Tactile Music Puzzle

The brief

Design a manually operated 3D puzzle that would be easier for a blind user than a fully sighted user. It needed at least four separable components, multiple valid solutions and an approximate 200 mm build envelope.

The concept

• Four interchangeable cylinders encode sections of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Raised patterns allow the cylinders to be compared by touch, while operating the mechanism reveals their order through sound.

• Two cylinders are identical, creating more than one valid arrangement. The coloured handles deliberately suggest the wrong sequence, making sight a distraction while touch and sound provide dependable information.

• The project explored accessibility as an information-design problem: deciding which cues should be trusted and which should be challenged.