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Developmental handbook
For my Senior Capstone project, my group is working with East Boston Social Center (EBSoc) on implementing a design solution for Parent Administered Developmental Monitoring. Our project is a Developmental Handbook that leverages at-home items to create age specific toys that help monitor developmental milestones, from birth to children three years of age.
Our team was tasked with researching Child Development and Early Education in the East Boston community and assigned two clients, East Boston Social Center and the Mayor's Office of Boston.
PROCESS
01 CLIENT RESEARCH
Understand the client's needs and problem areas they are currently facing to determine areas of intervention
04 PROTOTYPE
Create low fidelity prototypes of handbook and physical toys
02 INDUSTRY RESEARCH
Gather information about child development industry and scientific journals about developmental screening
05 GIGA MAP
Continue research to influence product decision making as well as articulate how this solution will yield benefits for EBSoc
03 CONCEPT
Concept 3 different solutions for developmental monitoring
06 PITCH
Present final proof of concept to class and clients for feedback on next steps for the following semester
process breakdown
Research & IDEATION
At the start of the semester, each student worked with the two clients to understand which of their problem areas could benefit from a design solution. Individually, we identified our specific interests and then gathered in small teams to align on an area of interest to serve as our focus for the remainder of the year. My team's focus is developmental monitoring of children ages zero to three.
We gathered data from scientific studies on cognitive development and learned about the child development industry for three weeks before brainstorming several solutions.
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Systems Map of Developmental Monitoring
COncept Development
After ample research, we came up with three different design solutions that focused on combating stigma against parental administered monitoring, increasing awareness of the benefits of such monitoring, and providing accessibility for this important milestone measurement to benefit the East Boston community. After evaluating the feasibility and desirability of each idea, we landed on creating the Developmental Handbook. This book is a digestible manual for parents to make toys using items found around the house, which they can then use to keep track of their child's developmental milestones.
Template for DIY Toy
Initial Sketch
Giga map & PROTOTYPE
In order to create the handbook we needed to identify specific age segmentation of developmental milestones and the appropriate toys for monitoring. Our research directly influenced the development of our product; In order to articulate our findings we built a Giga Map to breakdown each component of our research to give our solution validity.
Simultaneously, we began to design and brand the handbook, as well as prototype the physical toys for the different ages. For the book we prioritized friendly language and branding to align with our goal to combat stigma. To increase awareness, we included digestible information about key milestones. Lastly, our entire design solution was centered around accessibility by utilizing household items that have ranges of substitutions for our specific demographic.
Giga Map & Product Development
Next Steps
REFINE
Along with many additional refinements like user feedback, we plan to complete the handbook by adding 2 toy options for each age segmentation and corresponding guided play.
We also want to explore innovative materials and layouts for how the book could look in its final form.
TRANSLATE
We hope to utilize East Boston Social Center's translators and have the book translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic as the majority of East Boston is populated with culturally diverse backgrounds.
IMPLEMENT
In order to distribute these handbooks amongst the community members of EBSoc, we plan to do a pop up inside the facility that will allow parents to join together to access the Developmental Handbook.
Above anything we want to empower parents to learn about the life long impact that developmental monitoring can have on their children.