PIGGY

Piggy is a playful companion for developing children between the ages of twelve to twenty-four months. Piggy helps promote and develop movement, balance, and fine motor skills as children grasp, push, roll, and visually track this playful companion.

FORM DEVELOPMENT

Through ideating, I explored features and body types ranging from cartoon to more realistic. Settling on a body shape, which was more cartoon-like, I wanted the gesture of the toy to be fun, playful, and attractive toward my targeted age range.

Use

With the targeted age range being twelve to twenty-four months, this toy helps encourage the child’s development in a few different ways. Through visually tracking the toy, children develop ocular motor patterns which help with balance and spacial orientation. Throughout the different stages of movement, the playful gesture and motion of the toy helps encourage the child’s movement towards the toy. At first this maybe seen by the stages of rolling towards the toy. Progressing through the stages of crawling, the child can reach for and move to the toy in a horizontal position. When balance is attained and walking is developed, the child can move in an upright position toward the toy and eventually cross the horizontal mid-line barrier to pick it up.

MECHANICAL MOCK-UP

For the breadboard mock-up I assembled my movement using linkages of wire, pins,  and foam-core, while using wood, cardboard, and foam-core for the structure. To create the movement of my toy, I went through three stages of refinement. In the first rough stage, I focused on creating the movement using rough materials. Progressing through the second stage, I refined the placement of the linkages. In the final build of my mock-up, I refined the linkages and located them to each feature of the toy, which is drawn at full scale.

PROTOTYPE

This is the prototype of Piggy. The majority of components were 3D printed while the axles and pivot points are steel rods.