Had a great phone conversation with a visually impaired man named Vincent Martin this past Friday.  With his outstanding enthusiasm and willingness to aid me in my project, I was able to decide on the direction that I want to pursue. Vincent was a 3-time paralympian, so fitness is very important to him. He confirmed some of my research by lamenting about the lack of accessibility to exercise for the visually impaired and the lack of independence - even if one is able to exercise.  Things that he mentioned were the need for ways to SHOW blind folks how to properly exercise and loved the idea of a "lane-keeping" device.  So I went from there.

From that talk I was able to come up with a few, so-so ideas. I presented them this morning but I am not going to post them until I have a full set of concepts, complete with sketches.  Look for them soon.

Need a focus...

Met with Jon Sanford today, who is the director of the Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (CATEA) here are Tech.  He is also a prof. in the ID dept. We talked a little bit about the visually impaired population, but more importantly, he gave me a better idea of how I should approach this problem. I guess I was under the impression that there have been some fully-solved problems for blind people, but apparently every "solution" that is in place could use a lot more work. So that's good for me, but bad for the visually impaired population.

He also gave me some great contacts at the VA Hospital and at RERC, so I am currently writing all kinds of emails.

So now... i just need to decide on a project focus!

Project 2

Starting a new studio project for Claudia.  This one is entitled Lightness... make what you will of that, because I'm still figuring it out too.  Basically, though, I'm focusing on designing a product for the visually impaired population. The product also has to utilize metal wires in some key role.  Thats all for now.