Newsletter nº 4. January 2013 WORK SCHEDULE STATUS Design4children work has entered its later 6-month phase accomplishing its working schedule. At this point, R1 (Design-Support) and R2 (Virtual-Tester) are already developed and R3 (PurchaseAdviser) is quite advanced. We have started to prepare the validation phase which all three results will be tested in real conditions with the companies. As a reminder, the results of the project are; R1: The Design Support Software Tool is a knowledge based support application for designers. The purpose of this application is to provide information for designers to help them with product design. This application will aid the designer to introduce enhanced functionality to products and assure children’s comfort and wellbeing. R2: The core of the Virtual-Tester consists in a virtual dynamic mannequin allowing the designer to define the different childcare products in intimate contact with children’s body. Such mannequin will include anthropometrical criteria for fitting, with dynamic properties allowing anthropometric variations (due to age and morph type), movements performed of each developmental stage and environmental conditions to evaluate thermal comfort. R3: This software consists of a database crossed by a flux of information. Manufacturers, experts, customers and retailers feed the database and use the software. The information gathered can be used by; Customers when buying the products, retailers to serve better to the customers, manufacturers to improve their products. For more information visit our webpage: http://www.design4children.eu/ For more information please contact the project coordinators: José Olaso: jose.olaso@ibv.upv.es or Luis Ballester : lballester@asepri.es
PAEDIATRICS FOUCUS GROUPS SESSIONS A workshop with paediatrics took place during September 2012. The objective was to obtain a general and detailed overview of paediatrics’ opinion regarding Design4Children targeted products: clothing, footwear and childcare products. With that aim, fifteen paediatrics participated in a controlled design of experiments. The tasks developed consisted in three parallel focus groups sessions in which paediatrics were presented different set of products/situations (by means of pictures, collages, etc.) to elicit their response/opinion. The audio and video of the sessions was recorded to later extract worthy information. This information was used to improve and enhance the validity of Design4children results regarding product design, product interaction with the final user (parents and children), as well as retailers and designers. These sessions took place in IBV’s facilities with ASEIP’s collaboration. Form more information please contact: José Olaso: jose.olaso@ibv.upv.es or diez jav@gva.es Newsletter nº 4 – January 2013