11/9/19

User Testing

Today, Colin, Nathan, Maia, and I (Meg was at an origami convention!) trekked out to MIT to interview some users! We’re talking to the Visually Impaired and Blind User Group (VIBUG) and we wanted to get some feedback about our printer design. Parking in Cambridge was an adventure, but we got there on time and got to talk to some very cool people! We brought an interface prototype for the users to play with as well as a braille font sizing sheet.

In general, people were pretty excited about our idea, which was super encouraging! Issues with existing braille printers include their weight (heavy!!), their cost (expensive!!), and their speed (super slow!!). We’re going to aim to fix all of those problems with our design. Additionally, some of the users mentioned contracted braille, which is a much more common form of braille. Unfortunately, implementing it would be a lot more work on the software side, so we’ll see if that ends up happening.