Student Design and Research Group

[idresearch]

Hi everyone. I'm an industrial design student at a university that must remain anonymous due to legal formalities. Two fellow design students and I are currently designing a product that will aide deaf athletes in their awareness of changes in gameplay as well as coach/player communication. We, with the permission of alldeaf.com's webmaster, are asking for your help and contribution to our research. ANY information you give is much appreciated.

We are currently working on setting up a brief, sixteen question, online survey from which we can gather statistical information. As soon as that is up and running I will be sure to post it and would very much appreciate your participation.

But for right now, I would just like to say hello. I will be posting more information about our product design in the future. But if you have any questions or comments, feel free!

SURVEY IS UP AND RUNNING!!! Thanks for participating.

-Mike

 

[Gemtun]

Hi everyone. I'm an industrial design student at a university that must remain anonymous due to legal formalities. Two fellow design students and I are currently designing a product that will aide deaf athletes in their awareness of changes in gameplay as well as coach/player communication. We, with the permission of alldeaf.com's webmaster, are asking for your help and contribution to our research. ANY information you give is much appreciated.

We are currently working on setting up a brief, sixteen question, online survey from which we can gather statistical information. As soon as that is up and running I will be sure to post it and would very much appreciate your participation.

But for right now, I would just like to say hello. I will be posting more information about our product design in the future. But if you have any questions or comments, feel free!

-Mike

Sounds awesome. I want to know more about this interesting project!

 

[idresearch]

Meg, thanks for your quick response and interest!

We are a student run design and research team consisting of three university industrial design students. This project began after realizing the need for an improvement in game play communication among hearing impaired athletes. Our goals are to aide and improve awareness of changes in game play, such as fouls, timeouts, player substitutions, etc. Through the research of athletic rules, regulations, and trends among athletes participating in theses sports, we have noticed that many deaf or hearing impaired athletes are not allowed or are banned from hearing aide use during game play. Other times, hearing impaired athletes make a conscious decision against wearing their hearing aides during sporting events from fear of costly damage they may sustain. The sports we are focusing on are ones in which the athlete is made aware of changes in play via whistles and buzzers. Sports such as soccer, football, basketball, etc. all require intense focus on the play at hand. Often times, in these sporting situations, hearing impaired athletes are required to devote some of this focus to visual cues for changes in game play: a referee’s raised hand, crowd reaction, or a stopped clock. We aim at resolving this problem by notifying the player through a stimulus that does not require the player’s active attention, bringing the athlete an immediate awareness of change in game play.


We will be updating this thread constantly as the product develops, designs are finalized, and information becomes publicly presentable.