Design a smart watch for blind.

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Design a smart watch for blind.

Asked at Google over a year ago

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Product Design category

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Anshika Srivastava · Answer 1 · 2023-08-07T20:47:29+0000

Clarifying questions
1. Is there a specific objective in targeting the blind people ?
2. What's a smart watch ?
3. Assumption : smart watch connects with the smart phone

Goal : To help blind people lead an independent life.

User Groups :
1. Blind working people
2. Blind non-working at home people

Select user group : We'll be selecting the first group as it can cover both, at home and office updates

Pain points :
1. Correct route to office and back, and other navigation option to diff. places
2. Tripping over small obstacles while independently going out
3. Log and reminders of medicines taken or other medical assistance throught out the day
4. Exercises and daily health routines logs and updates
5. ToDo logs and reminders

Prioritizing pain points :

2. users should be intimated before hand in case of any kind of obstruction in their path, and should also have an overview of the route they are taking.
3. Throughout the day, log of medicines and activities should be maintained

These 2 we'll be prioritizing,
1. is already taken care of google maps etc., for 4 & 5 also, multiple apps exist

Solutions :
For point 2:
a. Voice based navigation support, with guidance about the route, obstructions nearby etc.
b. Alert manager, that should detect a free fall or accidents and should intimate the closed ones immediately by auto sending location. Manual option too to trigger an emergency
c. Before heading out, an update on weather conditions, political conditions outside

For point 3:
a. Logs of daily medicines and an option to set reminders to take them, based on voice support. Based on logs, auto set reminders. The reminders should keep in mind of the working hours and adjust the alerting volume automatically
b. Reminders of important tasks to be done or scheduled throughout the day in office.
c. Notes feature, that auto save the basic details of a person they meet in office based on gestures like waving hands, shaking hands with someone or just voice recognition. Once these gestures are detected, they can prompt users, if they want to save some details about the person they met. This will help them keep a log of their daily meets which they can review back home.

Prioritizing solutions :
For point 2: we'll be picking a and b, giving a priority on health and safety. point 3 can be identified by friends and families or general regular news updates

For point 3: we'll be picking a and c, giving health and safety again the priority. point c, will ease their work life. point b can already be done via google calendar updates on smart watch

Note: Here we've subtly painted an objective to keep health and safety of users their top priority

sowjanya yaddanapudi · Answer 2 · 2021-11-18T07:02:44+0000

Clarifying scope

1. What’s my role in building the smart watch for visually impaired, Am I an OEM or a google PM?

2. Are there any budget constraints for building this watch?

3. Are there any market constraints or can I assume to launch it in united states?

Assumptions:

You are the google PM building a smart watch for blind with no budget and market constraints and yes the device connects to the smart phone.

Goal : Build a smart watch for the visually impaired which helps them to be self-able when the care takers are not around.

Users :

1. Mildly blind

2. Partially blind

3. Completely blind

I would like to focus on the completely blind as that will help the other two user segments also benefit from the product being built.

What are the needs of the smart watch for the blind?

Needs	Primary Need
Being able to look around and helping them identify the person, memorize if the user met this person and helping them with the person and object identification	Yes
Being able to help them navigate, notify them during obstacles, like when the visually impaired is walking, notify them if there is a wall/ person ahead.	Yes
Help them with the people’s expression when they are talking to people.	Yes

I would like to build a MVP and focus on helping the visually impaired to be able to navigate and identify the obstacle ahead and communicate that to the user.

Solutions

Solution	Impact	Effort	Pros & Con’s Trade-Off’s
A smart cane with a sensor built which helps detect the objects ahead and generates a sensor when the object is ahead. We will use vibration and the vibration increases as the user is navigating very close to the obstacle.	Medium	low	Pro’s Cost to build is low Con’s Identifies the obstacle but doesn’t help identify the object It’s not a wearable device and hence can or might be treated as an additional overhead to carry
Smart glasses with camera and sensors, camera identifies the object and lets the user know about it via voice signals and the sensor estimates how far the object is and translates that as well into a voice signal	High	Medium	Cannot be used while playing or doing any physical activity The device is not waterproof as sensors and cameras do not work in water
Drone bot which acts like an assistant to the user	High	High	Expensive and longer time to market

I would recommend Smart glasses and the solution is particularly scalable to identifying individuals and objects, Individual’s data can be stored when met first time and retrieved by searching through the user social graph built and objects can be identified leveraging Google’s image search.

Metrics for measuring the success

1. No. of devices purchases

2. No. of users using the device

3. No. of times the device was able to locate and identify an object

Counter metrics

1. No. of users who stopped using the device

2. No. of times the device failed to identify an object