A Study on the Design of Bidirectional Emotion Translator for the Hearing Impaired Based on SAPAD- AHP

In order to enhance the quality of life of the hearing impaired, this study aims to construct a two-way translator for the hearing impaired to realize design innovation. The study employs non-participatory observation and in-depth interviews to analyze the user’s behavioral patterns of using the translator. By introducing the SAPAD framework, the study mined the mapping relationship of “Behavior-Object-Meaning” and clustered it to derive general meaning clusters. Then, the weights of these general meaning clusters are calculated by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and the multilevel core meaning clusters are obtained through filtering and clustering to identify the core needs of users. Based on the mapping analysis of “multi-level core meaning clusters - product”, the study reconstructed the component system. The conclusion shows that when using the translator, the needs of the hearing impaired include understanding the emotions of others and expressing their own emotions, which confirms the necessity of introducing affective computing in the translator function. In this study, we carried out the practice of designing a bi-directional emotional translator for the hearing impaired based on affective computing based on the SAPAD-AHP fusion framework. Finally, this study provides a practical reference case for the SAPAD-AHP fusion framework, which helps to continuously improve the theoretical system of product construction under the semiotic path.