‘Suno’ is an interactive puzzle game and a teaching tool for children, which allows them to recognize an object with its sound and relate it to other object sounds that belong to the same space.
AGE GROUP: 3-7 years
The puzzle could also be used for storytelling by mixing and matching objects of different themes or be used for describing simple steps of doing a task. For eg, How does your mother cook vegetables? She washes them, chops them, and puts them in a pan.
The aim is to make visually impaired children familiar with their surroundings using sounds, which would make them more aware and conscious of their environment.
From the research I did by visiting schools for blind children, or talking to parents who brought up their blind kids, I came across a few interesting insights. The one that struck with me was to do with how parents need to constantly communicate and keep their kids informed about what is happening in their surroundings, be it at home or in schools.
I created four themes as prototypes: Kitchen, Classroom, Bathroom and Traffic Sounds.
For the visually impaired kids to be able to understand the form of the 2D shape, I gave transparent embossed outline to the whole visual image. On the back of the blocks, the object's name is written in Braille as well as in English (using embossed text), which could serve as hints.
The sound prototyping is done using Arduino Uno, while the puzzle blocks are made out of MDF boards with visual stickers on top.
