Designing a mobile interface for a deaf user
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
Location:
P1 OPINNÄYTTEET D 2018 Tambay
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Authors
Date
2018
Department
Major/Subject
New Media Design and Production
Mcode
Degree programme
New Media
Language
en
Pages
79+18
Series
Abstract
My MA thesis is a collaborative research and design project about designing a mobile application to bridge the communication gap between Deaf people and healthcare professionals in South Africa. It explores health knowledge transfer problems faced by the Deaf community during a health consultation and aims to solve them by the means of a mobile application interface designed to aid communication. Healthcare, a basic human right, is violated when healthcare professionals don't find the means to communicate health information to Deaf people in a medium that they understand. This communication problem is due to a language barrier between the Deaf and the hearing world. A Deaf person uses sign language as his or her primary form of communication, yet there is a lack of sign language interpreters at healthcare centers. Sign language is the first language of Deaf people because of which a number of Deaf communities all over the world are only able to use a very basic level of written or spoken language. Moreover, medical information is complex and the factors mentioned above make it difficult to transfer health knowledge between healthcare professionals and Deaf patients, leading to poor health conditions of the latter. In order to solve this problem, my thesis explores ways of transferring medical knowledge using visual methods of communication as opposed to text based communication, via a mobile application. Since health knowledge is a vast topic, for my project I focus on only one medical condition, Diabetes type 2. This choice is determined by the fact that Diabetes is a lifelong condition that requires regular hospital visits and timely communication and treatment. A core aspect of my research is finding ways to design interactive interfaces that better suit the requirements of the Deaf user than they do at present, using a process of benchmarking, co-creation, interviews and usability testing. My project documents insights from desk and field research which are used to design and test a prototype of the mobile application with Deaf users in South Africa.Description
Supervisor
Reunanen, MarkkuThesis advisor
Chininthorn, PrangnatDiehl, Jan-Carel
Keywords
interaction design, deaf user, mobile, accesibility, interface, co-creation