KUBUS
Sensory Experience Design
The project focus for the final year of my Honours degree has been based around Playspace Design. The thesis explored the children's experience during play and how it effects their perceptions of play. The research highlighted key opportunities within playtime and how each experience changes the attitudes and behaviour of children. The focus for the next few months will be developing a concept to improve the sensory experience that children have during playtime.
The Problem.
Existing playgrounds lack creativity and imagination, no sense of experimentation and not enough stimulation for brain development. Children’s development is crucial from a young age, were not experiencing enough sensory play could lead to Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). Sensory integration is part of the sensory processing in children’s behaviour, where it can range from passive to active. To meet the sensory needs of young children in outdoor private play spaces, Kubus has been specifically designed to enhance the interactions and behaviour response in a child’s development.
Kubus is designed to be a modular piece of equipment that can be easily assembled, used and stored within the establishment. Currently, modern playgrounds have helped children to interact and connect themselves more within the environment, rather than sensory experience such as touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste, along with movement, balance and spatial awareness. Unfortunately, nowadays young children are no longer experiencing risk or sensory play due to technology. Sensory play helps children develop important life skills at a young age.
The Solution.
Kubus is designed as a play cube that enhances children’s imagination, help with creativity and cognitive skills. More importantly, Kubus enriches the sensory experience through the different type of textures and physical activities. The simple yet geometric form of a cube helps develop sensory experiences throughout imaginative play with undefined tunnel paths and exploring the hands-on sensory panels. The unique perspective of Kubus, enables an immersive learning play experience that changes the behavioural attitudes of children to expose various sensory outputs by organizing the child’s brain.
Kubus is ergonomically designed for the 2 to 5-year age bracket. Kubus has interchangeable sensory panels that consist of different sensory experiences: touch, hear and sight. These panels will be placed on any four of the six sides of the cube and are restrained by a screwed knob.
“The possibilities are endless.”
— Marie Boulanger
KUBUS.
It is smartly designed so that each of the sensory panels is securely placed in four sides of the cube, which hinder the children to accidentally trap one another by constantly having at least one opening and exit side. Kubus is entirely safe to use, as it was designed to have the ability to stack each cube on top of each other and even along sideways, thus it allows the children to create a maze-like system that enhances imaginative play.
The corners of each cube’s edge will have a cylindrical extruded bumper for mating, that enforces two cubes to fit together naturally and are held in place during usage (play). The pre-assembled frame allows the adult to simply un-pack Kubus and then enable the children to independently place the sensory panels into place and use the knob to attach/join the panel to the cube securely. Kubus’ unique designed parts are easy to remove and replaceable, which allows for specific parts that are worn to be replaced individually without having to replace the entire cube.
QUT Design Festival - Creative Industries
On the 13th of November 2019 I had the amazing opportunity to showcase the project at the QUT Design Festival.
- 2019 -