How can I Research?

What if deaf community could experience music?” This is an idea that our team has come up with. Music is inevitable part of my life, as I never fail to wear my earphones when I leave my house every morning. Dynamic sounds and voice always give me an energy to survive in this busy world. I think it would be wonderful if even deaf community could experience music in their way, by using AI that convert music into something else, like visual information or vibration. The following are research exercises we should conduct before settling on a final product idea.

1. Survey a representative sample of deaf community to have an insight of how they perceive the world. Since we are going to solve a problem for deaf community that we haven’t experienced before, we have to get much closer to their life. For example, we need to know how they are thinking about the idea of “music” in the world without sound.

2. Survey a representative sample of those who have a long experience of playing music. This survey will help us understand how people interpret music. For example, it is possible that professional musicians have a specific visual image or shape of each sound. In order to get deep insight into way of perceiving music, this survey has a lot of meanings.

3. Survey some groups of people that is classified by their age, such as kids, students, adults, and the elderly to know how often and in what kind of situation they listen to music. The results of this survey will help us decide what type of solution our idea should be (app, machine, etc.).