A home assistant that provides safety for your children.
Project brief: Design and build a social robot for any problem at hand
My role: Led the physical prototyping, industrial design, and research
Team: Kyu Ree Choi, Athena Giani, Taylor Primuth, Abby Turner
Project timeline: 10 weeks
PROBLEM
Many parents struggle with how they might transition from having their children monitored by an adult upon their absence to staying home alone.
SOLUTION
A social robot that combines the functionality of a sitter and the familiarity of a toy to a child. This gives parents a peace of mind while transitioning their kids towards being home alone.
Interactive Wagon & Camera
FEATURES
Drawable Material Sound Feedback Mobility Motion Sensor Rotating Camera Pressure Sensor Speaker Facial Recognition
Application
FEATURES
Confirming Faces & Audio Recording
Design Process
01
Ideate
Ideation & secondary research
- Mind mapping
- Articles & statistics
- Quantitative research
02
Discover
Primary research focusing on
our target users
- Survey & Interviews
- Qualitative research
03
Conceptualize
Creating concepts based on our
findings and analysis
- Affinitizing
- Sketching ideas
04
Build
Refine the chosen direction
- Prototyping & user testing
- Building
Ideate
Ideation & Secondary Research
7 million of the nations 38 million children, ages of 5-14, are left home alone on a regular basis.
58% of parents hire a babysitter at least 1 time per month
84% of parents spend at least $2000 a year on babysitting
Discover
114 Survey Responses
78 Working Parents & 36 Non-Working Parents
- Working parents usually have a babysitter
- Finding a babysitter is hard to obtain
- People put trust in a smart home device for security
4 Interviews
4 Mothers
- Most people don’t have a plan for transitioning their kids to being home alone
- Parents try to provide entertainment for kids left home alone
Through our survey we were able to gather lots of data tailored toward our target users. We asked questions that were specific toward lifestyle and preference to ensure we would not use an approach that was disliked by the mass. In our interviews, we mostly interviewed working parents, but also made sure we heard from the other side as well. By interviewing specific individuals we were able to ask personal questions that gave us insight to how parents want to tend to their children.
Conceptualization
Affinitzing & Sketching
Once we have gathered all this research and affinitized our insights, we were able to fixate on a specific direction. Listening to our users helped the team realized where their biggest pain points take place.
How might we communicate parent’s needs with their children both verbally and visually?
After many sketches, we landed on a form of a wagon. This wagon would be interactive for children to communicate to their parents and vise vera.
Build
Prototyping & Building
After our first round of a lo-fidelity physical prototype, we were able to see if children were even interested in the idea of a wagon to play with and utilize for their other toys. We brought this prototype to Forsyth Park and Isle of Hope School in Savannah, GA where kids would interact and play with the prototype.
Lo-Fi Prototype
Mid-Fi Prototype
In this stage, we made the exact measurements the final wagon and camera would be from foam core. This way we were able to put all the electronics in the appropriate places so I can think about how to build it in a smooth and seamless manner.
Before starting the final build, research was done on durability and affordability of materials to think about cost of manufacturing and our target audience. To have a business model in mind will help sell the idea and feasibilty of our project.
After deciding on the materials, the building of the wagon began and CURO was born.
Hi-Fi Product
Building process
If you are interested, please take a look at my process and feel free to reach out to me with any questions!