Type here...Every system carries its own logic. A logic of who it serves, who it imagined when it was built, and who it left out without ever needing to say so. Music, despite being one of the most universal human experiences, is no exception. For centuries, its instruments, interfaces, and methods of teaching have been designed for those who can hear. Everything calibrated for a specific kind of body, a specific way of perceiving. For everyone else, the margin remained.
It was from that margin that this project began, and it was someone who lived in that margin who first showed that it did not have to exist.
My programming teacher is deaf. He is also a professional saxophonist. When I asked him how he had gotten there, his answer was simple: through vibration. Years of learning to feel what he could not hear, translating frequency into touch, rhythm into pulse. He had not waited for the world of music to be designed for him. He had forged his own entry. That conversation stayed with me. If one person could do that alone, over years, what would be possible if we built that path deliberately? If design, instead of ignoring these bodies, started from them?
This was not a philosophical question. It was an engineering one.
We live in a moment where recommendation systems decide what we listen to, algorithms shape what we desire, and products are built based on data from users. Contemporary design is sophisticated, but rarely neutral. It imagines a standard user and optimizes everything around that assumption. Those who do not fit that model do not receive a worse experience. Most of the time, they receive no experience.
The goal of this project was no longer to adapt music for those who cannot hear. It became more ambitious: to reconstruct the experience of music from the perspective of those who had never been considered in its original design. This meant not translating hearing, but creating a new sensory language that could stand on its own.
The result was a device that translates musical notes into vibrotactile and visual stimuli, allowing deaf and neurodivergent people to feel music through their hands. Small vibration motors represent each note through variations in intensity and duration inspired by dynamic envelopes of sound. A digital interface associates colors with notes, adding a visual layer that supports multisensory learning. The device does not attempt to replicate hearing. It constructs its own language, based on what these bodies already know how to do.
The process of building it, however, was far from linear.
In 2024, we took the project to a national innovation competition and reached the finals. We did not make the podium. The failure was useful in the worst possible way: it forced an honesty no one asks for, but every project eventually requires. The prototype worked, but the theoretical foundation was shallow. The logic behind the translation of stimuli needed more rigor. At that point, there were only two options: archive the project or start again. We started again.
We restructured the project as an academic research initiative. We immersed ourselves in literature on tactile perception and sensory learning. We rebuilt the embedded system logic and reassessed every component. The process was slow, deliberately slow. And it was precisely this slowness that allowed the project to gain consistency. Creating stopped being about fast execution and became an ongoing exercise of trial, error, and reconstruction.
It was during this second cycle that user testing began to transform hypothesis into evidence.
We conducted sessions with 18 deaf and neurodivergent participants, aged 12 to 34, in São Paulo. The protocol was intentionally simple. Participants used the device without any prior explanation of how musical notes corresponded to vibration patterns. After approximately 15 minutes, 14 out of 18 participants were able to distinguish rhythmic patterns solely through vibration, without verbal instruction or visual reference.
More than interpreting patterns, these participants gained access to an experience that had previously been unavailable to them. One participant described it as the first time she could follow something that would normally escape her. This is not merely experimental data. It is a concrete shift in what access can mean.
The tests also revealed something that had not been anticipated. The device created a different kind of attentional space. Participants who reported difficulty concentrating in traditional learning environments described the sessions as more accessible and easier to follow. This was not because the stimulus was simpler, but because it combined multiple forms of perception in a way that aligned with how they already processed the world.
This is what it means to design with intention.
The theme Designed to Desire starts from the idea that what we desire is shaped by the systems around us. Interfaces, algorithms, and products all carry assumptions about who the user is and how they should engage with the world. What this project revealed is that these assumptions can be questioned. When inclusion is treated as a starting point rather than an afterthought, the entire creation process changes.
In 2025, we returned to the same competition with a more mature version of the project. We achieved first place nationally. This result is not simply a milestone. It is the validation of an entire process: the decision to persist when it would have been easier to stop, to deepen when it would have been more convenient to deliver something sufficient, and to take seriously questions that the market has not yet learned how to answer.
Forging the Key asks what happens when we stop trying to fit into existing structures and begin to build our own paths. The answer we found was concrete. It changes who is considered in the act of creation. It changes who gains access. It changes what becomes possible for someone who had been overlooked by conventional design.
The key we forged does not open a single door.
It reshapes the lock and redefines who is able to pass through it.
Nota editorial: Este artículo contiene exclusivamente el ensayo original de Cecília Galvão (Instituto de Tecnologia e Liderança (Inteli), Brasil), cuyo trabajo fue seleccionado por la calidad y relevancia de su propuesta para ser compartido con los participantes del SABF. El contenido no ha sido editado, modificado ni intervenido por el SABF. El participante conserva todos los derechos de autor sobre su obra.
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