Sindhur Hegde

Designer


Get in touch

sindhurhegde@gmail.com


Adventures of Mr. Fozzington


Through my journey as a volunteer at the Percy Hedely Foundation, I wanted to create a product that would enhance reading habits amongst children who have a hearing disability. These children find it very hard to associate the written word to what is taught to them in sign language. I wanted to bridge that gap of communication.

Many schools in the United Kingdom are trying hard to keep up the teaching of BSL. As the students per year have been increasing, but schools are poorly staffed. Teaching BSL is hard and needs experience, expertise and constant training.

Studying Interactive Media Design, I wanted to create a product that would touch lives and create an impact. We see thousands of applications emerging on the iStore and on the Google Play store every week. The competition is rising at an alarming rate in every sphere, be it entertainment, sports, news or games. Everyone is always on the lookout for the “next BIG thing “. Children these days ask Santa for an iPad. Times are changing fast and the herd keeps moving along.

The core idea was to create a simple children’s  picture book, for the deaf, parents or any individual who wants to learn the basics of BSL. The possibility of today’s technology is endless, and studying Interactive Media Design, opened up a lot of windows that frames many uses of today’s modern technology.

Incorporating Augmented Reality into a children’s print book to bring out subtle animation that enhances the story and allows the reader to access the BSL videos. On scanning a code on the page through the application, engaging animation appears on the screen and the reader can watch videos of the narrator explaining the story in British Sign Language. I used simple words that children and parents would be able to grasp for everyday communication habits. The end of the book has a complete index of each word in the book which will have a corresponding video translation of the word in BSL . Allowing the user of the book to refer back and forth to these words even when offline. The application is designed to be clean and easy to navigate by any individual including the children who are disabled.

Through this project and a niche target audience i want to communicate, that the new age technology need not just be used to make our everyday life’s simpler, and more social. There is something more we can do for our society being Designers and creators of the imaginative future that we tread on.