Design, Development and Evaluation of Haptic and Olfactory based Application for Visually Impaired Learners

Abstract

Educational entertainment or edutainment is a popular approach to allow learners experience a fun learning environment while acquiring knowledge. Currently, this approach is widely used and has promising benefits, whereby not only it provides a fun learning environment but also cause learners to hardly notice the learning process. However, as there are a minimum of 2.2 billion people worldwide with vision impairment or blindness, this approach can be a challenging experience for them. It is thus important to provide equal opportunities for these members of the community in the teaching and learning environment. Owing to the limited applications available for the visually impaired in virtual edutainment tailored for them, this research aims to design and develop an edutainment application for visually impaired users using a user-centered design. The application allows users to touch 3D objects using Touch by 3DSystems. In addition, sounds and smells will be released from the speaker and olfactory devices, respectively. The usability and satisfaction of users toward this application was tested on the visually impaired as well as blindfolded users using a 7-point Likert scale questionnaire. This questionnaire was constructed in accordance with USE (Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of use) by Lund. A total of 10 participants – including visually impaired teachers and blindfolded students – participated in this study.  Participants in this study agreed that the proposed application is useful, easy to use, easy to learn, and were satisfied with the application. The average rating of the results out of 7 was 5.92 for usefulness, 5.6 for ease of use, 6.22 for ease of learning, and 6.25 for satisfaction.