The idea behind this toy was to help toddlers and young children with difficulties understanding social situations (i.e., children suffering from PDD) to express their feelings and understand how a feeling and emotion can be expressed with the help of facial vocabulary.
I designed Feelings Friend to be a non-specific creature. It’s not an animal nor is it a person – so every child can decide who it is and what it’s like.
Feelings Friend introduces facial vocabulary to encourage children to easily express their feelings while, at the same time, helping others understand how they feel moment by moment, day by day.
Children can use the facial features stored in the convenient front pocket, to create facial avatars of themselves. Feelings Friend includes illustrated cards to assist children with grasping the concept quickly and easily. Situation cards allow the parent/teacher to discuss conversations about each other’s feelings. By identifying with the creature, the child is able to learn to mediate his/her feelings to the environment.
This toy was first presented in the Innovation Center at the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg in 2013. Since then, it has had great success from retailers and buyers in both the private and educational market and it has even won awards.
Awards:
2014 – Parents Choice, USA
2016 – Nuremberg Toy Fair, Germany-Trend of the Year
2018 – Zabawka Roku, Poland – Toy of the Year
ClientEdushape Ltd.RoleProduct Development and Design | IllustrationYear2012-2013
