DESIGN NAME: SplashBuddy
PRIMARY FUNCTION: Educational Toy
INSPIRATION: Nowadays in a metropolitan city, almost all children from early age have their own electronic device in hands. They abuse the devices and hampers communication between parents. Then, Some questions keep looping in my mind: What is the impact on children playing their electronic devices? How can children enjoy to play without electronic devices? How to increase interaction between children and parents? Is there any skills they can learn from parents during interaction?
UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Bathing is the most intimate time for family. SplashBuddy is a bathing kit that fosters parental interaction through creating an amusing experience for both parents and children while acting as an educational toy that encourages preschooler to build up their self care ability. The design includes 5 components that encourage bathing procedures. All of the components can be detached and connected with other components flexibly to inspire children’s creativity. It is also design for bathrooms with limited space.
OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION: SplashBuddy is a bathing kit that fosters parental interaction through creating an amusing experience for both parents and children while acting as an educational toy that encourages preschooler to build up their self-care ability. The design includes 5 components that encourage bathing procedures: a goggle-like shower hat to adjust angle and width and prevent soap from dropping into eyes, octopus shaped comb for combing hair and massaging head, anglerfish container for storing water and pouring to body, turtle like sponge for cleaning the body and a whale stool for sitting and preventing injuries caused by slippery floor, for playing and arranging the tools during bath and acts as storage after bath. All of the components can be detached and connected with other components flexibly to inspire children’s creativity.
PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION: The project started in September 2015 and finished in May 2016 in Hong Kong, and was exhibited in Annual Show 2016 of School Of Design in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in June 2016.
FITS BEST INTO CATEGORY: Toys, Games and Hobby Products Design
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PRODUCTION / REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY: The design includes 5 components and all of them are made of silicone and plastic. The design is water proof and has been considered children's safety problems. Sharp and playful colours are used to attract children to play. The characters (whale, octopus and anglerfish)of design are chosen based on their characteristics. For example, whale is the biggest fish in the ocean. During bathing, It seems that children becomes a diver(wearing goggle shower hat).They are sitting on whale(stool) and travelling in the ocean. All upper parts and lower parts of components(octopus, anglerfish, turtle) can be detached and connected with other components flexibly to inspire children’s creativity. There are wire and rubber band inside the goggle shower hat for adjusting suitable angle and width. Also, two-ways used cover is designed on the whale stool. Side with a rectanglar sink is designed for placing the tools or toys during bathings. The another side without sink is designed for coverage. On the other hand, to keep the stool lives longer. When children growth or become adults, they do not play toys in the bathroom anymore, but they still need a stool to sit or assist bathing.
SPECIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES: Whale stool:Width 280mm x Depth 200mm x Height 280mm, Octopus comb:(upper part)Width 63mm x Depth 39mm x Height 63mm, (lower part) Width 58mm x Depth 28mm x Height 58mm, Turtle sponge:(upper part)Width 63mm x Depth 22mm x Height 63mm, (lower part) Width 58mm x Depth 28mm x Height 73mm, Anglerfish container:(upper part)Width 63mm x Depth 58mm x Height 63mm, (lower part) Width 58mm x Depth 28mm x Height 73mm, Goggle shower hat:Width 220mm x Depth 35mm x Height 190mm
TAGS: Educational Toy, Interactive, Self-care ability, Playful, Preschooler, Bath Toy
RESEARCH ABSTRACT: My research started from my personal experience to deeply study the issues and impact of electronic devices on children by online questionaire, books and journals. The answer is found that the abuse of electronic devices has great impact on children such as causing lack of self-care ability, social ability and hampers communication between parents. Then I interviewed 10 parents about when is their parental time in a day and how is their interaction with child. The answer that I found is bathing is the most intimate moment and most of the parents tried to let their child bathing alone and only assisting them. However, their child was just simply playing but no bathing. Then, the objective of design is came out with 'Learning by playing and communicating'. After that, I study the size of bathroom, process of bathing, time spending and skills learning and behavior by age. And later on, I finalized the concept and think about the idea. I also researched the colors uses, size of children's hands and materials uses. And have experiment about waterproof, children safety problem and functions.
CHALLENGE: As my design is targeted aged 3-5 years old children and their parents, the major problem is children were easily to be tired of playing something. Therefore, I tried to think of some tricky and playful things (not the main fuctions of the design) as adding value of my design. For example: The octopus is a comb for massaging hair, but it is also a dropper. The user first need to join the upper and lower part of the octopus together. Put the octopus in the water and use his first finger to cover octopus's mouth. Take the octopus from the water and remove the finger. Water will drop from the holes of the bottom of octopus legs. Also, I hope my design will not be wasted after children had growth, the whale stool with a 2-sides cover is designed for different age group to use.
ADDED DATE: 2017-05-25 16:12:20
TEAM MEMBERS (1) :
IMAGE CREDITS: Sum Tsang Wai Sum, 2016
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