The Reagan High School Soundboard

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  The finished product along with the team, excluding our voice actor.

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  The finished soundboard

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  Progress on the unfinished soundboard

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  The team working on wiring the soundboard

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  The team working on wiring the soundboard

Inspiration

Non-verbal and semi-verbal students at Reagan High School struggle to convey emotions directly to teachers and peers. Students who are unable to express emotions properly often become frustrated with themselves, and teachers find it difficult to assist them properly. After discussing various ideas with the Special Education Director at our school, we settled on a large emoticon-based board with speakers that students could easily go up to and express how they were feeling. This would allow student voices to be heard and teachers to assess a student's emotional needs accurately.

What it does

The board provides an easy way for students to express their emotions with the simple touch of an emoji that triggers an audio response from speakers. We built the board to look pretty and have an inviting interface that would welcome students to interact with the board. From having a spacey theme painted by an artist at our school to being voiced by Reagan's own voice actors, this board creates a seamless experience for its users.

How We built it

The Reagan Soundboard was built from a combination of an old whiteboard stand and a large piece of wood that we cut to fit the stand. We wired the electronics using a thin copper film and connected it to a Bare Conductive board that allowed us to play audio files when one of the pins was triggered. We attached conductive panels to the copper wire as well as conductive paint that did not limit where the students could touch the board.

This board continues to serve the Reagan student body and has enabled students year after year to express themselves and feel heard and included in the Reagan community.

Challenges We Faced

The biggest challenge in creating this board was the design of the board, the sound, and the emoticons. We worked with people across our school including artists, our Special Education Director, and our Choir Instructor to attempt to build the most optimal experience possible for students. In the end, we decided to take apart a whiteboard stand and replace the whiteboard with a custom woodboard that we painted with a dark space theme. The emoticon designs were created by one of our team members and changed for 3 iterations before the team, special education instructors and other involved parties reached a consensus.

Built With

• bareconductive
• user-centered-design