Exploring Inclusivity in Patient-Centered Health Care | Week of 11/2

Reflection

After trying to figure out what form, scale, and outputs would work best for the general visitors of UPMC, I needed to iterate and the most enticing type of installation for people to enter and for group of people to work with at the same time. This will also help me decide how exactly I want the sound to be produced and whether it’s goal is to be fairly static or not. The best way for me to think about the structure of this is it being dependent on sound, so some of the idea I’ve been drawn to is a form that mimics what a sound wave would look like. What occurred to me is that based on the curves indentions of a sound wave, I could depict the frequency and fidelity of the sound or music in that way. For instance, the closer that you approach the actual installation the louder it will get but as you engage with the inside of it more, you will begin to hear certain parts and aspects of the sound more. So essentially the sound clarity is determined off of the distance from the installation and the interaction within it. The haptic feedback will work very similarly than sound so that the closer you get a more intense and refined the “virtual touch” will feel. An affordance that haptics and sound also bring is that is gives a non intrusive way for visitors to engaged the installation at their own pace and curiosity.

However, despite the useful insight that I gained from my interation process, there’s still an important piece missing — making sure that the form of my installation fits within the lobby space coordinates. I’m assuming the lobby has large, widespread space due to it’s general use, but I have to take into account the objects and obstacle that are around that could cause problems. I don’t what this to worsen the way-finding for visitors, especially considering that most are visually impaired. So some of the next steps are to generate a similar idea that works perfectly within the space. On top of this, my professor and I had a conversation about how I can make the installation more of a interactive, piece that could promote the understanding of others. To do this, I want to step back from making the installation black and white, and giving the visitors a chance who are visually impaired to visualize what color they think the sound and touch represents. This way it gives the user an extra step in the process to enjoy and it give people who are visually paired a chance to gain insight on how a particular demographic might think. This ideally would be a colorful collage that changes depending on the music that changes.