The aim of this group project was to help someone with a problem or issue they have in their everyday life using product design. We chose to work with my sister Abbie who suffers with social anxiety. She gets nervous when she has to leave the house and after our initial interview we realized Abbie fidgets a lot when anxious. This lead brainstorming and coming up with some prototypes for Abbie to try and give feedback on. Abbie had a good idea of what did and didn't work for her which lead to a co creation session with some of the group members and Abbie. This was an important process within the design to get it right for our fixpartner Abbie. We came up with some final designs which were 2 cuffs for the handle of Abbie's child's buggy. They will be detachable so they can be used on future buggy's. We went with Abbie's calming color purple and velvet for a soft touch. There is a pocket inside the cuffs which hold a squishy for Abbie to discreetly fidget with along with pearls/beads on wire to play with. We presented them to Abbie. She was really happy with the results and commented that the Comforting Cuffs would help her on bus journeys to take her mind of the anxiety.
