Anuraag - Soundscapes for Elder Care
An interactive armrest that plays emotion-sensitive soundscapes through simple finger movements.
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
The Research Journey:
From Music Theory to Elder Care
The project defines a novel, low-friction pathway for self-isolating older adults in elder care facilities to find emotional agency and private comfort.
The goal is to mitigate the mental health risks associated with profound loneliness and the refusal of external therapeutic help.
Phase 1: Understanding Musical Engagement
Methods: Conversations with urban elders, visits to music schools (Saptak, Harmony, Maroon), and expert interviews with music teachers.
Key Insights:
Musical engagement is dictated by exposure and encouragement across the life span.
Older adults' sensory soundscape becomes more alien as they age, causing them to retreat to smaller, controlled spaces.
A large barrier to learning is an ingrained cautiousness and conservatism.
Mapping exposure to music in one's life in terms of Spectating, Performing and Yearning.
Methods: Visits and interviews with facility contacts (Ashit Gandhi) and experts, including a Geriatric Physiotherapist (Professor Pothiraj), Geriatric Psychologist (Kshitija Sawant), and the CEO of Healthy Aging India (Dr. Manjiri Chaturvedi).
Core Problem Identified: The tragic journey of the self-isolating resident (e.g., "Shyamji")—who leaves the family due to conflict, struggles to adapt to the new home, and finally lets sadness turn to stubborn refusal of help.
The reality of adapting to an elder care facility
Iterative Design: The Path to the Artefact
The next step involved development of certain prototypes to test out a few mechanisms and mediums that host their interaction.
Designed to test out a quick and easy way to voice your emotional state in a positive manner. May reduce the barrier to emotional expression by a lot, by keeping language out of it. The identify-express flow is made accessible, by allowing one to select an emotional state and voice musical notes coherent with it.
Observations:
The context of the interaction is not well established.
Complex Raagas were not understood or appreciated.
Prototype was extremely low fidelity.
Therefore, decided to use sounds and auditory signals that may be more relatable.
A physical station/product that allows elderly residents perform a collaborative exercise, unlocking songs that go into a music library as a reward. Goal is to incentivize elderly residents to have shared experiences with each other.
The prototype accepts button input and sends it wirelessly to multiple devices to trigger audio playback. Much like the game Simon, the goal is to press buttons in a correct sequence in order to play parts of a song in the correct order to unlock it.
Observations:
Shared activities and music taste were too complicated to enforce.
Therefore, decided to focus on individual comfort and privacy.
Dividing a digital touch interface into 4 quadrants, this prototype allows one to use their finger to control the audio. Each quadrant expresses a different musical mood, and thereby, allows for 4 different emotions to be expressed. The user can feel which quadrant they resonate with in the moment.
Observations:
Older adults refused to interact with the tablet, finding the interface ambiguous.
They stated inability to appreciate and perform music, and expressed a fear of being judged.
The design must be integrated into a familiar item (the armrest) and use simple, tactile input.
Final Prototype: Soundscape Generating Armrest
Core Mechanism: Residents place a themed template onto the armrest to load a soundscape, which is then subtly controlled by simple finger movements.
Therapeutic Soundscapes: The sound library consists of sound environments curated for specific emotional states:
Calming (शांत): Birdsong and rain.
Reassuring (आश्वासन): Familiar human environments like a kitchen or market.
Invigorating (उत्तेजना): Bright, sharp, musical notes.
The soundscape templates can be physically constructed and decorated by school children, creating a connection and sense of being acknowledged by the outside community.
Coding the soundscapes and designing the touch interface in PureData and MobMuPlat
Developing the form and shape
A video walkthrough of all three soundscapes and interactions (live demo)
The final prototype was not tested in context and its effectivity remains to be understood, but it serves as a valuable probe to designing interactions that are non-screen, and incorporated into objects of daily living.
The nature of the interaction opens up a scope within contexts away from the elder care space, more as a musical instrument or music education tool.
This project was greatly supported by Saurabh Srivastava, Mayukhini Pandey, Shobhan S and Subir Bahaduri, all faculty/visiting faculty at the National Institute of Design. I am very grateful for their inputs and encouragement.