SMILE KIT for pediatric cancer kids

It is natural for any child to be fearful of new experiences and strange environments. Kids can’t fight cancer alone; parents and healthcare professionals must use many tools to help them.

After understanding the problem statement, we started with desk research to get a clear idea about the problem.

After Doing the desk research, we started creating a questionnaire for the parents.

Our target group was parents and kids, so we created personas for each of them.

We created an overall flow and brainstormed a few ideas to solve the problem.

After Ideating, we created a final prototype and concept of the smart kit for children fighting blood cancer. Speaking of the naming of the Smile Kit. We named a SMILE KIT to give smiles to children suffering from pediatric cancer. In smile kit we have smile ToyWeekly calendar, poster and sticker sheet, mobile application which connects with smile toy.

As for Smile Toy, Smile Toy works with the Smile app. We developed two scenario about smile toy.

First Scenario: providing warm comfort
First, parents connect the toy with the app. And then the toy can interact with children by giving them encouraging reactions like ‘you can do this’, ‘ i will be with you’, ‘don’t worry. And when the children grab the smile toy, they can feel haptic sensations like gentle vibrations that mimic human’s heartbeat to give comfort to children. This is the first scenario for warm comfort.

Second Scenario: Educating parents
First, parents learn from the app about cancer and explain it to their kids, such as like treatment process or any helpful information. Along the way, the smile toy can interact with children through audio aid to support parents’ explanations.
This is because parents have an emotional connection with their children. So, we thought it would be more effective for parents to explain the treatment process to their children than for doctors to explain the treatment process to their children.

In the process, we had so many failures. But As a result, We were able to create a small and cute product shown on the far right.

When we made a concept for the smile toy, we designed a certain size of smile toy through ergonomics research so that children between the ages of 6.5 and 14 can hold it in one hand because we were inspired by research saying that this age group is at high risk of pediatric cancer. We intended this toy to be made of soft material. So, We wanted children to be able to comfort themselves by holding a smile toy whenever they are anxious about the cancer treatment process.

We also applied color psychology while working on this project.White symbolizes children's innocence, and the orange color gives confidence and courage to children. so that is why we used this color.

This app can be linked with the smart toy to control the smart toy.

Both parents and children can use this calendar kit. Parents and children can understand the treatment process by playing with the treatment process on a calendar.
It is intended to reduce the stress from the treatment process.

After making the smile kit, We showed the Smile Kit to Amy Lazet, who works in the school library, and got her feedback. Because her child is undergoing pediatric cancer treatment, we thought she would give us good feedback as she knew the whole treatment process and context.

And along the way, we presented this project on the last day of the Human Factors class. We received feedback from our professors that we applied the knowledge we learned in class well. And the second feedback was that it was good because we made much effort to make the actual Smile Toys with a 3D printer.

From this project, I learned three lessons.

1. It was a good opportunity to apply color psychology, ergonomics, and human perception to an actual project.

2. while working on the project, I learned and empathized with the difficulties faced by pediatric cancer patients and their parents.

3. Making an actual product was difficult. I realized I needed more preparation and effort to convert my idea into an actual product.
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We completed this smile kit in the concept stage for the class, but if there is a chance, I would like to develop this project to a more realistic stage and improve it so that it can help pediatric cancer patients.