PHYSICAL DESIGN · WORK AT RAM
Tactile learning materials
A design-review example about what a scaled street model communicates to a hand. The important decision was which distinctions to preserve, and which visual details to leave out.
Employer-owned prototype work. This page describes a design-review contribution without publishing client source or claiming ownership.
Scale changes the meaning of a detail
A printed road model has to be explored by a fingertip. Reducing every feature by the same factor does not preserve how easy those features are to distinguish.
The parametric design accounts for kerbs, paving, raised markings, neighbouring tiles and access for the hand. A geometric clearance check can help inspect reachability. It cannot tell us what a learner understands.
Removing a detail can make the model clearer
One of my design-review decisions was to remove zigzag road markings from the tiles. The concern was that a visually familiar road detail could become a disproportionately strong tactile cue at model scale.
Many street details coexist at full scale.
Keep the distinctions a hand needs to find.
What this example shows
The contribution is a judgment about representation: how geometry, scale and material affect what an object communicates.
This is prototype and design-review work. I am not claiming endorsement, deployment or measured learning outcomes.