TouchNav
A concept for a navigation app that allows the user to navigate and explore the spaces around them without having to look at a screen using haptic feedback.
Year: 2024
Design: Diego Muñoz, Dunni Fadeyi, Gonzalo Morales, Ruta Czaplinska, Vishal Mehta
Discipline: Human Centred Design, Human Computer Interface (HCI)
My contributions include ideation, storyboarding, storytelling & graphic design.
Project designed as part of MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering | Royal College of Art & Imperial College London
Our current relationship with technology almost exclusively relies on audiovisual outputs to understand what the machines we interact with are trying to tell us. Beyond the obvious drawbacks, this presents for the visually and hearing-impaired, this form of communication poses particularly serious risks when we are on the go: focusing on screens as we walk on the streets can lead to accidents and theft — in London, a phone is stolen every 6 minutes, most often snatched from the user's hands as they stare at their screens off-guard. We may feel safer turning off the screen and using a pair of headphones instead when moving around the city, but this can further isolate us from our surroundings, posing additional risks.
Here's a video of our prototype.
To address this, we designed TouchNav — a navigation app concept that uses advanced haptic feedback actuators built into smartphones. By tuning the frequency, intensity, and sharpness of the vibrations, we can create distinct tactile signals. With this, you can keep the phone in your pocket as you navigate the city! Freeing your visual and auditory senses so you can enjoy your surroundings. It works by making the phone screen respond through haptics, changing vibration patterns based on whether the pixel under the user’s finger is light or dark, and reacting differently when the finger touches an interactive control.
Interaction with the map
Interaction with the compass
This project was a response to the brief: "How will we interact with machines of the future?" at the Imperial College Design Society Makeathon sponsored by Huawei.
When we think about the future, we imagine a world in which our interactions with machines feel natural and seamless, thus mimicking the real-world interactions we experience as three-dimensional, physical beings.
Imperial College DesSoc Makeathon Team (From left to right) Dunni Fadeyi, Ruta Czaplinska, Vishal Mehta, Gonzalo Morales, Diego Muñoz.