Search This Blog

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Big Questions

How can a product designed for therapeutic intervention help a much broader audience.

Sub questions
1. Who is the specific target?
2. How does each Sensory Processing Dysfunction equipment engage to body?
3. Is a product going to be straightly a medical product, or a combination of medical and a toy?
4. Can I combine two different areas of therapies in a product?
5. Am I going to redesign an existing product or design a totally new product?
6. What is a way to extract the best quality from each idea?
7. Do parents, caregivers, and baby sitters need any products in caring SPD children?
8. Is it going to be straightly for SPD children or ultimately for all children?
9. Are there any programs or affordable products for low income families?
10. Are there enough equipments for home treatment or for on the go?
11. Is a product going to be for one child or for more than one child?
12. How big is your product going to be?
13. What kind of materials am I going to use?
14. How can I make a product in a way both effective and fun?
15. What are the problems with existing equipments?
16. How long does it take to see any noticeable improvements in a child?
17. Is there any product specifically designed for adult with SPD?

Below is a list of questions that I emailed out to the therapists.

1. How much is per treatment or the program and is everything covered by insurance?

2. How often does a child come to the class?

3. Is there any type of aids available for low income families with SID children?

4. How long does it take to see any improvement and how long does a SID child stay in the program on average?

5. Which are the most effective equipments to treat SID children with and what do you like about?

6. Which are the least effective equipments to treat SID children with and why? (If applicable,)

7. Which are the children’s favorite equipments or physical activities and what do they like about?

8. How big and how long is one class?

9. What are main concerns that families with SID children have when they first walk in to the class? In other words, what do they want to get out of the program?

10. How would you want to differentiate your class, program, or sensory gym exceptional from others?

11. What are the difficulties in treating children?

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bora,
    This is a long, detailed list of questions, and it shows that you are beginning to think in depth about your topic. You are going to start to learn everything about this, including: the pedagogical objectives of therapy for SPD children; the existing products out there for use during therapy; and how the existing ones fall short in some important aspect. YOu may learn, for example, that kids the feeling of fur against there skin, they find that calming. So, you could make a special rocking chair made out of fur. This is an area where many designers have already been working, and it is a crowded market. You have to differentiate your product from what is now available by finding some new angle that will make your product noticeably different. Remember who is your audience: you have to first get the attention of teachers, therapists and parents, but ultimately it is the child who is using this, and they must like it and find it beneficial. I recommend that you read many case studies of actual kids and observe more classes if possible. Watch carefully to see what doesn't work. Find new materials, or colors or textures, really engage the child's senses and allow them to play.

    In planning your survey, make sure that you ask the fewest possible questions, do not be repetitive and make it very easy and fun for the person filling out their answers. You can use Google surveys to create this. Let me know if you would like me to show you how to do that.
    steven

    ReplyDelete