Rätten till kommunikation
The goal of the brief was to democratize the use of the Internet and develop a learning developing system/device for the most basic communication and data transfer at the lowest cost possible for people that lack a fundamental understanding of computers.
In the third world countries a lot of people can't read or write. They are adults and we think it's an important part to also give them the chance to communicate by reading and writing. We want to introduce the Internet to those people, but also make sure they can use it to communicate.
We removed all traditional elements from a computer, such as the screen, mouse and pretty much all hardware. The only thing we chose to spare was the keyboard, from which we removed all unnecessary keys. The prototype was build with an old keyboard, that was ready to be thrown away, to keep the cost and environmental effects down to a minimum.
When we were satisfied with the components we had left, we installed a small speaker and a microprocessor able to connect to the Internet. For this prototype we used an Ardunio with an ethernetshield, however, we could just as well used a GSM-shield to connect wirelessly.
Connected to the Internet, the keyboard downloads a set of words and speak them out loud. The person in front of the keyboard spells the word by typing and, when submitted, receives an answer by audio feedback.
By connecting the keyboard to the Internet we could store all data in the cloud, update it and see the learning process as it happens. The data could also be publish on a website and dynamically show the progress to the rest of the world.
