PRODUCT DESIGN

CREATIVE INTERVENTIONS & assistive technology

PROJECT: ReadClear

Project lead: Dr Aida Suarez Gonzalez

Timeline: September 2023 - February 2024

Funder: UKRI - Healthy Ageing Catalyst Accelerator Award

Amount: £100k

Project background:

People with neurological visual impairment face unique reading problems. They often have difficulty tracking lines of text with their eyes, and experience a phenomenon called visual crowding, whereby text elements that appear in the peripheral vision jump around and clutter up the central vision to the extend that text consisting of (multiple) sentences becomes illegible.

ReadClear is the first digital tool specifically designed to mitigate these symptoms, and assist people who have neurological visual impairment with reading. The first version of the ReadClear app was co-created with people living with a rare visual form of dementia (posterior cortical atrophy) and its effectiveness in assisting reading was proved in a clinical trial (Suarez-Gonzalez et al., 2019).

Design brief:

To transform the product design of the ReadClear app into a digital service that is ready to go to market. To this purpose, a coherent and minimalist visual identity was created, alongside an improved user interface and user experience of the app, tailored to the specific reading needs of users with neurological impairment. It was important to take cognitive and physiological challenges that target users might have into account. For instance, people with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) often also have motor function impairments, and they lack the needed muscular flexibility and control over their hands and fingers to interact with digital screens that have a scroll function.

Demo new UI design of the ReadClear app:

New ReadClear website