Children's Allergy Communication Aid
Final Year University project that focuses on helping parents teach their children about their food allergies.
In the UK, 7% of children suffer from food allergies, a figure that continues to rise each year. As well as posing significant physical health risks, food allergies have been shown to negatively impact the sufferer’s quality of life. In both parents and children, the fear of an allergic reaction causes stress and anxiety. To combat this, parents may often restrict their child from attending anxiety inducing social events, e.g. playdates, where the risk of an allergic reaction is high. Primary research discovered that during these events parents worry children may forget about their allergies, and they believe others present do not have a good enough understanding. Cutting out social events may help ease the parent’s concern, but the child’s social growth may be negatively impacted. The Children’s Allergy Communication Aid has been designed to prevent this from happening by aiming to make both the child and parent more comfortable.
The product has been designed with the cognitive abilities of 4-6 year olds in mind, considering things such as their memory span, positive reinforcement, repetition and play.
To begin the design process, an initial questionnaire was answered by parents of children with food allergies. This questionnaire provided direction to the project, and allowed the designer to produce user personas. It developed with focus groups and through multiple interviews with experts in the education, psychology and nutrition fields the concepts were developed and narrowed down. For example, teachers suggested the toy should incorporate an animal because the child would personfiy the toy and be able to project their feelings onto it, leading to the concept of play therapy. The psychologist provided valuable insight into colour theory, and advised avoidance of the colour red because children may have associated their allergies as a negative thing, and something to be ashamed of when the product was trying to achieve the opposite.
Once a final concept was chosen low-fidelity prototypes were sent to both the experts and parents, and appropriate developments made based on their feedback. The ergonomics were refined, as well as the mechanism used to open the tail.
The parent has control over what information is shared with the child, and once the child understands they can place the coin in the whale. This process turns the aid into a game, with the main goal of filling the whale.
At social events, the communication aid will capture other children’s attention and increase their interest in the important conversation. The presence of the physical toy at the event should also act as a comfort for the child.