The Future of Interaction Design Is Born From A Car For The Blind

If you want to see what’s beyond glass, multi-touch screens, you needn’t go much farther than this TED talk by Dennis Hong on a car his team has developed for a blind driver.

Yes, you read that right. A blind person driving a car. Not an autonomous car that drives a blind person around, but a car where the blind driver is getting feedback and making real driving decisions in real time.

They’ve created an amazing set of devices to make this work. One that impressed me the most was the AirPix, a tablet-like device that uses small holes blowing air to substitute for visual picture. By waiving your hand over the air bursts, the user can get a strong sense of the terrain. It’s Google Maps through air. Brilliant.

Watch the video. You’ll be blown away.