CendMate

Mio Googles

Challenge

Swimwear accessory for visually impaired people to use their prescription wears underwater.

Impact

Figma
Google Docs
Google Forms
Notion
Maze

Role(s)

Product Designer

Contributions

Low fidelity prototype
High fidelity design
Design documentation

Mio Googles

Challenge

Swimwear accessory for visually impaired people to use their prescription wears underwater.

Impact

Figma
Google Docs
Google Forms
Notion
Maze

Role(s)

Product Designer

Contributions

Low fidelity prototype
High fidelity design
Design documentation

Mio Googles

Challenge

Swimwear accessory for visually impaired people to use their prescription wears underwater.

Impact

Figma
Google Docs
Google Forms
Notion
Maze

Role(s)

Product Designer

Contributions

Low fidelity prototype
High fidelity design
Design documentation

Click to product sketches

The aim of this project is to create a publicly accessible solution for visually impaired people who do not have access custom prescription eyewear but want to swim. It also demonstrates how product design is not limited to software interface design and can extend to other fields like consumer product design and development.

The boy in the ocean

In 2023, I saw a YouTube video of a kid who kept waving his arms signaling to the lifeguards to be rescued to beach while standing on the a few meters from the shore because he couldn't tell what direction was the beach. His eyesight was that bad. This had me thinking of what solutions were out there so the boy's beach experience won't be impeded.

Video link of boy in water

text

So I thought…

What would be the best way to tackle these problems?

1. Making visually impaired people's swimming experience closest to normal as can be. 2. Making said solution easily accessible.

I decided to look into it and here are some things I discovered:

1. There are companies that make custom prescription swimming goggles for visually impaired people. However, not everyone has access to these niche products. 2. Prescription glasses are NOT built for swimming. The structural integrity could fault, there's risk of rust of metallic materials and so on. 3. Prescription glasses are not able to stay in place comfortably in water. 4. There is one company that makes prescription lenses in the form factor that could accommodate a wide variety of people and prescription glass shapes and sizes however, they only make ski goggles.

Link to glass not staying in place in water

The ski goggles making company

Now you might have also thought of it, however…

I already considered contact lenses and conducted a focus group session with visually impaired participants to see if it was a worthy solution to pursue. Here's the TLDR of it. "People who used contacts said they could only manage using it for about 10 minutes in the water before experiencing pain and redness in their eyes."

Criteria for creation

Having had an idea of what the solution would look like, I decided to write down some guiding principles for the products design: 1. Design a solution that does not require specific lens preparation. 2. Design a solution that can is easily accessible to the public (this was inspired by the beach setting in the video link above) 3. Create a solution that is simple and familiar enough for kids to easily use.

Using the constraints listed above, here are a few ideas I came up with:

1. Goggles that would fit their lenses or entire glass frames 2. Create attachments that could be fastened to the glass frames (this left the glass frame and wearer, vulnerable to damage and injuries. 3. Design lenses with adjustable focal lengths like a camera lens for different wearers medical specifications - This could work but there are a diverse number of defects out there and was a costlier option. 4. Design googles with slots for its users to insert their lenses into - Glasses weren't made for their lenses to be popped in and out.

More research on different eyewear

I wanted to know more about different eyewear to gain a better understanding of the human eye, its defects and how different types of eyewear was used to cater to different human functions across varying industries.

Click to learn more about concave and convex lenses

What does the target audience ACTUALLY think or want?

In order to understand what affected users would want in order to elevate their experience, I decided to conduct a focus group interview. The criteria for participation were as follows: Participant has to have an eye defect requiring glasses. Participant has to have experience swimming. Participants were also encouraged to pick and discuss the most appealing option out of all the ideas listed above. They particularly leaned towards goggles that would house their medicated glasses. Here are the insights I gained from the session. Glass frames are not structurally ideal for swimming. Contact lenses are another alternative to the swimming goggles however, some users experience redness and dryness of the eye in the water after about 10 minutes of swimming. Participants raised concerns about how heavy the entire thing would feel on their face. There were also concerns about having to see through 2 lenses and how the product could potentially distort their lens prescription. Participants noted that they'd like their eyes to be completely shielded from water.

These insights ended up translating directly into some of the the design decisions I made for instance, paying attention to the materials being used to prevent distortion of the wearer's glasses and to reduce the weight of the entire product on the user's face.

Creating product requirements

After analyzing the insights and data accumulated thus far, I was came up with a few product requirements

Product requirements

Prototyping and sketching

Both the prototyping and the testing went hand in hand. I gathered as many eye glasses (most of which had no prescription as I was focusing on fitting and eye glass shapes).

The blue outline illustrates the view frame, the over-ear housing and the under ear support to keep the goggles straight

First iteration of the MIO-G1 goggles

Parts and functions

1. View frame - Made of zero distortion, clear plastic. 2. Corner seal to protect the frame hinge from impact damage or bumping into the swimmer's face. 3. Over-ear strap - The over ear strap has two parts. The entry slot which is a more loose and elastic part of the strap at the temple area after the hinge guard and the temple housing behind the entry slot that house the glasses frame temple. 4. The strap buckle - Is located at the back of the goggles and is the final locking mechanism to seal out all foreign objects from the vacuum. 5. The view frame is to have a 20mm gap between the view from the view frame and the swimmer's cornea. This is to accommodate the eye glasses as typical glasses have a … of 14-16mm gap. Adding 2mm for the frame's thickness and the rest for comfort and adjustability. 6. Temple/hinge strap - This is the part of the silicone unibody that holds the glass's view frame in place within the goggles, not just on the persons face. The temple housing holds the temple in place.

"What are the easily damaged parts of a pair of glasses?"

"Inspired by the story of Abraham Wald in the second world war, I decided to consider what parts of people/s glasses broke easily in order to combat against impact damage." This single question lead to thickening the curvature between the temple and the view frame as it was where the glass's hinge was located and was also the most vulnerable spot of the glasses.

Link to medium post on research

text

First iteration of the MIO-G1 goggles

High definition sketch

Here is a frontal and side view of the product. It gives a general idea of the design and function we hope to achieve in the upcoming iteration prior to finding a more skilled illustrator and 3D designer.

Orthographic front view

Orthographc back view

First iteration of the MIO-G1 goggles

Learnings

While designing a digital solution is considered to be an iterative process, designing a is not as iterative as one would expect. A physical product having a better iteration usually means a newer model of the same product which admittedly would be better, but would also cost the consumer more money to purchase. A good example here would be your smartphone which has different models with varying upgrades and specifications. The apps can easily be updated, however, the phone itself ahs to be changed if you want something better. So having to make sure EVERY part of the product works perfectly is something that is greatly emphasized in the industrial/consumer product development process.

What's next?

Since I had limited resources, I was unable to create a proper 3D model of the product to 3D print and test physically. So the testing phase can only go this far. Here is what the next few moves would have looked like. 1. Getting proper renders of the product and testing it in a 3D environment. 2. Printing out the materials to be tested by target users. 3. Getting feedback and iterating on those changes that need to be made for the product. 4. More testing until we have a final product that is satisfactory.

Full research page

Want to work with me or be friends? Shoot me a message

Let's Talk

Want to work with me or be friends? Shoot me a message

Let's Talk

Want to work with me or be friends? Shoot me a message

Let's Talk