2018 | PRODUCT DESIGN, UX RESEARCH, ART DIRECTION
MIKA
A Sensorial Inclusive Toy
The project seeks an inclusive game design, where both disabled children and children without disabilities can participate. This fosters interaction with diverse people and promotes valuing others.
Likewise, the game encourages the resolution of conflicts within a playful and respectful space. This learning contributes to the development of more supportive, respectful, and diversity-aware individuals.
Design MX Award Winner 2018
Project Exhibited at the Franz Mayer, Published in the Ibero-American Design Biennial (IDB 2018)
MIKA is a construction game made by panels, from which forms and nodes emerge that function as unions to assemble different spaces. In these new constructions created, children explore in a shared way their creativity by developing places that transport them to the world of their choice.
It was the field research, which led us to three specific insights from which we developed the project:
Private spaces provide security for children.
The game delimited in space and time facilitates the differentiation of the various daily activities.
Construction games benefit the development and development of children.
These discoveries led us to a game in which ideas, projects, scenarios and relationships are built.
MIKA seeks to generate technical aids that target exclusion of minors with disabilities.
Recognizing the power of play in learning!
Being the construction of shelters, a universal and timeless game in children from preschool to second grade, it is concluded that the creation of objects that not only benefit the most vulnerable sector, but the entire educational community, can be achieved through recreational activities that encourage children's participation and learning.
The objective of the game is to awaken creativity and promote coexistence, so MIKA summons the game together, since everyone is needed to develop what is imagined.
MIKA is made up of walls of different colors and shapes that facilitate its differentiation.
Such walls feature different abstract figures that vary in meaning depending on the child’s imagination. MIKA’s pieces lend themselves both to assembling spaces and to be worn as a costume. The game is both a means of personal expression and a tool for the teacher/responsible for the guided narrative, depending on the purpose of the activity.
Made with Ethyl Vinyl Acetate or polyurethane foam). Lightweight, flexible, non-toxic, waterproof material, protects against bumps and impacts.
Different shapes and textures in each piece for easy recognition in children with visual disabilities.