Dwarfs 어린이 교육 키트 by Man Wai Wong is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2020 A' Design Award 철상 in 완구, 게임 및 취미 제품 디자인 Competition Category.

철완구· 2020

Dwarfs 어린이 교육 키트

by Man Wai Wong

A' Design Award 철상 Winner in 완구 Category

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Colors

The Design

About Dwarfs 어린이 교육 키트

드워프스(Dwarfs)는 일반 학교에 재학 중인 6세에서 12세 사이의 자폐 스펙트럼 장애 아동을 위한 교육 키트이다. 이 키트는 이모보드(Emoboard)와 이모브젝트(Emobject)라 불리는 작은 블록들로 구성된다. 사회복지사가 놀이를 이끈다. 아이는 이모브젝트를 바라보고 만져본 뒤 이모보드 위에 올려놓으며, 그러면 부정적인 감정과 연결된 소리가 재생된다. 아이는 그 감정을 추측하고 정답 카드를 통해 확인한 다음, 그 감정을 달래주는 또 다른 이모브젝트를 선택한다. 시각, 촉각, 청각을 활용하여 감정의 표현과 조절을 돕고 의사소통을 장려한다.

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award 철상

Dwarfs 어린이 교육 키트, 이 작품은 A' Design Award 철상 수상작으로, 잘 디자인된 창작물에 기대되는 전문적·산업적 요건을 충족하는 좋은 디자인에 수여되는 권위 있는 인정입니다. 철상 수상작은 창작자의 뛰어난 기술, 높은 전문성, 전문가다운 이해, 창의적 역량을 보여 줍니다. Dwarfs 어린이 교육 키트, 이 작품은 높이 평가받고 감탄과 사랑을 받는 창작물로서 실용적이고 혁신적일 것으로 기대됩니다. 이 철상 수상 디자인은 업계 모범 사례를 통합하며 노하우와 재능으로 연결된 유능한 기술적 특성을 갖추고 있습니다. Dwarfs 어린이 교육 키트, 이 작품은 철저함으로 존중받으며 삶의 질을 개선하여 세상을 더 나은 곳으로 만들도록 디자인되었습니다.

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties: There are two aspects that the ASD children are not good at, emotion and communication, the product aims to improve the children's social lives by training these two aspects.

The product targets 6 - 12 years old ASD children who are educated in ordinary schools. It involves a playing process with a social worker to educate the children about emotion expression and emotion control. In the process, visual, tactile and auditory sensation of the children will be triggered, so that the children will have more and deeper communication with the social worker instead of only verbal communication, eventually their social skills will be improved.
Dimensions & Packaging: Emoboard: Width 400mm x Depth 400mm x Height 283mm

Each Emobject: About Width 70mm x Depth 70mm x Height 70mm
Tags: autism, education, sensation, communication
Production Technology: In the design, RFID technology is added to complete the auditory stimulation. Also, digital programming of Arduino and Pure Data are also involved.
Design Challenge: The most challenging issue in the project would be the technology part.

RFID technology and digital programming were definitely difficult for a product designer. Therefore, a former IT tutor in Hong Kong Polytechnic University was invited to help with these parts.
Research: A first hand research was conducted in 2018, included observation on some ASD children and an interview with a social worker who was working on some projects about ASD children. The research was to know about what kind of difficulties or issues that the ASD children and social worker face in their usual lives.

A first hand survey was conducted in 2019 in order to collect people's impression on different emotions for the design development. The participants were required to draw the colours and anything that could recall their different emotional memories. 30 people participated in the survey, included adults, children and ASD children.
Inspiration: Under Integrated Education in Hong Kong, some ASD students were being labelled because of their different behaviours, many of them just do not know how to express their feelings and emotions properly. Therefore, this became the starting point of the project.

In the design, different sensations were involved because I took tactile therapy as a reference. It inspired me to arrange stimulation of different sensations so that ASD children will be triggered to have more and deeper communication since some of them are not good at verbal communication.
Project Duration: The project is a Product Design student final year project finished in Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The project started in September 2018 in Hong Kong and finished in May 2019 also in Hong Kong, half of the duration was for research stage, half was for design stage. It was exhibited at the Design Annual Show 2019 in Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Operation Flow: The gaming process is held by a social worker while an ASD child is the participant.

First, the child is required to pick up an Emobject that represents a negative emotion. He has to observe it by eyes, touch it by ears and put it on the Emoboard, the Emoboard will then produce a sound that represents that specific negative emotion. After the whole observation, the child will guess which negative emotion that the Emobject represents. He can check the answers with the answer cards.

After, the child is required to use the observation method mentioned above to guess another Emobject that represents a negative emotion, which can soothe the previous negative emotion. If his answer is correct, he can put the Emobject he chooses on the Emoboard, the sound of Emoboard will slowly change from the negative emotion to the positive one.

The gaming process is to educate ASD children about emotion expression and control.
Team Members: Main designer: Man Wai Wong

Co-designer: Chi Wing Lee