{"id":484,"date":"2010-03-05T01:05:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T08:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/?p=484"},"modified":"2010-05-03T00:38:55","modified_gmt":"2010-05-03T07:38:55","slug":"design-for-humanity-selective-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/?p=484","title":{"rendered":"Design for Humanity :: (Selective) Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SHbanner\"<\/p>\n

The goal for this week was to design for humanity.\u00a0 The original framework was along the lines of designing for a developing country or the disabled.\u00a0 There are whole classes devoted to designing for specific disability, as well as Solar Design and Design for Unicef.\u00a0 Due to the one week time constraint, I found it more appealing to find a demographic that is accessible to American culture.
\nMartha Nussbaum’s Sex & Social Justice establishes a framework for universal freedom.\u00a0 I do not care to summarize all of her key issues, but my inspiration stems from her inclusion of emotional freedom.\u00a0 Her definition includes “not having one’s emotional develop[ment] blighted by fear or anxiety.”\u00a0 This conjures images of Darfur and Myanmar, but it exists in places where physical violence and oppression are not prevalent.<\/p>\n

I chose to design for those in verbally abusive relationships.\u00a0 I think we’ve all experienced a verbal assault.\u00a0 In many cases, the assailant rationalizes his or her own experience as the victim.\u00a0 (Selective) Hearing is a conceptual device that could break the cycle.<\/p>\n

If angry rants were automatically tuned out of your hearing, your aggressor would have no choice but to speak to you calmly and respectfully for you to actually hear them.\u00a0 The device itself serves as an objective evaluation on the verbal exchange, so the victim is not blamed for not listening to the aggressor.<\/p>\n

\"yelling\"<\/p>\n

How would it work?<\/p>\n

The ideal design is a discreet device placed in the ear.\u00a0 Others would not notice, and your privacy is protected.\u00a0 For my diagrams I use a larger, hearing aid design, just to get my point across.<\/p>\n

When dialog is detected by the microphones, the audio is fed to a speech analyzer that runs a series of checks on the content.\u00a0 The user would be able to configure the settings with on-board software (ideally from a blue tooth connected cell phone).\u00a0 These settings could detect inflections and tone as well as derogatory statements, racial slurs, etc.\u00a0 Parts of the speech that do not pass filter tests are replaced with selected sound effects (woodpecker, birds tweeting, squeeky shoes, etc).\u00a0 As an added feature, the user may toggle an ambient mode, where ocean sounds or soothing music is played in ear until the recognized voice has finished speaking.<\/p>\n

Technical Considerations<\/p>\n

To run the analysis of speech content, there will most likely be transduction of speech to text for analysis.\u00a0 This will cause a delay to process, so the earphones will inverse phase of the microphone to properly noise cancel the speech until it is approved by the earpiece.\u00a0 For practicality, there should be selectable modes (Bypass, Alert, Argument) so as not to delay wanted information.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n

\"flowchart\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The goal for this week was to design for humanity.\u00a0 The original framework was along the lines of designing for a developing country or the disabled.\u00a0 There are whole classes devoted to designing for specific disability, as well as Solar Design and Design for Unicef.\u00a0 Due to the one week time constraint, I found it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-softness-of-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikelberman.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}