DanceVibe: Assistive Dancing for the Hearing Impaired.

Abstract

Dancing to the rhythm in music comes natural for most of us. This however is a little far-fetched for the hearing impaired. Not being able to hear the music, the hearing impaired rely on visual aid and techniques such as mind counting to dance. To ease the learning process and alleviate the cognitive load in a dance performance, we propose DanceVibe, a wearable device that replays the beats in music via vibrations. In a 35-volunteer user study conducted over 3-month time, we find the system adds to the visual aid in the learning process and is effective enhancing dance performance. The system is particularly useful enabling on-stage performance without the need to memorize and mind count the beats. A word of caution before using DanceVibe and DanceVibe only on stage is that it does require practice and familiarity to the concept of rhythm.