Sound Sparks is a project I designed for my University Honours project at the University of Dundee studying BSc Digital Interaction Design. It is a minimalistic and contemporary dementia based designed audio player that uses RFID and Arduino to play sounds when a laser cut acrylic graphic is placed on the player. This project was featured in the local paper and you can find out more about my university course here - https://www.dundee.ac.uk/study/ug/digital-interaction-design/

I started off by searching the market to see if there was any existing products on Dementia, to see what other designers have done and to find gaps in the market, which there was. I knew there was an opening and decided to interview doctors, healthcare professionals, care home workers and families who are affected by this condition as part of my user research. I also made up surveys to find out what is best to retrieve memories as that was what was coming up a lot in my interviews, that people wanted a product that sparked a person's former self again. Sound came out on top as the biggest memory retriever and thus I started to design a minimalistic player for an elderly, dementia sufferer so that they can use with little help or none.

I studied existing audio players and old ones as it was for mainly the older generation I wanted it to have a feel of a vintage record player, thats where my tags came in. Modern in look but a similar interaction created to generate sound on the player, by playing on the circular top of the audio player. For the main design, I sketched and prototyped in low and high fidelity with cardboard and MDF wood until I got the right product. I user tested all the prototypes with people to find the best solution. I then created the winning idea in birch wood and plastic making use of the wood work shop and a laser cutter. I learned a vast amount of product design during this process.

For the actual inside of the player was an Arduino, speaker, MP3 card (with stored sound memories of the client I based it on) and multiple wires. I coded this and wired it all up inside the player. This is my favourite design I have made as the satisfaction of seeing it working was amazing. I took this project to New Designers Exhibition in London in 2014, where it got a fantastic reception.