Imagine going to a bar to meet your friends. When you arrive you try to spot them in a room filled with people, but your view is blurred which disables you from recognizing your friends. How would this make you feel? People that are blind or have low vision (PBLV) are all around us and can be found in any context of life. Just like sighted people, they feel the need to attend to social situations. However, socially navigating themselves, meaning finding and navigating toward familiar people around them, can be more challenging for them due to missing sight.

Literature describes that having a visual impairment can greatly impact your social life (Brunes et al., 2019; Desrosiers et al., 2009; Grow et al., 2015; OehlerGiarratana & Fitzgerald, 1980). This was confirmed by PBLV, during interviews that were executed in advance of the project. There seems to be a gap in exploring how design could help PBLV with the challenges they experience in their social life. With a participatory approach, this project attempts to contribute to filling this gap. During the project, the goal was to ‘develop a supporting device that makes PBLV feel more at ease in social situations’.

Interviews and shadowing sessions with PBLV, and a literature study resulted in the definition of eight areas where PBLV experience challenges in their social life. Together with studying the technological developments in the field of social life of PBLV, resulted in composing the design goal to: ‘Design a tool that allows PBLV to improve personal social navigation. Helping them to find and identify familiar people around them in social settings.’

With this design goal and the conducted research in mind, the conceptualization phase followed. During this phase several concepts were generated, (rapid) prototypes were created, and additional tests and studies were executed. Knowledge gathered from this phase resulted in the design of the final concept called ‘Sofi’.

‘Sofi’, the social finder, is an application and add-on for the Apple Watch which supports PBLV in their social navigation. It does so via communicating the identity, and location of familiar others nearby through vibrations. In addition, it helps PBLV to navigate towards these familiar others when desired.

Based on prototyping and testing elements of the final concept, and gathering feedback from PBLV, ‘Sofi’ seems to be a promising concept that could have potential for further development. The findings of this project, in particular, the research on social challenge areas for PBLV, and the design exploration can contribute to the knowledge of using design to help PBLV tackle the challenges they experience in their social life.