Inspired by the emotional role music plays in people’s lives, Sona explores how music can be experienced beyond sound — through touch, rhythm, and social connection.
Context
Sona is an accessibility-centered tactile music experience designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. It pairs a mobile app with a wearable shoe sole that translates music into real-time vibrations, so rhythm, emotion, and social connection can be felt through touch.
As team lead I directed research and design — user research, synthesis, personas, and the product vision from concept to prototype — with Lily Zhang and Wanyi Zhu.
About three months in Spring 2026 (IXDSN 2400-1): mixed-methods research, a reframed How Might We, an MVP of app plus sole, then a high-fidelity prototype.
Project brief
How might we create a more immersive and accessible way for mid-to-late life adults who are deaf and hard of hearing to experience the full depth of music in social contexts?
Research kept pointing past “can they hear it?” toward identity and belonging — music as something you share in a room, not only something you receive through a speaker.
Accessibility experiences often stop at function. Sona had to support emotional connection, not only a vibration map of a beat.
Insights pushed the product toward clearer onboarding, accessibility customization, and interaction that feels immersive rather than purely assistive.
Design
The MVP is an app-driven experience that translates live or streamed sound into vibration through the soles, with a home that asks how you want to listen.
By translating sound into tactile interaction, Sona treats accessibility as something seamless, expressive, and socially connective.
Prototype flows, MVP sole + app, and the reframed How Might We.
Process
Expert interviews, concept testing, usability testing, personas, affinity mapping, and product-market fit work came first. That mix is what moved the brief from “make music accessible” to social, mid-to-late-life, full-depth experience.
The MVP is physical: a shoe sole with a haptic pad, plus an app that listens for nearby music. We used a 3D printer for the wearable and Lovable in the digital pass — the object had to exist, not only a mockup of feet on a screen.
Result
The team left the term with a named product, a pairing-and-listen prototype, and a wearable sole. Sona became an exploration of how design can amplify connection and inclusion through multisensory interaction — not only a music-accessibility concept.
[TODO: add Sona demo mp4 and any result metrics]
An AI-generated walkthrough of someone using Sona will appear here soon.
Takeaways
Social context and “full depth” changed the product more than a list of accessibility features would have.
Printing a sole kept the team honest about pairing, calibration, and what “feel the music” has to mean.
Clearer onboarding and a quieter home were how the research showed up — not a paragraph about inclusion.
