Anuraag — Screenless HMI & Ambient Soundscapes for Elder Care
An interactive, non-screen armrest controller designed to provide low-friction emotional agency and non-verbal comfort for older adults in assisted living.
Physical Computation
Iterative Prototyping
Multimodal
Conversations with urban elders, Music School Visits, Secondary Research
Visiting Elder Care Facilities and conducting expert interviews
Ideating, building and testing physical prototypes
Form studies, building the software, material and finish
Phase 1: Understanding Musical Engagement & Sensory Shifts
To evaluate whether acoustic interfaces could serve as non-verbal therapeutic tools, the project began with field visits to music schools (Saptak, Harmony, Maroon), expert interviews with music educators, and contextual conversations with urban elders.
Exposure Shapes Comfort:
Musical agency in later life directly reflects lifelong exposure. Without prior training, elders exhibit high caution, conservatism, and fear of judgment when invited to "perform.
Mapping the Engagement Spectrum:
User interaction with sound was mapped across three distinct stages: Spectating (passive consumption), Performing (active generation), and Yearning (unmet desire for expression blocked by intimidation).
Mapping exposure to music in one's life in terms of Spectating, Performing and Yearning.
The Alien Sensory Environment:
As cognitive and sensory faculties shift with age, outside urban soundscapes become overstimulating and foreign, causing older adults to retreat into smaller, highly controlled physical spaces.
Phase 2: Assisted Living Realities & Expert Validation
Field immersions at elder care facilities (collaborating with facility contact Ashit Gandhi) and specialized interviews were conducted with:
Dr. Manjiri Chaturvedi (CEO, Healthy Aging India)
Prof. Pothiraj (Geriatric Physiotherapist)
Kshitija Sawant (Geriatric Psychologist)
The Core User Journey (The "Shyamji" Persona):
A recurring institutional trajectory emerged: an older adult leaves home due to domestic tension, struggles with grief and sudden loss of routine in the facility, and retreats into stubborn self-isolation—deliberately refusing institutional activities and psychological counseling.
The reality of adapting to an elder care facility
Iterative Design: 3 Prototypes & What Failed
Rather than jumping to a final artifact, three distinct physical and digital prototypes were deployed to uncover failure modes in input mechanics and emotional accessibility.
Concept: A multi-button physical soundboard mapping discrete emotional states directly to coherent musical notes and Indian Raagas, testing if non-verbal audio lowers the barrier to emotional expression.
Findings & Failure Modes:
The interaction lacked physical context and felt disconnected from the environment.
Complex classical Raagas required musical familiarity that many residents lacked.
Takeaway: Abstract musical scales felt foreign; feedback needed to be grounded in relatable, everyday ambient acoustics.
Concept: A wireless, multi-device physical console (inspired by Simon) requiring residents to enter button sequences collaboratively to unlock shared songs into a central community audio library.
Findings & Failure Modes:
Enforcing synchronized, cooperative tasks introduced social anxiety and performance pressure.
Enforcing shared musical taste alienated individuals with diverse regional and generational backgrounds.
Takeaway: Socially forced interaction drives self-isolating elders deeper into withdrawal. The interface had to prioritize private, autonomous comfort.
Concept: A capacitive touchscreen divided into four interactive quadrants, each modulating real-time audio parameters corresponding to a specific mood.
Findings & Failure Modes:
Older adults actively refused to touch the tablet, finding the flat glass surface ambiguous and cold.
Users repeatedly articulated a fear of "breaking the device" or being evaluated on their musical competence.
Takeaway: Flat glass screens trigger cognitive overload and resistance. The input mechanism had to be embedded invisibly into familiar furniture objects already associated with rest.
The Solution: The Ambient Armrest Controller
The final system embeds tactile interaction into an armchair armrest, utilizing natural resting ergonomics and passive physical affordances.
Physical Slotted Templates: Residents initiate an interaction simply by placing a themed tactile template onto the armrest. This mechanical slotting action loads the soundscape session without navigating a graphical UI.
Tactile Continuous Input: Low-profile embedded touch surfaces detect micro-gestures and finger strokes along the armrest, allowing users to modulate sound density, spatial panning, and harmonic filtering intuitively.
Intergenerational Touchpoint: The physical templates are designed to be constructed and hand-decorated by local school students—re-establishing a passive, tangible link between institutionalized elders and the broader community.
The system was programmed in Pure Data and integrated via MobMuPlat, generating three real-time, responsive acoustic environments specifically tuned for emotional regulation:
Calming (शांत): Continuous ambient natural soundscapes built on rain textures, water movement, and birdsong; modulated to lower heart rate and reduce acute restlessness.
Reassuring (आश्वासन): Domestic and familiar acoustic frequencies, including subtle sounds of home cooking, gentle market hums, and domestic rhythms to alleviate spatial disorientation.
Invigorating (उत्तेजना): Crisp, resonant melodic timbres and gentle rhythmic transients designed to stimulate motor response and combat depressive lethargy.
A video walkthrough of all three soundscapes and interactions (live demo)
Technical Architecture & Build
Rather than jumping to a final artifact, three distinct physical and digital prototypes were deployed to uncover failure modes in input mechanics and emotional accessibility.
Coding the soundscapes and designing the touch interface in PureData and MobMuPlat
Developing the form and shape
While developed as a functional proof-of-concept requiring broader clinical longitudinal testing, Anuraag successfully validates that:
Screenless, ambient physical computing effectively removes the technological intimidation that isolates older adults from digital wellness tools.
Passive furniture integration converts ordinary objects of rest into non-stigmatizing therapeutic devices.
Broad Transferability: The core interaction architecture—tactile surface gesture modulation mapped to generative sound engines—holds significant potential beyond elder care, serving as a non-visual interface for sensory-sensitive education, stress management in workspace furniture, and inclusive musical instruments.
This project was developed at the National Institute of Design with guidance and critical input from faculty and visiting mentors: Saurabh Srivastava, Mayukhini Pandey, Shobhan S, and Subir Bahaduri. Special gratitude to the medical practitioners and elder care administrators who shared their clinical insights.
