ABOUT

An app to give Graham, a partially tetraplegic man, his voice back.

Two years ago Graham, a man in his 50’s, suffered a stroke and as a result he is almost completely paralysed and unable to speak. Since his stroke Graham, his wife Zoe and their children have faced a daily battle, adapting to new and often painstaking ways of communication.

Graham’s condition allows him a small amount of motion in his left hand, however the action of typing can be so strenuous that he may only manage 1 word a day.

Graham and his family desperately needed a way to improve their communication.

The Big Life Fix: The Big Life Fix is a TV series, bringing together top designers and engineers to help people like Graham, whose lives have been affected by circumstances beyond their control. It aired on BBC Two on 14th December 2016.



Supporting Ruby Steel and Ross Atkin, Mettle set about helping them improve Graham’s communication with his family as a means of enhancing all their lives.

A big part of this challenge was understanding Graham’s needs and the challenges he faces - it became clear that communicating Graham's character and his infectious sense of humour was key and that anything with a 'robot voice' was to be avoided.

The Reaction Pad was born: The early concept for the Reaction Pad was an iPad application that would be an expressive tool taking emotive audio clips from films, TV and music as a means of giving Graham an outlet for expression. This idea encompasses a digital pallet of expressions to be quickly and easily accessible with very few interactions. The key differentiator is that the Reaction Pad focuses on personality rather than exact wording or transactional communication and this proved fundamental to portraying Graham's personality.

Built on a grid system, the app is made up of 4 sections. Attention and Quick Statements contain a selection of phrases, that when selected are sounded through the iPad. They spread across the full range of language including expletives - it was important to allow the full spectrum to provide Graham with the options. The Emotions section contains expressive content from clips of his favourite films or TV and the Environment section connects Graham to his smart products, enabling him to alter his surroundings, e.g. increasing the temperature, changing the lighting or play music. Being reliant on fixed phrases would quickly get tiresome so the app was designed with a mirrored website where Zoe can update audio clips, rearrange them or change the action on an environments button. Future iterations of this application could include greater sound banks and editing directly from the application.

Having been built to be customised, when Zoe found old videos of Graham before his stroke it was possible to strip the audio off the video and construct words and phrases in Graham’s voice and allow Graham to play them through the app!