Ford: Case study

Credits & Description:

Client: Ford
Agency: GTB Roma
Chief Creative Officer GTB EMEA: Julian James Watt
Executive Creative Director: Federico Russo
Art Director: Stefania Esposito
Copywriter: Leonardo Pastacaldi
Client Service Director: Andrea Manfredonia
Business Director: Chiara Di Loreto
Account Executive: Marta Vagnarelli
IT Manager, Data Administrator and Analyst: Massimiliano Pacilio
Head of production: Mara Bruschetti
Production and post production Company: Why Worry Production
Director: Mauro Mancini
DoP: Agostino Vertucci
Executive producer: Diego Panadisi
Line producer: Francesca Esposito
Editor: Julien Panzarasa
Sound design: SUONI LAB - Rome
Editing: Claudio Bresciani
Published: May 2018
Synopsis:
Feel The View, a new innovative device, that when applied on a car window is able to decode a landscape seen from the car, allowing visually impaired people to experience it with the tip of their fingers.
Highways opened to everybody. This was Henry Ford’s dream over a 100 years ago. That dream is now evolving, day by day, to improve people’s lives, changing the way they travel: From sharing mobility services to those of collaborative parking, from solutions to revolutionize logistics in the cities of the future, to imagine a world where streets will be reconstructed according to people needs and traffic flows.
A process of evolution that wants to be as inclusive as possible and meet the needs of all people, even and especially those with disabilities.
For this reason, today, Ford of Italy and GTB Roma want to bring Feel The View to life: a new innovative device, that when applied on a car window is able to decode a landscape seen from the car, allowing visually impaired people to experience it with the tip of their fingers.
The device is able to transform a flat surface of a car window into a tactile display. The prototype captures and transforms the photos taken by the integrated camera into haptic sensory stimuli, not visible, perceptible through touch and hearing.
The photo taken from the device is converted from the internal software into a greyscale image. This image is then reproduced across the glass window by special LEDs. The device causes vibrations of 255 different intensity at the point of touch: The lower the intensity of gray, the greater is the intensity of the vibration. The blind user is in this way able to sense the different vibrations exploring the window with his fingers and will be able to visualize and reconstruct the view into his mind.
The prototype, connected to the internet, integrates a system of artificial intelligence and vocal synthesis that completes the experience: a vocal assistant connected to the Ford car’s audio system, helps the blind person to contextualize the image captured by the built-in camera, allowing them to explore all shapes of the surrounding areas autonomously, simply and intuitively.
The video was made by the production company Whyworry, directed by Mauro Mancini. Special thanks to the protagonist of the video, Anna Rita De Bonis, CEO of Views International.