Assistive products for children with dysarthria
Lightweight, modular, and safe – products designed for children.
Children’s dysarthria training aids are designed to support oral muscle training through exercises tailored to different speech sounds and their related muscle movements. These functions are integrated into a modular training system that can be used during therapist-guided sessions and continued at home with parents, reducing the need to prepare separate props and creating a more consistent training experience for children.
Grand Prize
Uneec Applied Design Award 14th
Client
Side Project
Year
2021
Designer
Joel Chang
Contribution
Concept Development
Industrial Design
User Experience
Color, Material and Finish
Prototyping
Design for Manufacture
Design Background
Dysarthria-related articulation difficulties may appear in early childhood, often around ages 3–4. if you are over 6 years old, you need to see a doctor quickly to avoid missing the golden treatment period, otherwise, it will affect the correct pronunciation after growing up. The later the intervention begins, the more difficult correction may become. It is necessary to correct the articulation problem as soon as possible before going to elementary school, improve the fluency of speech and the correct pronunciation, which can prevent children from developing low self-esteem and affecting interpersonal learning difficulties.
Current Pain Point
After consulting with a speech therapist, I identified three key problems.
1. There are no mouth muscle training courses. Parents are often asked to prepare self-made props at home.
2. Most of the products on the market are for training the
masticatory muscles (not designed for dysarthria).
3. Except to take classes, training is also required at home, but the efficiency
of autonomous training is poor. It is inconvenient for parents to prepare
teaching props/ materials by themselves, they are easy to forget/delay training.
The Solution
