What is my concept?

My concept falls under the collective team domain of designing for "a creative learning initiative to teach colour theory to Year 1 students through active engagement and open interaction techniques."

I took this domain and the first round of user feedback into consideration and decided to focus my individual design direction on contextualising colour for the visually impaired/ colour blind. As my concept currently stands, I aim to achieve this through providing relevant audio and light feedback to a given colour.

I am currrently facilitating colour mixing and drawing as can be seen below:

My original concept aimed to have the users then draw their current emotional state in the centre of the mat. However, I think the interaction scenario became overly complex and user feedback highlighted a desire to draw and create without restrictions.

Thus, I am learning towards faciliating total creative freedom and experimentation with colour and sound. My individual design direction should facilitate the understanding of colour mixing and colour theory both visually and audibly.

What is the ideal finished product?

The ideal finished product is a large scale stand-alone mat that can be incorporated into a year one classroom setting. Users with and without visual impairments should be able to actively engage and benefit from interaction with the system

The mat would be approximately 1.5m in diameter and have a large circular canvas in the centre where the users can draw with their mixed colours and audio. Each colour has an associated audio track which aims to form an objective link between the colour selected and the sound being played (ie blue = running water).

Applying pressure to one of the buckets around the outside of the mat would select that colour. Users can select multiple colours which will mix those colours, and related audio tracks, together. The newly mixed colour can be experimented with on the canvas in the centre of the mat.

Just as the colours mix together (blue + yellow = green), so will the audio (blue audio (running water) + yellow audio (birds chirping) = green audio (leaves rustling)). This acts as an audio equivalent to the colour mixing process and hence forms an audio narrative to pair with the users drawing.

LED lights would also illuminate the paint buckets which are currently selected to clearly represent which colours are currently being mixed together.

Ideally, the finished project would also facilitate collaboration with multiple users so that experimentation and creativity could be explored in a communal environment.

In summary, my individual design direction should allow visually impared and colour blind users to obtain an understanding of colour theory through providing light and audio feedback. Users should then apply this knowledge to draw and express themselves in the centre of the mat.