Preview of product range developed by Tactopus

Research & Discovery

In 2015, through a summer internship, I found myself in a small room at
Xavier's Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged in Mumbai,
experimenting with a newly installed thermoforming machine. The
challenge seemed deceptively simple: create tactile maps that blind
students could use to understand science, math, geography.

Working through different materials and techniques, I realized this was
just the tip of a much larger problem – the fundamental gap in how we
approach education for visually impaired children.

A relief map of Indian modelled by hand, set up for duplication via
thermoforming

Digitally modelled experiments for 3D printed moulds

Traditional tactile graphics
required extensive Braille
annotations for them to be
usable independently.

Interactive feedback was crucial
but existing solutions were
prohibitively expensive

Students needed to constantly
switch between reading graphics
and finding corresponding
legends. For young children,
inability to comprehend cause
loss of interest and trust in
graphics

Spatial concepts were
particularly challenging, with
many students developed
misconceptions from text-only
learning, that carried into
adulthood

Observations and learning

The Missing Piece

The statistics were stark: only 61% of India's disabled
population between ages 5-19 attended any educational
institution. And even among those who received education,
the quality of learning was failing many. Teachers are
wonderfully respourceful and go above and beyond to meet
student needs, but they are burdened and frankly not trained
or prepared to meet the massive challenge.

Through the research that my team would conduct later with
blind schools across India, combined with desk research from
literature, we discovered that traditional teaching methods
weren't just inadequate – they were fundamentally misaligned
with how visually impaired children learn.

Our baseline assessments revealed important insights that
need to be investigated further: While visually impaired
students performed remarkably well in auditory tests (scoring
71.42% compared to sighted students' 45.6%), they struggled
with spatial concepts and mathematics. The problem wasn't
their ability to learn – it was our inability to teach in a way that
made sense to them.

Research and Design of an
Interactive System

Lab to Market: Designing
for Commercial Launch

Part 1

Part 2

The next section outlines the interaction design work
done towards developing more inclusive learning tools

Interactive System Design

Goal: Create audio labels and higher order interactions
on tactile graphics to reduce dependancy on braille
labels, and increase utility of graphics

Conceptual Solutions Considered

Part 1

Features of solution chosen for further
development:

• Fixed-position camera tracking
• HSV color filtering for precise finger detection
• Spatial mapping of touch points to content
• Audio feedback system with gesture recognition
• Custom gesture language for navigation and
  interaction

First Order Interactions: Point and Select

Basic Setup

A Tactile Graphic is programmed with different audio
labels mapped to different regions

On Hover or Point

Audio track plays on loop till the pointer remains in
the mapped region.

Example: Square, Triangle, Circle

On Click/Select

Audio description is played

Example: A square is a shape with four sides...

Sample Tactile Graphic

Essentially a series of selections of
numbers or letters

Text Input

Higher Order Interaction Possibilities

Label

• Description
  • Detailed Description

Select > Deselect > Replace Selection >
Submit Selection

Accessing Nested Information

Selecting Response to a
Question

Increasing complexity

Label: Tree

Description: This shape depicts a generic large tree
with several branches

Detailed Description: The vertical line on the lower
part of this graphic describes the trunk of a tree.
Trunks can be s thick as your wrist, but larger older
trees can have trunks as thick as many children in a
tight huddle. the round shapes above represent the
branches...

Building on this base, I explored ways to add more
complex interactions using the spatial and tactile space

Breaking out of the “page”

After prototyping and testing these interactions, I was able
to explore more interesting ways to use this digitised
Physical space. Tactile elements did not have to be fixed
on a page, they could be tangible pieces, blocks, toys that
can be move freely within the detected space, as long as
they have a optically readable identity.

Early prototypes of tangible interactive
games

Concept video, global finalist at IxDA 2016

In the process of building, testing and talking about these
ideas at conferences and education summits, I’d begun to
produce bespoke interactive learning tools for schools
and libraries.

This traction helped me raise funds for further commercial
development, and build a team.

The name is an portmanteu of Tactile and Octopus,
coming from the observation that all children love animals
and animal references, leading to a memorable and
catchy brand name.

We also learnt from our education aprtners that the multi-
modal learning technology was working wonderfully with
children on the autism spectrum and other cognitive
disabilities. We started to address more identified needs
in our product development cycle.

The rest of this page has some details on the design and
research process behind some of the products we created
at Tactopus.

Part 2

Product Gallery

The Hungry Number Monster

Skipping over several months in this process of design,
testing, designing for manufacturing, and setting up a
production process, here’s a highlight reel of our most
popular products:

Initial exploration: Using the vertical set up, requiring
users to lay out cards flat on the desk

Early test group included children with low-vision and
blindness. We had earned some early buy-in.

Converting the board for mass-manufacturing with durable,
child-safe, soft material.

Positive feedback from more users

Experimentally flipped to a vertical slotting system. Was
immediately more popular and usable.

What Makes You Special: An Audio-tactile
Wildlife Experience

Using the camera mounted on a simple light-weight stand, we
built interactive audio narrative on a tactile book, The story
was adapted from StoryWeaver’s collection.

Range of interesting textures were used to represent animal textures

Underlying system behaviour blue-print

Counting Book

As an early primer to build numeracy skills, we developed a
book that could have tangible elements to be counted.