children

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Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines are a common solution for sleep apnea patients. They are extremely evasive and often disrupt sleep patterns, positions and overall comfort of the user. Despite CPAPs quality of use, they continue to be uncomfortable for the user and often are a hindrance rather than help. They can often cause, eye infections, stuffy noses, anxiety, pressure points, and dry mouth. For Children with sleep apnea a CPAP machine can be a traumatizing experience, and the market has yet to be explored.

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Modulette is a play platform for girls ages 3-6 that ecourages construction, customization, and activity through defined dance moves and chalk panels that custom instructions can be inscribed upon. 

The baltic birtch laser inscribed panels are connected by injection molded silicone spacers that provide a sprung floor efect for dancing and moving on.

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The Tag Project was featured in the Spring 2013 edition of the Current Design Research Journal.

Design students were asked to collaborate with children with special learning needs to create an interactive textile-based artifact or system that would encourage sustainable practices within Kenneth Gordon Maplewood School. The resulting design would be gifted to KGMS and its students for implementation in their school.

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This project was directed at finding a simple yet effective and fun learning activity for children, specifically teaching for the 21st century. We thought that there was a large portion of people that are loosing their ability to tell time quickly on an analog clock, due to their growing comfort with looking at digital clocks. Our group felt that the sooner kids learn how to quickly tell time on both analog and digital clocks, the better. The result is a very friendly and simple toy that requires a time to be entered in either one of the clocks, and then the child has to enter the correct duplication on the other. This to us was a perfect solution since it also encourages participation of the adult in the learning process.

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Beauty in Variety is a platform designed to bring awareness- and help develop the ability to articule- on the need of racial diversity in our lives. Made for parents with young children, a book takes readers on an adventure with four children as they discover how much their lives depend on difference, starting with gentle topics like ingredients to bake a treat but building to the more complex subject of multiculturalism. An online portion accompanies parents on how to approach the subject so that no adult feels they are not adequately able to comfortably speak on the matter. 

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Opportunity: Using playful rehabilitation as a source of meaningful social engagement and empowerment for seniors after physical trauma.

Hippo is intended for seniors experiencing depression following physical trauma and their caregiving family. The focus is to promote creative interactions,  that move past memory loss, cognitive degeneration or challenged mobility using their remaining skills. The aim is to provide all the members of the caregiving family a means to understand what the senior is experiencing through their own body, as well as a new way to observe and understand the senior's needs through play.

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Project Tunnel Vision implemented several activities to see what does and does not work in co-creating with children. An activity booklet was tested, along with playground building with shapes and pieces, an obstacle course and fort building session in a gymnastics studio, as well as in-playground play and game making. Some activities were distracting, some outcomes were predictable, and some activities were very surprising. One thing was certain about the co-creation activities: that simply being around the children gave the design team immense insight into how they play and see the world.

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Project Tunnel Vision is an investigation into the contemporary playground environment. Upon exploring various problems with modern playgrounds it was learnt that children are not included in the design process, and when they were it was generally a token gesture. The purpose of this systems design is to put children at the front lines of the design process. By consulting children with a number of constructive activities, a context-specific design is created via community engagement. Once a playground has been designed by both the children and the design team, it is shown to the client and goes through several revisions by the client and children co-creation team.

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Burns Bog Tour is the proposal for an interactive guide to the Burns Bog in Delta. It uses games and short term goals (such as a scavenger hunt) to engage students in learning about the fascinating biodiversity and history of the bog, and includes features such as a backpack and journal for personalization. Participants of the tour would work towards leveling up, from dragonfly to bear, and would receive a pin with their accomplished level at the end of the tour.

The Burns Bog Tour for the iPad was developed by Jonas Bødtker, Marcela Huerta, Sarah Kozlowski, and Heather Neale. For the most part it uses current iPad technology, but would rely on as of yet non-existent camera capabilities to function.

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The Academy of B.C. Children's Hospital (ABCH) is a group project in collaboration with B.C. Children's Hospital that involves building a new framework for their existing website.

The design problem is that there is a massive amount of information presented in a rather dry and static way, and we do acknowledge that a hospital website needs to be highly informative. How could we present this material in a manner that encourages the interaction of exchanging and receiving this health knowledge within and outside the website? During the process, we came up with the idea that people learn the most through teaching, when they're reiterating their knowledge to other people. The final outcome revolves around the idea of sharing.