The Sand Box is a simple (or ancient) solution to enable people with speaking difficulties to communicate with others. Sand was chosen as a medium because it is reusable; just scribble what you want to say in the sand with the stylus; show it to the intended person; bury the text with more sand then scribble again. Click on image to enlarge
5 comments:
Hi Wai,
I'm a first year Industrial Design student in UTM and hope to learn from you. I just want to ask if the device is suitable to be used in a windy place? Do you think that consumer will prefer it than to use the conventional pen and paper or the more modern devices like PDA?
Hello Yew Weng,
Yes it will be a problem at windy place. Pen and paper is of course a valid solution but I think we will end up will a lot of paper just in one conversation which is quite wasting. PDA is good of course but what happens if the battery is dead and you are in an emergency? Also this is meant to be a $cheap$ solution which is why I chose sand. Another good solution is a Pocket Etch-a-Sketch.
(Sorry for the previous comment, I press the "enter" key and messed up!)
What about the good ol' magna doodle?
The only flaw of magna doodle, as I remember it, was the fact that the screen was a dull gray, making it hard to read if the text is not well written.
Perhaps you could come up with a magna doodle version, featuring a soft back light powered by a solar battery : This way the text would be black on white, you'd waste no paper, and waste no energy! :)
I still remember a toy I had when I was little. It was called a Magic Slate, or something like that, and the way it worked was it was a layer of black paint or ink or something over a colorful surface, like this:
---plastic membrane---
black paint
---plastic membrane---
colorful surface
-------backboard-------
You'd take a very dull stylus to doodle on it, and when you were done, you used a squeegee-like scraper to flatten the paint out again.
Something similar, but with just a plain white surface instead of one with so many colors, might work well. It'd solve the wind issue, and no batteries are required!
Just a thought.
-Sarah N.
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