Museum Eyes

Project Overview

Problem Statement

Museums are inherently visual spaces that often present accessibility challenges for blind and visually impaired visitors. Furthermore, traditional solutions like pre-recorded descriptions or braille text require significant work from museum staff.

Solution

Museum Eyes is a wearable device that serves as a digital museum assistant to help blind people navigate and interpret museum exhibitions. The wearable device interacts with an internal scan of the museum to navigate users, tactile floor patterns to detect exhibits, and AI to generate exhibit descriptions.

Key features include:

Reliable voice navigation of museum
Real-time generation of detailed artwork descriptions
Guided photo-taking using audio cues for optimal image capture

Needfinding Process

Our needfinding process involved extensive research into the challenges faced by visually impaired museum visitors, interviews with accessibility coordinators, and analysis of first-person accounts from blind individuals about their museum experiences.

Research Methodology

Interviews with Fine Arts Center (FAC) staff
Literature review of academic papers on museum accessibility
Analysis of first-person accounts from blind and visually impaired museum visitors

Affinity Diagram

We created an affinity diagram to organize our research findings and identify key themes. The diagram revealed that physical / digital navigation, engagement, and the social experience of museums are the most pressing needs for improving museum accessibility.