Developing vision substitution products using computer vision

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is two-fold. The first is to investigate if cutting edge technology can be used to enhance the life for people with visual impairments. The second is to provide a simple example of how the design process can look from the beginning to a finished Hi-Fi prototype. This was achieved by gathering requirements for a product and creating a prototype, This was carried out in three phases. First relevant literature was researched, and the discoveries were distilled into a set of design methods which was used. The second phase is the requirements gathering where the methods chosen in the first phase is used to elicit requirements for the prototype. The third phase is the implementation of said prototype with evaluation. The overarching method used in the requirements gathering is the umbrella approach. In the beginning a very broad perspective is kept which iteratively shrunk until the requirements for the prototype is set. This follows the user centered approach to product design. The functionality which was decided to be prototype was a hand gesture in front of a camera which could select certain areas of the video feed. This part of the image can then be analyzed in different ways, for example, with OCR. The functionality was eventually implemented by tracking different colored stickers placed on the tip of the index finger and thumb. The prototype was unstable which made the results from the user evaluations inconclusive. The results of the thesis were semi-successful. Many different types of functionality were investigated but only superficially. The hand gesture functionality may be feasible from an implementation perspective, some implementation improvements possibilities is provided under discussion. It may also be feasible from a usability perspective; more evaluation needs to be done with a more stable prototype.