We thought that if we found a way to make a visual view tactile, we would give blind people the chance to appreciate a landscape in a car trip.

This is why we created Feel the View: a device that through 255 levels of vibrations on the car window translates a visual landscape into one you can experience by touch.

A built-in camera takes a picture of the view that is then converted into a grey scale image. Every shade of grey is translated into a vibration of different intensity on the car window, allowing the blind to visualize the landscape. Moreover, an integrated vocal assistant connected to the car’s audio system, by means of an online AI, will help them put the image into context.

The association of a mobile device and a car gave the visually impaired people a sufficient level of independency that was our initial aim.

It took us over seven months of tests and trials to reach the result we were looking for.

Vibrations seemed to be the most suitable solution for the kind of approach we were pursuing. The association of the intensity of vibrations to the shades of grey was another topic discussed at length.

Testing stage was a critical part of the project, as we wanted to put the device to a significant trial by letting visually impaired people try it and give us a totally honest and unbiased feedback. We gathered what we believe were very positive inputs, that, together with the critical feedbacks, helped us optimize the device to a very satisfactory level.

We finally came up with what we believed was the best solution, and designed the prototype of the device according to the tests’ feedbacks.

This technology, further evolved and developed, might become a tool to distribute across organizations and associations that directly deal with visually impaired people.

This project is still at prototype stage, therefore there are no sales objectives or relevant data in this respect.

The film was published on April 30th 2018. In just 48 hours, it was covered by over 250 international media publications, reaching over 45 million earned impressions worldwide. On zero media budget.

The brand perception scored a significant uplift: we only received positive feedbacks on social media and all digital media where the film was posted, praising the brand for the initiative and encouraging us to go further.

We have no long-term outcomes as the project was released less than a week before the date of this document. Yet, the new haptic language developed in this project opens the chance to our brand and other developers to create devices that will help the visually impaired to live a better life.

100% blind people can’t enjoy the visual part of a trip. We interviewed a number of people who cannot see and they told us that they always look for different things to do in a car, because they can never enjoy the landscape, like everyone else.

We wanted to make car windows a doorway to enjoy the view for those who cannot see. We discovered that blind people primarily feel the world through touch. We partnered up with a start-up to define the right technical solution and to develop the most appropriate device to translate images into a detectable code. We discovered that vibrations could be an easily understandable solution, to be immediately applied onto a car window and used during trips, autonomously.

And so we used the principle of vibration to build a portable prototype that could let the blind experience the shape of images outside their car window.

Situation

One of the things that make road trips great is being able to sit back and enjoy the view out of the car window. All the different passing landscapes that sometimes are breathtaking.

Brief

Open the pleasure of car trips to everybody, even and especially those with disabilities.

Objectives

The aim of our project is to open a new level of communication for visually impaired people developing a new innovative device that is: portable, intuitive and compact.

An innovation that today is designed to be used inside cars, but tomorrow could be implemented in schools and institutions for blind people as a tool that could be used in multiple ways.

Also, our goal is to involve blind people as well as those who have lost sight in their older years.