Music is often associated with hearing and sound, but listening is not the only way to experience music. Deaf people enjoy music and can benefit from music just like everyone else. Vibe is a platform that aims to help Deaf people learn piano and create music.

Few products and services offer music lessons to Deaf people.

Lessons for Deaf sometimes require additional setup, consisting of an extra surface like Music Floor for them to better touch and feel the music.

These modified instruments are difficult to carry. Because of the poor mobility of these instruments, Deaf people face issues with re-listening to their compositions and sharing their passion with others outside of the room.

“I adapted to follow music by feeling the beats through vibration” - Source: Lee Walker @ It’s that deaf guy, writing in The Guardian

Ludwig van Beethoven, a famous deaf German composer and pianist, composed some of his most famous works by laying on the floor next to the piano while composing.

Deaf singer Mandy Harvey used to feel the vibrations of the music by standing barefoot on the floor. Deaf people feel music through different ways like touching a surface attached to an instrument or by touching loudspeakers.

Due to the timeline of the project I had to focus on one musical instrument. With time, this project can aim to target other instruments.

• The piano is comparatively easy and comfortable instrument for Deaf people to learn and play.
• It is professionally tuned and need not be tuned every time someone plays it.
• Playing the piano is almost like typing, the player has to hit the key by looking at the corresponding music notes.

How might we make music more accessible to Deaf piano enthusiasts?

Vibe app and Vibe patch connects with the piano and help players feel the music as they play. Vibe aims to help Deaf musicians learn music on any piano without having to modify it. They can also record and listen to their music whenever and where ever they want.

Vibe patch connects with the app and converts music from the app to vibrations. Neck, heart and soles of the feet are some of the most sensitive parts of the human body to feel the music but Vibe patch can be placed anywhere on the body based on one's personal choice.

I worked on creating a musical keyboard with 8 primary keys and then mapped frequencies of each key to the vibrating patch. The vibrating patch consists of vibration motors that connect to the keyboard and functions based on the feedback received from the keyboard.

• Deaf people can play any piano without extra setup.
• The vibrations created from the music notes are more precise and accurate.
• Music can be created, stored and accessed anywhere.
• More music enthusiasts will have access to music lessons.

Vibe was a challenging project for me as it was my first physical computing project. During the project, I learned about technology and it's limitations which later helped me design products that are grounded in reality. As next steps, I would like to test this product with the Deaf community and iterate based on the received feedback.