“Benny’s Adventure is an assistive toy designed for a 2-year-old boy to help him hold on the right body gesture for a longer time in collaboration with Benny’s therapist and Adaptive Design Association.”
PRODUCT OVERVIEW
Tool | Design, Physical Computing, Arduino, Fabrication
Role | Product Researcher & Manager & Prototyper
Group | Neyva, Julia Cruz, Ruojin Shi
Time Frame | Spring 2019, 4 weeks
Project Type | Group Work & Industry
“Due to disability, Benny has difficulty positioning his head and feet in the right position. The goal is to hold his feet in the right position for a longer time and encourage his head to move.”
The left side is Benny’s foot panel with a sensitive button inside it and the right side is the toy itself.
When the button is pressed, the little character in the tube will rise up with a conveyor Belt. When the button is released, the character will stop moving. When it reaches the top, the light will light up as well as the music will be played as a reward.
The toy has four customized themes (Space, Ocean, Spiderman City, the Letter tree ) and four characters (Little Astronaut, Mom, Dad, Benny), each having a story to be told by the therapist/Benny’s family member to Benny to encourage family time.
HOW IT WORKS
We visited the Adaptive Design Association in New York and learnt from the stories of designing for disability. Then we had a deep talk with Benny’s therapist to understand more about Benny’s background, interest, personality and the goal of this project.
RESEARCH
About Benny
Age: 2-year-old
Language: Russian & English
Hobby: Cars & Superheroes & Music
Current Assistive Equipment: A chair table with a foot footplate.
Needs & Wants:
1. Encourage his head to move.
2. Encourage him to hold his feet at the right position for a longer time.
3. The toy should be playful and interesting.
4. The toy could engage family members or therapist.
We developed our idea from Bubble machine to Inflatable Man to Sealed Tube with a floating ball (Later we found out air is hard to control after talking to the maker of the installation) and finally to Conveyor Belt.
We would love to focus mainly on the position correction of his feet because we have his foot plate model. Since the tube is around 30cm tall, Benny will be encouraged to move his head by looking up and down to track the character’s movement.
IDEATION
After deciding to use conveyor belt as our main mechanism in the system, we specified details of our design and functions, including the rotation direction, character design and rewarding light and music.
PROTOTYPE
1. Up & Down movement of character
2. Adaptive switch for feet’s usage
3. Rewarding System of light and sound
4. Random choice of movement animation (so the movement of character will be different every time, making the toy more playful.)
MAIN FEATURE
1. Make more customizable backgrounds and characters:
Before test we only have one set, after test we made four sets of background and character!
2. Make character/background changing more easily.
Instead of sticking the background inside the tube, we put two sleeves behind the tube for character/background changing. Also we changed the top/bottom of the box so that it can be opened to make changes instead of taking everything apart.)
3. Light & Music
We used NeoPixel lights with filters upon it for diffusion. Also we tried out amplifier and buzzer for it to work. We also made sounds in Russian.
4. Instead of a big button alone, insert it into the foot panel and let it more sensitive with pressure.
5. Let the character moving up and down continuously instead of stopping at the top and no movements happen next.
6. Randomly triggered movement animation of hero character.
TEST & FEEDBACK
