What's The Colour?
Applied Skills
Making Skills
Glass Work
Assisting with Hot Work | Cold Work
Metal Work
Bending | Spot Welding
Software Skills
Coding
Arduino | C++
'What's The Colour?' is an interactive lighting device, designed to educate people of all ages what colours look like to people with a colour deficiency
Context
When: January 2023 - April 2023
This project was done in collaboration with Eleanor Scott.
We both wanted to explore and show how somebody with a colour deficiency would see colour. The product is intended to be situated within an institution - like a museum or science centre - to educate people, in particular children, how others might see the world around them.
The product highlights an aspect of people's lives that cannot be explicitly replicated as each persons sight is different and unique. Also being partially colour impaired myself, the project allowed me to show my perspective of the world.
Designing
When designing the form of our product, we used 'The National Museum of Scotland' exhibits as inspiration as having the product be something users could touch was important.
Considering different methods of interaction, we explored through sketching how this might apply to our conext and what is most suitable for our product.
Making
Step 1
Create moulds to use so we can form our glass.
Step 2
Assist the glass technician with the hot work to blow glass into our moulds.
Step 3
Cut and smooth the glass pieces on the flatbed.
Step 4
Create a base to house the electrical components and support the glass pieces
Equipment Used
Arduino Uno Board | Bread Board | Neo Pixel Light Ring | LDR Sensor | Resistors
Coding & Electronics
How does the product work?
When the light levels are below a set threshold, this triggers the Neo Pixel Ring to turn on.
We needed the product to be accessible for people of all ages to be able to interact with our product. Our research at the museum showed fewer buttons worked best. With our product we chose to use sensors so no buttons were needed. This allowed users to interact with our product and feel the glass.
Testing
The code being wrote needed constant testing. This initially started with us just using fingers to activate the lights, before moving onto the glass pieces.
Final Product
"Seeing how the glass was a dull colour and realising my hand's shadow made the light turn on was really exciting" - Rosina
"The sign was comprehensive and I could see it being developed into something that goes into a museum.
It seems like a really interesting proposition for children and adults alike. It made me think about colour deficiency in a slightly different way." - Emilia
