Grow

Adapting eyewear to growing kids
Timeline | 5 weeks, spring 2020
Tools | Illustrator, Rhino and Keyshot  
Background | This project aims to design eyewear for growing children, between 5 and 12 years of age. Children change both physically (there bodies grow) and mentally (they change style).

Collaboration partners

Problem statement

How might we adapt glasses to growing children and encourage them take better care of their glasses?

Project goal

I want children to be more involved with their glasses and to be able to put together the glasses themselves. Foremost to make them feel proud of their eyewear as part of their identity and leave room for playfulness while interacting with their glasses. I imagine the children and their parents can have a playful time by putting the glasses together themselves.

Process
Interviews
Market research
Prototyping
Interviews
“Glasses are worn like no other; some  children's that comes in here break their glasses five times per year.” Hannes eyewear stylist
I interviewed Hannes, an eyewear stylist at "Synsam" (an optics chain in Umeå). His responses inspired me to formulate the brief around children and their eyewear use in the near future.
“It’s fun to change style but the most important is that the glasses don’t fall of when I do things.”
‍Dogglas, 5 years of age.
“If the glasses could grow with me they would have to be really beautiful, otherwise you just want to get rid of them.”
Beatrice, 6 years of age
“When I was 7 years I wanted Monsters Inc pattern on my frames, but I wouldn’t want that today.”
Eric, 11 years of age.
shape-study survey
learnings
It was challenging to find children to interview with (especially during the Covid-19 outbreak). Once I made contact with children, the received feedback was valuable to reflect on my design process. They helped me understand my assumptions do not match with their actual needs. For example, I assumed that the taste for eyewear shapes differ between genders, but was proven wrong when I evaluated my shape-study survey.

Three concepts

B.
Ikea principal, the child and parent putting
 glasses together themselves.
A.
First Aid Glasses, a toolkit for children
to repair their glasses when they break.
C.
Grow, an adjustable eyewear which temple's
and nose pads' sizes can be customised for growing children.
After the feedback from Roland Keplinger (Head of Design at Silhouette) and from Eva-Lena Bäckström (the tutor), I decides to continue to develop and combine concept B (Ikea principal) and C (Grow).

sketches

ADJUSTABLE parts

Change the bridge by pulling it in and out
Adjust the temples by pushing it back and forth
Adjust the length of the nose pad by snapping the arms into the holes
3D-PRINTED MODEL
Challenges
I realized that the fast-pacing eyewear industry is mainly focusing on market trends. I challenged myself to see the eyewear less as a styling piece. Instead, I focused on making children's eyewear more sustainable by extending its longevity from 1 year to 7 years.

Result

Grow is an adjustable pair of eyewear designed for children between 5 and 12 years of age. It adapts while the child rapidly grows. The eyewear comes in an interactive package that lets both parents and children build the eyewear piece by piece. This modular concept enhances the bond between the user and the eyewear. The eyewear strives for a sustainable lifecycle by letting the child expand and exchange parts whenever needed.  

FAAB
EBBO