Understanding the world through touch and sound
Every child wants to have a friend; every child likes to explore everything around him or her through tactile experience. “Look, I only touched it, and it replied to me! I understand it!”
That friend can be Buddy – a gentle tool of therapy and emotional nurturing that will subtly foster the child’s imagination and memory. Buddy is lifelike, it can move and use sounds to communicate. Its natural and abstract shape engages creative imagination – one child will see it as a bunny, another – as a space traveller from a distant galaxy. Buddy’s surface features relief elements that will guide the child’s fingers towards sound-activating zones. The selection of sounds can be changed which allows to modify Buddy’s mood or even treat oneself and one’s friends to a little concert by playing the sounds of real musical instruments. Buddy will help gain a better understanding of emotions, the creation of melodies will have a calming effect. This is extremely important to children with autism who can be very sensitive to the environment and have difficulty understanding the emotions of others. The sound zones have words written in Braille that denote various moods, therefore, Buddy is a suitable friend to children with visual deficiencies.
Buddy is an educational tool that helps children learn to read and gain a better understanding of the environment, and fosters their creativity and imagination. Buddy can accompany the child anywhere – best friends are always together after all!
Design - Samanta Skridlaitė
Design Consultant - Povilas Juškaitis
Video - Šarūnas Kvietkus
