The One Show

The One Show is the world's most prestigious award show in advertising and design. For over 50 years, the Gold Pencil has been regarded as one of the top prizes in the creative industry. The One Show has a rich legacy of honoring some of the most groundbreaking ideas, created by some of the most remarkable minds in creativity.

2023 One Show - Interactive & Mobile Craft

Eyedar

Agency Area 23, an IPG Health Company / New York + Dalmatian Cow / Los Angeles + Blind Pig / London

Client Horizon Therapeutics
BACK TO RESULTS

Annual ID

OS23_IC025M

About the Work

Echolocation is a powerful sensory substitution skill where the blind use their sense of hearing to visualize surroundings. However, echolocation is not widely accessible and in previous forms takes years to learn. As a result, only 1% of the blind community have learned the skill.

Eyedar digitizes the principles of echolocation, making it an accessible and learnable skill. By leveraging the newly available LiDAR 3D technology in iPhones, Eyedar maps a user’s environment and translates it into 3D soundscapes, allowing the blind to visualize their surroundings.

Our blind-led UX team built the app with universal best practices of accessibility design and took a blind-first approach to user experience. This meant eliminating any visual interface in favor of voiceover and gestures that allow our users to use the app with ease.

Eyedar uses the iPhone’s LiDAR scanner to create a 3D map of a user’s environment. A vertical line array sweeps from left to right, with each point assigned a pitch from low to high, bottom to top. As the line sweeps the field, each point emits its assigned tone, with higher (close) or lower (distant) volume depending on proximity. The result is a soundscape that, to the untrained ear, sounds like a lot of noise. But with training provided in the app, the mind becomes accustomed to the sounds, assigns meaning to them, and develops a clearer mental picture over time.

Echolocation has already shown it can positively impact the lives of users, and the only impediment to widespread adoption is the accessibility of learning the skill. Eyedar removes that. For the 99% of the population for whom echolocation was once unattainable, Eyedar and its sensory sound experience has the potential to redefine what it means to be blind.