Project Narrative

Final CHORDially Prototype. Welcome Window on the left, Select Song Window on the top right, and the Playing Window on the bottom right.

GitHub Repository

🎸 Problem & Goal

Kimberly, this year's client for ENGINEER 1P13’s Power in Community project, has Usher Syndrome, a condition that degenerately impairs her vision and hearing. She has expressed her frustrations with a lack of applications and websites that accommodate both her deafness and blindness. Instead, they focussed only on one of those conditions.

Problem Statement: Kimberly has expressed her desire to learn to play songs on the guitar. Despite knowing most guitar chords, no software could accommodate her blindness, and lacked audio. Rather than reading out chords, some software would only make different beeping noises, which was not helpful. Create software to help Kimberly learn the guitar chords of various songs. This software should be intuitive, have high-contrast graphics, few windows and clicks, and an understandable flow. This software must be low-cost to maintain and create and must not cost more than $100 to prototype.

Project Goal: Utilize tools and skills gained throughout the year to generate a finalized prototype, utilizing feedback from design reviews and testing plans.

🔧 Completed Tasks:

1️⃣ Created a fully functioning application that reads out chords of various songs in time with the beats.

• Conducted a testing plan to generate more suitable iterations
• Held design reviews for feedback on new iterations

2️⃣ Generated a database containing 50+ songs from across different genres and eras, and their chords and beats

• Conducted research to compile chords and beats for each song
• Combined all songs in one JSON file

3️⃣ Conducted research using various sources

• Researched Usher Syndrome
• Researched current available technologies to help blind, deaf, and deafblind people
• Researched possible materials and software that could be used to aid the design

Key Features of the Project:

High-contrast User Interface software, with accessible User Experience thanks to large fonts, an understandable flow, and audio narration throughout.

JSON file song database, including song name, artist, beats per minute, chords, and beats for each chord.

Timeline of project:

→ February 10th, 2025 - March 31st, 2025

• 1 week for problem framing and initial research
• 1 week for concept exploration
• 1 week for design selection and refinement
• 3 weeks for prototyping and iterations
• 1 day for project presentation and demo
• Toggle for the project’s Gantt Chart

Team’s Work and Personal Contributions

Team Contributions:

✔️ Generated problem statement, outlined objectives/constraints and metrics, and created testing plan

• A finalized problem statement, along with refined objectives, metrics, and testing plan were achieved through discussions, questioning, and ideation

✔️ Utilized morph chart to come up 5 different possible designs

• Combined 2 different ideas from morph chart into an initial prototype thanks to decision matrix

Morph chart with Biomimicry inspired means.

Decision Matrix, caused combination of prototype 1 and 2.

✔️ Held design reviews with teaching assistants for iteration feedback

• First design review assisted in the selection of a design
• Second design review assisted in the refinement of the initial prototype