student_needhelp
04-20-2006, 02:22 AM
Hello! My name is Christine and I'm currently a junior attending Parsons School of Design in New York. My major is called product design, and in my mass market class, I have decided to create a product or improve an existant product that involves children with diabetes. My grandfather had diabetes and died earlier because of it, but I want to understand deeply what and how children go through when they are notified that they have diabetes. I realized while I was trying to develop my concept, I was lacking real opinions. If anyone could answer or give feedback, that would be great! Here are few of my ideas:
Through my research, I realized that children with diabetes are suddenly constrained with schedules and important priorities. Such as, checking glucose, injecting insulin, eating the right types of food at a specific time, excersizing, etc.
Based on that, one of my concept was to make a toy, in fun shapes such as a frog or a lion or a pig, in which the alarm goes off at a certain period of the day (morning, noon, evening) and gives the responsibility to the child to feed the toy with the right type and amount of food (plastic food).
As I was going further into my research, I came upon an advice column in which when the child is too young, the parents need to inject the insulin for them. After the process is done, the parent draws a silouette of a child's body and indicates the location of the injection. This clearly shows information to the child so they can understand it better visually and mentally. Also, in school, do children bring their diabetes supplies to their nurse when they are not old enough to handle it yet? If so, a fusion of these two ideas was my second concept. It would be a container in which it stores the supplies that are needed to carry around easily, simply, and sensibly. On the top of the container would be a, a picture frame that can attatch and deattach from the container. The picture that is inserted into the frame, there would be a pen to indicate the location of the injection. There could also be options of already drawn silouettes of boy and girl's body that can be inserted into the frame. While the picture frame can deattach itself from the container, it is also magneted so it can be on the fridge, desk, carried, etc.
The second concept is to make it more compact and organized for the user, both parent and child.
Another concept was redesigning the needle of the insulin into fun shapes and color such as a crayola, a bear, etc. This would bring more a positive image rather than the negative.
Some other brainstorms were comic books and board games that uses known icons (such as barbie, buzz lightyear, etc).
Let me know if there are any questions or comments at all. Anything would help! If you'd like to email me it is: ohc795@newschool.edu. Thank you so much!
Christine Oh
Through my research, I realized that children with diabetes are suddenly constrained with schedules and important priorities. Such as, checking glucose, injecting insulin, eating the right types of food at a specific time, excersizing, etc.
Based on that, one of my concept was to make a toy, in fun shapes such as a frog or a lion or a pig, in which the alarm goes off at a certain period of the day (morning, noon, evening) and gives the responsibility to the child to feed the toy with the right type and amount of food (plastic food).
As I was going further into my research, I came upon an advice column in which when the child is too young, the parents need to inject the insulin for them. After the process is done, the parent draws a silouette of a child's body and indicates the location of the injection. This clearly shows information to the child so they can understand it better visually and mentally. Also, in school, do children bring their diabetes supplies to their nurse when they are not old enough to handle it yet? If so, a fusion of these two ideas was my second concept. It would be a container in which it stores the supplies that are needed to carry around easily, simply, and sensibly. On the top of the container would be a, a picture frame that can attatch and deattach from the container. The picture that is inserted into the frame, there would be a pen to indicate the location of the injection. There could also be options of already drawn silouettes of boy and girl's body that can be inserted into the frame. While the picture frame can deattach itself from the container, it is also magneted so it can be on the fridge, desk, carried, etc.
The second concept is to make it more compact and organized for the user, both parent and child.
Another concept was redesigning the needle of the insulin into fun shapes and color such as a crayola, a bear, etc. This would bring more a positive image rather than the negative.
Some other brainstorms were comic books and board games that uses known icons (such as barbie, buzz lightyear, etc).
Let me know if there are any questions or comments at all. Anything would help! If you'd like to email me it is: ohc795@newschool.edu. Thank you so much!
Christine Oh