons taking up large areas of the screen which are locatable by their position relative to the edge of the device and swiping, along with screen readers to verbalize information. This function will take existing physical activity data processed into meaningful information, including steps walked, calories burned, and duration and intensity of physical exercise over the past time range specified by the user from second to year(s), and convey it without visual or audio output from the app.

Detail the requirements

We decided that the function of the design is to transfer a user's step data from the app to the user without audio or visual output. The objectives were to provide users the flexibility to choose how their data is represented, have the time interval over which data is shown be selectable, easy-to-learn, and easy-to-operate. The constraints (starting with the most important) were the design must accommodate visually impaired users, ensure privacy of user data, and have distinguishable features. The service environment of the design is the physical phone or tablet and the virtual Health app. The stakeholders to consider were the government, hospitals and health agencies, and competitive smart-device brands.

Generate alternative designs

We brainstormed and use various ideation techniques to generate many ideas, then used multi-voting and a morph chart to select three alternative designs shown below. Each design was evaluated against the objectives using metrics, and one final design was selected.

Evaluate the final design

The first design was selected and prototyped using salt on paper to demonstrate the feasibility of friction as a non-visual guide. If implemented, measures of success in accessibility could include the WCAG2 and Accessibility Developer Tools, user response could be collected from app store ratings and focus groups, and design performance could be measured using an app latency calculator.