Talking Tiles

Do people with hearing impairments ever get tired of listening?

• Individual project

• 2020: 5 months

• Part of Msc Design for Interaction at Delft University of Technology

• Design brief: Design something that has a specific effect on someone in a certain way.

• Activities: Interviews, observations, academic research, design goal, interaction vision, iterative prototyping, evaluation

Context

Listening can be tiring, especially when you are hearing impaired and in a situation where multiple people are speaking simultaneously. It can lead to listening fatigue, which makes you feel exhausted and even less able to focus on listening.

Solution

Talking Tiles is a package with sixteen different icons designed to allow you to calm down and energise in a quiet space while remaining involved with your friends. Your friends use these icons to summarise the conversation you miss while leaving to go on your listening break. They flip an icon at each new subject of the conversation to mark its topic. When you return, your friends bring you up to date, using the icons to jag their memory.