We asked our 2024-25 Accessible Instrument Development Fund grantees to document their journey towards creating a brand new accessible instrument. One of our grantees, Hunaid Nagaria, wrote the below blog to provide a detailed insight into how their instrument, Midas, was made!
Midas, by Hunaid Nagaria
“Midas is an adaptive, wearable controller that transforms any object or surface into a uniquely calibrated musical interface. Born from a five-month co‑design journey, this project asked: how might we redefine access to recreational tech for people with muscle‑weakening conditions like Muscular Dystrophy? Rather than treating control as something rigid and standardised, Midas brings interaction to the user’s fingertips—using soft, fabric-based force sensors to create a highly personal and flexible input system.
Working directly with accessibility advocates and gamers, Vivek Gohil and Grant Stoner, I followed a “Start‑with‑One” methodology: build for one individual’s needs with potential for wider impact. In a feedback session, Grant said: “If you were to design an ergonomic controller for MD, you’d have to make a different one for each individual.” This insight became a powerful provocation: what if we stopped designing for a fixed object, and instead allowed people to bring use objects of their liking?
The provocation led us to a wearable: soft, textile-based force sensors that wrap around each finger like a ‘finger sock’. It doesn’t require movement but instead, it registers pressure, ideal making them especially suited for people with limited mobility. The user presses their fingers against any surface be it a table, a phone, a spoon and the deformation of the fabric sensor sends a signal. Each device is calibrated to each person’s strength. The hands stay central for their comfort and control.
As the prototype took shape, something unexpected happened. During one of the later user testing sessions, Ruud van der Waal from My Breath My Music joined as an observer. With extensive experience developing accessible musical instruments, Ruud immediately saw the musical potential in the system. While my initial focus was on gameplay, he pointed out that the same physical interactions like pressing, holding, tapping are also foundational to music-making. The flexibility, sensitivity, and wearability of the sensors made them well-suited for use as accessible musical interfaces.
This prompted a shift in perspective: Midas wasn’t just a controller but it was an instrument too.
Gaming and music share something fundamental: they are both forms of play, of cultural participation, and of self-expression. Both rely on a relationship between user and tool that is often deeply personal. Midas respects and enhances that relationship. It allows users to choose objects that are comfortable, familiar, and ergonomic to them and transform those objects into expressive musical tools rather than remove them from the equation.
As the project evolved, Midas became a flexible, analog instrument. Because the sensors are highly tunable, users can map pressure to volume, effects, or note changes. Because the interface is wearable, they can perform across irregular or found surfaces but not just traditional buttons or keys. And because Midas is designed for adaptability, it’s proven surprisingly effective for users beyond the original MD cohort. Individuals with tremors, for instance, have found that the larger “target area” of Midas gives them more control than standard buttons.
With support from the Accessible Instrument Development Fund, I’m now entering the next phase of the project: refining the sensors, building PCBs, and collaborating with musicians to explore Midas’ potential. The grant also connects me with the Drake Music community, an opportunity I deeply value as a designer without lived experience of disability or a musical background. This engagement ensures that future iterations of Midas are shaped by the very people who will use it most”.
You can also watch Hunaid present his work at our DMLab London event in September:
Thanks to Hunaid for documenting his work with Midas!
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Our Accessible Instrument Development Fund, a part of DMLab London, is supported by the City of London Corporation’s charitable funder, City Bridge Trust, London Catalyst, and with public funding from Arts Council England.
