Team
Jonas Mahler, Amelie Straubmüller
Type
B.A. project
Year
2021/2022
Supervision
Andreas Hess, Prof. Gerhard Reichert
Award
Mia Seeger Preis 2022 Anerkennung
Introduction
How might we help patients affected by locked-in syndrome to become more independent in their everyday lives?
"EyeTalk" is a two-part product concept consisting of a headset and base station that enables people with locked-in syndrome to control a communication software by moving their eyes in order to communicate with others.
Locked-in syndrome is a neurological disorder characterized by the paralysis of almost all muscles.
The first component is an eye-tracking headset, which measures the vertical eye movement of the affected person using electro-oculography (EOG) and thus controls the second component, a sentence construction software.
This software is not visually visible to the user. Via bone conduction headphones integrated into the headset, only the wearer of the headset can hear where he or she is in the software and which selection has been made.
In order to control the speech software, the patient can navigate with eye movements and use different speech modes that differ in complexity of the sentences and the time to generate a sentence.
Through rapid prototyping and usertesting different approaches of structures for the headset we designed a slim, lightweight and comfortable headset that can be worn by patients for long periods of time.
