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An easy way for partially hearing impaired to learn any language!

Lingo 
Pandit

EXVACATION

Why Lingo Pandit

The creation of Lingo Pandit stems from the endeavor to devise a methodology aiding partially hearing-impaired individuals in acquiring multiple languages. Its aim is to acquaint users with phonetics, a branch of linguistics exploring how humans produce and understand sounds, encompassing parallels found in sign languages.

Role

Research, User Experience & Interface Designer

Research methods

The research focused on understanding the learning patterns of our partially hearing-impaired acquaintances, who typically master only one language as their primary means of communication and rely on lip reading to interact with others. They often struggle to keep up when conversations switch to a different language. My project aims to assist them in comprehending their speaking capabilities, facilitating learning, and, importantly, understanding any language they endeavor to acquire, rather than being restricted to just one.

Research goal

The goal was to understand different aspects of a journey of partially impaired person, like their schooling, medical consultation, and day to day communication patterns.

OBSERVATION

During my time there, I observed several study sessions involving students with varying degrees of hearing loss, including Sensorineural, Conductive, Mixed, and Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder. The teaching methods resembled those of typical primary schools, involving show-and-tell followed by practice to learn the alphabet.

Challenges:
This approach posed challenges for students with hearing impairments. They often struggled to grasp the pronunciation of the letters being taught to them.

INTERVIEW

Interviewed an otolaryngologist who collaborates with audiologists, speech and language pathologists, physical therapists, radiologists, pathologists, neurosurgeons to provide comprehensive care for patients with various types of hearing impairments.

Also interviewed a graduate student of linguistics who helped me in grasping the fundamental framework of the discipline. This encompasses the scientific examination of language, including morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics. My focus primarily delved into phonetics, drawing from class notes provided by the student.

Additionally, I explored other facets such as understanding how individuals with partial impairments communicate with those without impairments. I found that speech reading, involving attentive observation of the speaker's lip and jaw movements, serves as a primary means of comprehension for our target users. Furthermore, I investigated the extent to which information and context can be gleaned from the speaker's expressions, gestures, and overall situational awareness.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

EXTRACTION

Synthesis & Findings

THE EAR AND ITS FUNCTIONALITY

The sense of hearing provides a background, which gives a feeling of security and participation in life. It plays a critical role in the development of speech and language and in monitoring one's speech. The ear performs a variety of functions: to be able to hear very soft sounds over a wide frequency range as well as withstand the very loud sounds, to discriminate between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness; to be able to locate the direction of arrival of a sound and in the presence of noise, to be able to switch on and off a sound of interest. The human ear perceives simple tones in the range of 20 to 20,000 Hz and also complex signals such as speech and music.
Both types of signals are used in the assessment of hearing loss.

Hearing sensitivity of each ear is measured separately
The severity/degree of hearing impairment/ hearing loss is generally classified in seven categories as per Goodman’s (1965) classification.

HEARING SENSITIVITY

WHAT CAUSES IMPAIRMENT

CONGENITAL: Present at or acquired soon after birth

  • Birth asphyxia (time of birth)

  • Low birth weight (time of birth)

  • Infections like maternal rubella

  • Severe jaundice (neonatal period)

  • Particular drugs (pregnancy)

ACQUIRED: May lead to hearing loss at any age

  • Excessive noise, both occupational and recreational

  • Infectious diseases like meningitis etc

  • Ear infections or collection of fluid in the ear

  • Aging (degeneration of sensory cells)

  • Particular drugs, like some antibiotic/ antimalarial medicines

  • Injury to the head or ear

IMPACT OF HEARING IMPAIRMENT

  • Functional

  • Economic

  • Social & emotional

IMPACT OF HEARING IMPAIRMENT

Due to distortion of sounds, differentiation of environmental sounds, including speech, is difficult; making sounds louder does not improve the clarity or quality of sound.

EXECUTION

Solution scoping

Kirie

Dose Calculator

We as humans are unique in our use of tongue, lips and other movable parts of the speech mechanism. The first act of speech is breathing, in which you get air into a storage chamber; second is phonation, the process by which you force air into vibration by the action of the vocal folds; third, resonation, in which your mouth, nose and throat cavities amplify the sound so you can hear it. Finally, there is articulation, in which you modify the sound by movement of the teeth, tongue and lips into recognizable patterns. There are only 44 sounds to master, as a young child one starts making them by learning simple sounds which one can later articulate into repetitive sound combinations and then words.

UNDERSTANDING ARTICULATION OF WORDS

The intend is to help the hearing impaired learn other languages apart from what they already learnt, also to help them understand their learnt language better rather than a set of repeated syllabus mugged up without understanding. Here the target beneficiaries will be partially hearing impaired people with knowledge of English language.
The phonetic symbols used in English then are put to use to make them understand sound overall. Once they become accustomed with various sound of phonetics, they used them to built up other same sounds used in any other language (Hover on the circles to read more)

USING LINGUISTICS AS SOLUTION SCOPE

LANGUAGE

Structure

Word

Function

Letters

Form

Sentence

Phonetics

Phonology

Sound

A language function is the purpose of speaking that sentence or phrase

The way in which meaningful elements can be combined within a language is governed by rules called structure

Word is a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others to form a sentence

A sentence is a group of words which expresses a complete thought.

Language form refers to the so-called surface features of language and how these are arranged.

Sound is a Vibration that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.

Phonetics is the study and classification of speech sounds

Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages

Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication particularly the human

Letter is a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet

The ultimate result took the form of a gamified mobile application designed to assist the hearing impaired in acquiring new languages beyond their existing proficiency. Additionally, it aimed to enhance their comprehension of their native language, moving beyond mere rote memorization of syllables. The target demographic for this app comprised individuals with partial hearing impairment who possessed knowledge of the English language.
The phonetic symbols utilized in English were leveraged to provide a comprehensive understanding of sound. As users familiarized themselves with various phonetic sounds, they could apply this knowledge to recognize similar sounds in other languages. As part of the solution, Hindi was introduced as a secondary language, taught through the utilization of phonetic symbols as a learning aid.

Final outcome

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