Seeme
“See” your social behavior through a non-visual mirror.
WHAT
“SEEME” is a social educational mobile app to help young blind people improve their non-verbal communication skills.
HOW
The app helps blind users to self-check their social behaviors in a non-visual way. The system contains facial/gesture detection and voice assistant.
WHY
Blind students in China have certain difficulties in conveying appropriate gestural or other non-verbal messages to sighted partners in a conversation, which, leads to misunderstandings. As a result, they often loss self-confidence of their social performance.
Individual project / 4 months
UX design / User research
Oct 2019, Beijing
intro
How could we provide a non-visual way to help young blind people improve their social skills and be more confident in their future social performance?
context
Young blind people in China are socially excluded in multiple ways.
Special education schools
Less interaction with majority
Limited information resources
The living challenges that a blind juvenile would face in China.
empathy
How could blindness affect social interactions?
My research process:
* All videos and photos were published with the permission from participants.
Some pictures are processed to be blurred to protect personal privacy.
01 Shadowing
I spent a day with a senior student (who had lost his vision since birth) and had a short interview with him.
"I would like to talk with sighted people, but it can be a great challenge for me"
Some uncommon behaviours from blind student
02 Blindfolded test
To experience the sentiment of talking in complete darkness, I planned a blindfolded test among college students.
People became more nervous when they can't see others
03 Observation
Later, I organized face-to-face conversations between blind people and blind person&sighted person.
blind person & blind person
Some social behaviours from different blind students
blind person & sighted person
"His smile sometimes can cause confusion for me."
Jia (22yr), college student
"I would like to know whether my facial expressions look silly?"
Mei (22yr), who lost her vision at 6 years old
Key insights:
Blind students care much about their self-performance in social communications, like whether they have conveyed appropriate information to their sighted partners in the conversation.
define
Blind student lack non-verbal communication skills which leads to ineffective communication with sighted people.
Why non-verbal communication skills are important?
Nearly 65% of all human interpersonal communications happen through non-verbal communication signals.
What causes blind students lack non-verbal communication skills?
Loss visual inputs for learning social skills
Lack education of social skills at school
Unconfident about
self-performance
Lack interactions with sighted people
final results
Introducing "Seeme"
The “Seeme” concept allows blind students to self-check their social behavior through a non-visual mirror.
Meanwhile, I created a side feature that the blind users can get a sound emoji after scanning their smile.
They can share it as another expression of their emotions in online chatting.
