Major Project
Design for Urban Left-behind Children in China with a product to… [Read more]
Product for urban left-behind children in China to have remote interactions with parents
There are over 28million urban left-behind children(LBC) in China who are taken care of by grandparents or live in boarding school since their parents are away from home for work. Among them, children aged 6 to 10 account for the largest proportion. Due to the lack of parental companionship and direct care, LBC are more likely to have developmental problems and mental health issues. (And most Chinese children between the ages of 6 and 10 do not have their own smartphones and most schools do not allow children to bring mobile phones) Thus, this is a product designed for satisfying the emotional and parental needs of LBC by encouraging their parents to engage more in their lives.
Packaging
The product mainly has three warm colours (yellow, orange, orange-pink) which not only meet the colour preferences of different children but also represent the meaning of warmth, love and care. And in order to make it convenient for consumers and sales staff to get the product with the right colour, the main colour of the packaging is consistent with the main colour of the internal product.
App for parents of LBC
Parents of LBC can know their children's daily mood, tell bedtime stories to their children and complete long-term challenges with their children to improve the parent-child relationship through this supporting app which is specially designed for them. In addition to the above three main functions, remote thermal printing, voice calls and voice messages can also help parents communicate more with their children. Besides, in order to make the LBC's emotional changes more intuitively discovered by the parents as well as make the product more interesting when being used, the background colour of all interfaces will change accordingly with the mood of LBC.
Storyboard for product usage scenarios
Emotional expression is the core function of the product, which can help LBC express their mood at different stages by updating the daily emoticons on the product. This allows parents to intuitively know the emotional changes of their children and provide them with opportunities to care about their children and start a talk. In the same way, LBC can also find opportunities to express their concern for parents appropriately through the emotional expression of their parents. As a chance to engage in key moments of LBC’s lives, parents telling bedtime stories to their children with their own voices not only make the children more familiar with themselves but also allow themselves to enjoy the unique parent-child time of being a parent, which is irreplaceable by other storytelling products with the same mechanical voice. Additionally, the purpose of the long-term challenge is generating common topics and memories for LBC and parents when they work hard together to complete the challenge. This is also a good chance for parents to spend more time with LBC, communicating more with them and knowing their hobbies. Moreover, the function of remote thermal printing can be regarded as a special and silent way for expression, providing surprise and care when it is inconvenient or difficult for voice communication. Parents can print warm words, encouraging words, and even things that need to be reminded repeatedly.
The use of the product
The power button is at the bottom of the product, and the paper slot can be opened to replace the printing paper. Users can change the functions or volume by rotating two different rings.
Remote thermal printing
Parents can edit any words they want to say to their children on the app, such as encouraging words, apologies, reminder notes, etc. and print them out remotely.
Exploded product
The product exploded view shows the internal structure of the product and the arrangement of functional components.
3D print
A 3D print model was used to evaluate the assembly, ergonomics and usability of the product.
Jing Chen
I aim for simple, clever and proper design solutions to make any difference for our society, always considering users as my starting point.
During my previous experience in the student studio, I cared more about the final effect, creativity and aesthetics of the design results, hoping to get quicker benefits after the design work. However, through the duration of my degree, my focus has been moved to the social values of design problems, the feasibility and pertinence of the design output, hoping that I can make users adapt to the inevitable changes in this era or solve some social problems that cannot be ignored through design.
I look forward to renewing myself in every subsequent design work and making the most of my design ability to do things that are valuable to society.
Major Project
Design for Urban Left-behind Children in China with a product to satisfy their emotional and parental needs.