Cocoon Delivery Park

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Robert Ou & Joseph Zhou 

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When in the first few stages of labour, women are generally encouraged by nurses to walk about; this acts as a form of exercise that grants a sense of relief. At the same time, it allows for the baby to move into position in preparation for birth. Prior to starting this project, we have done some research and discovered that the BC Women’s Hospital in fact lacked a designated area for women in labour to exercise. Instead, women were encouraged to walk along the main roads just outside the hospital, which is obviously hazardous not simply in the physical sense, but due to the lack of protection from the environment, there is a harmful aspect to their overall health as well – especially if the woman is about to give birth. As a result, our aim is to construct a park where women can exercise with ease, safe from the harmful aspects outside of the hospital. Furthermore, because this park will be constructed within the hospital itself, facilities relating to labour will be nearby. Subsequently, if women were to suddenly go into labour, they can immediately be rushed to the correct emergency room without having the fear that they will not be sent in on time. Lastly, much of the walking area is regulated by nurses and security, which is a significant aspect when it comes to the safety of the women who are about to go into labour.

Lena

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Shelby Sixsmith

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Lena is a digital speculum—a tool to educate women on their own reproductive system and connect them with professionals remotely. The Lena device can be used to share medical information and conduct remote visits with your medical professional. Taking away the need for the awkward and often uncomfortable experience of Pelvic exams. Lena also strives to reduce the amount of stressful

and uncertain labour experiences by providing you with the tools to have a safe and comfortable birthing experience. You

can remotely check dilation and send those self checks to your doctor, creating an open and seamless line of communication.

Re-shaping the Sitting Month

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Sahali Tsang, Vivian Tran, and Gigi Lui

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Sitting month - or zuo yuezi in Chinese, is a form of postpartum confinement, that is practiced in both Vietnamese and Chinese culture. This confinement was designed to assist the mother's recovery after giving birth. Extreme care is focused upon the mother, along with strict rules, such as: keeping the body warm, avoiding cold air/water, no bathing, no beef or shrimp, and most importantly staying in bed.

While these rules seem extreme, they have been followed for centuries and have evolved over time. In the past, the sitting month

was intended to make up for the lack of proper healthcare available for postpartum. Recently this tradition is seen as an extra precaution for mothers to take. It has become a rite of passage into motherhood.

Ellipse, Maternity Seat

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Andres Somasco

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A rocking seat to foster partner connection during pregnancy. Relating to pain managment I wanted to explore a way to make the user feel weightless so I started thinking about a design that used a simliar body postion to zero gravity chairs which

reclines the user to a place where their body rests with even pressure.

Discovering Boundaries Together

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Lariena Kumar, Nima Walker, & Rosemary Corpuz

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Through this project we aim to pave the way for open discussions between parents and their children from a young age. To give parents a safe space to have the sometimes awkward, sometimes difficult conversations around healthy boundaries and consent.

We are looking at a three-pronged approach. First, inviting the parents to consider storytelling as a way to approach around abstract topics like boundaries, choice etc. in the form of cue cards. Next, setting up a structure the allow a collaborative approach towards boundary setting, negotiating and decision-making through play. Lastly, using a physical artifact that lives in the home to allow a non-verbal form of initiating communication.

Mirena Sleep Pod

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Mark Warin Hanbunjerd

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Mirena Sleep Pod is a bedside bassinet/rocker designed to mimic the protective enclosure and movement of an infant in the mother’s womb. While being a beautiful, organic object which stands out within an interior space, it formally extends the functionality of a bassinet beyond its pragmatic uses to a maternal tool for mothers and caretakers to emotionally connect with their newborn child in the nurturing sleeping space.

Origin Vault: A safe vessel for life's most important treasures

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Ezra Baum

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This vessel is designed to contain the placenta in the stage between birth and burial. After its role as a storage container for the placenta, it can be used throughout the persons life as a place to store important items, reminding them of their origin.

CareBear

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Iumi Kim, Jeongbin Gu, & Cassandra Matalas

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This project is a body-focused design relieving the physical and emotional stresses of pregnancy and motherhood. It focuses on restoring relaxation and providing care by acting on social and environmental relationships of the body with their support systems.

Cradle Arm

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Kirby McLean

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This design project aims to bring infants and mothers closer together, and aid in breastfeeding ergonomics through the creation of a utilitarian device.

Grief/Relief

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Spence Taylor

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An artifact symbolic of a renewed sense of purpose, a desire to make positive change in one’s life, and to amplify energy of healing, learning and awareness.

For this project, I chose to create a sculpture that would be representative of a child lost as a result of an abortion. I created a form through chiseling and sculpting of a piece of green calcite, which I nested in a piece of cherry wood. The piece of crystal weighs approximately as much as a newborn child would. The base was milled from a solid block of cherry, and white sand was used to set the crystal and give it stability without feeling rigid. The goal of this project was to create the light to the dark of my second project. It was attempt to explore the juxta-positon of relief and grief as it related to a man’s experience of grief as a result of an abortion.

Trimester Tryptic

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 Alexander Swanson 

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For my final project I wanted to represent the baby’s growth in the womb in a beautiful and approachable way. In my research the only depictions of the growth journey that I saw were computerized and bland. I took inspiration from botanical posters and began drawing each trimester as if it were encoumpassed by plants. The plants symbolize the veins and body of the mother which sustain the baby’s development 

Origin: A Public Nursing Room

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Vivian Heli Shi & Muy Quyen

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This design project aims to provide a breastfeeding space in public that can imitate the home or a nesting environment to help women feel comfortable while breastfeeding. The space is designed with considerate planning of amenities that can assist in alleviating pressure for first-time or experienced mothers to be less judged and have the privacy to breastfeed in public. Amenities range from a comfortable chair to a multi-functional table + an area for older children to play.

Cozy Embrace: A soft, eco swaddling cloth

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Sophie Yiqing Xu

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This design project recycles bedlinen sourced from thrift shops and reimagines the material as swaddling cloths and bed-linen for newborn babies and mothers. This cloth, by virtue of its age and use, is already soft and gentle on new-born babies skin. The aim is to reduce the need for mothers to buy brand new products made from virgin material. On the one hand, the used fabric is more skin-friendly, soft and suitable for babies, and on the other hand, it uses the endurence of fabric and promotes an eco-consciousness and thrift. 

How Was I Born Mother/Father? 

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Hoang Do

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A representational set of toys aimed to get children comfortable with the ideas around childbirth.

Desi Tadka to Pregnancy

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Mudita Aggarwal

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This design project aims to develop a website, providing nutritional guidelines to pregnant women and new mothers. The site  providing trimester-based diet plans, information about highly nutritious foods,  and special recipes originating from Punjab, in the north of India, i.e. A Punjabi myself, I felt it would be best to highlight my culture in introducing the expecting mothers with highly nutritious diets and recipes which benefit both mother and child.

Feather Feed

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Kamila Bashir

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This design aims at providing mothers with a comfortable feather-light tool that is comfortable, and maintains their mobility while breastfeeding without taking away the sensation of mother-to-baby touch. It can be used as seperate pieces, or a set that comes together, while sleeping, sitting, standing, and walking.

The Journal: a meditation device

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Bear Fraser

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A journal for women to use during their pregnancy. Key words: Connection, Family, Body and Mind, 

4 types of meditation, 

Breathing, Loving and Kindness, 

Walking, and Body scan. 

Conversation Dolls

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Aradhya Rattan

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Gender neutral dolls with invisible magnets and a set of body parts for 9-10 yr olds. Magnets on detachable body parts afford discovery and playfulness. 

Kids can build their own characters and share stories about them to explore anatomy and relationships between people and their bodies.

Conversations around puberty and pregnancy 

Gender fluidity and emotions that come with those life stages. 

The easily modified pipe-cleaner mouth makes it easy to express a wide range of emotions the dolls might feel. I tried making a felted mouth or using a piece of wire wrapped in tape but they did not work well with this set. 

Lumpy

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 Kenneth Boediman

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An educational soft toy for toddlers. Through our initial research, I discovered that one of the main reason mothers’ have bad pregnancy experiences is due to the anxiety of not knowing what will happen during labour. As a result of this, I wanted to create a tool that opens up conversations around pregnancy and childbirth at a young age. 

At the beginning of my research, I looked into comfort objects and soft toys as a way to build bond with a child and develop a product’s emotional durability. I gather all my research into one document and condense the information into more manageable sections. That way, I will always have a page I can frequently refer to when needed.

In additon to reading articles, I also watched various tutorials on making stuffed toys, looked at existing precedents, mapped out data through different methods of documentation, and explored different materials properties through online research and in person testing.

Enhancing and Articulating the Pregnant

Form

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Autumn Stewart

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Using radical structural clothing as a medium to exaggerate, romanticize, and invoke feelings of positivity, inspiration and wonder onto the

pregnant form.

Identity and Motherhood 

Challenging the Silence and uncovering feelings of Loss 

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 Julia De la Puente Calvo

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I decided to use this project as a space-time where I could explore ideas around identity, the body, and motherhood. Given that I had never experienced pregnancy nor becoming a mother, I fully gave myself to speculation and worked in a purely conceptual space driven by what I felt, thought, and valued.

Medium: text

Material practice: Visual representation/company 

for the text

This was a collaborative practice with my mom where I would send her what I wrote and she would comment on it. This seemed like a meaningful part of the project and it allowed me to share it with someone who made sense would be part of such a topic

Comfort + Connection Body Wrap

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Emma Brown

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My goal was to create a wearable object for people who are experiencing discomfort due to pregnancy, or want to be more mobile while pregnant or caring for their child. It would reduce stress on areas of the body that are

carrying more weight, or are changing through pregnancy.

When a person feels more comfortable doing the activities that make them happy this makes the physically demanding aspects of parenting

easier to manage. Parents buy countless tools for themselves and

the baby, so I wanted to make something that could be used for years into the child’s life and cut down on the amount of gear that parents

tend to carry.

Prex: A vibrator for pregnant women

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 Keenan Jinran Yu

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Designed for access for heavily pregnant women 

Gentle but deep vibrating wave 

Fits the shape of the vagina 

Adjustable modes

Safe

Milestones

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Yutaan Lin

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The Milestones are tools that are

intended to be part of a grounding

experience. In order to facilitate this, I

have also designed cards and prompts

that go with the Milestones, to provide

guidance for how one can incorperate

them into daily pregnancy practice, and

to give the user agency in how they want their Milestones to work.

• My intentions:

- Provide a collection of prompts and

suggestions for how one might use the

Milestone heat/weight packs in their

daily activites

- Suggest how these exercises may have positive physiological, mental, emotional or social effects during someone’s pregnancy experience

• What they do:

- A deck of cards that are colour coded

to different aspects of daily pregnancy

experiences, and provide quick guides for navigating different states users may find themselves in

- Create a tangible ritual around the

milestones, and help users build a

relationship with them through imbuing of meaning/ relating/ framing them through the pregnancy experience

- Directly respond to questions/ feelings/thoughts a user may be feeling at any given time

• Other functions

- blank cards could provide a user with

opportunities to build their own kind of

practice around the milestones

Birthing Chair

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Jai Selvaraj

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Designing a birthing Chair to encourage mobility, sitting, squatting and exercising the body during labour.

Parametric-design

Rocking Chair 

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Kamil Kaptan

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The rocking chair offers a somatic rhythmic motion to soothe babies and mothers during breastfeeding, while assisting sleep. This object then becomes an artefact of memory for families.

Baby Newborn Kit

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Terra Bae

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A doll-making project for young children whose mothers are expecting another babay. I’m interested in the physiological changes a child goes through when his/her family is expecting a second

child. A young child needs lots of love and care and once this is taken away they show signs of anxiety and

discomfort. A parent that is expecting another newborn is also in distress so caring for the first child is difficult.

Bringing in a new being that will take a lot of your attention away could be traumatic especially for younger

children. However, it is very important for the parent to teach the second child how they may cope with the situational

changes. These changes must be subtle, warm, and loving. Children can learn how to be responsible in

their own way if it’s just putting back their things to even just eating food could be a big responsibility depending on age. These small subtle responsibilities allow the children to contribute.

Mom Tote

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Harley Yu & Icey Weng

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As our main co-designer, moms are often suffering from the early stage of pregnancy all the way to the postpartum period. Our main design features allow moms to obtain their strength, relieve anxieties and exhausts through its practical usage. The tote itself is featured as a pillow, a so-called pillow bag. The belly front pocket with items in it, can also become a pillow for lying on a flat surface or putting it behind one's back as a back cushion. The stuffy strap also is friendly to shoulders and it becomes a pillow-like feature while wearing the bag. 

Labourinth

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Daisy Kim & Dami jung

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A board game to assist pregnant women struggling to have open communication with their partners and family and others around them about their experiences without feeling like a burden. Also, to inform them about the changes that happens and suggest rememdies or ways to reduce discomfort. 

Steam Box

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Sarah Wu

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In this project, I explored gestational

diabetes that occurs during pregnancy.

I aimed for creating a product that helps the mother to navigate and learn about how to have a healthy diet.

Initially, we started with a project brief

with the base research of comparison

between gestational diabetes and type

1 and 2 diabetes. I identified what my

area of interest is, my issue to address, relevancy, and how I can reflect this importance to a larger context in the design field

Maternal Diets

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Caleb Purdy

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The goal of this project is to collect and share cultural 

maternal food knowledge from around the world with 

individuals that are trying to navigate the confusing and 

contradictory world of pregnancy foods. Many cultural 

recipes have been tried and tested over hundreds of years and are only passed on generationally, but this assembly aims to bring this cross-cultural generational food knowledge to those that wouldn’t otherwise have access to it.

WEBSITE

Heart2Heart

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Dawson Wood

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The project is known as Heart2Heart. It’s a silicone doll with a vibration motor, that links with a medical monitor. The vibration motor pulses like a heart and is syncronized with the heartbeat of the growing child. It is meant to strengthen the bond between a Father, Polyamorous Partner, or infirtile mother, with their growing baby. As well, the form allows the user to learn how to hold the baby, and calm some of the anxieties on the day of birth. The Logo icon comes from the birthing chart image that we used, and I thought it would be appropriate to use for the logo.

Heart2Heart

with the appropriate color and light glows where the heart is,

and it pulses to the same

rythm as the heart.

He would also be made from a

transluscent silicon material,

adding a bit of layering and

visual intrest to the doll.

Creation Cards

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Gina Mae Schubert

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“CREATION CARDS” a method of connecting one with

their universe and their unborn childs’ soul, specifically.

To connect the prengnant mother with “her world”.

1. To connect a pregnant mother with the possibility of connecting with her newborn soul.

2. To connect a pregnant mother with the possibility of connecting with her spirit world.

3. To connect a pregnant mother with the possibility strengthening connecition with her physical environment including the earth, plants, trees and her loved ones.

4.To connect a pregnant mother with the possibility of strengthening her connection with her community and culture.

 Dami jung

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A board game to assist pregnant women struggling to have open communication with their partners and family and others around them about their experiences without feeling like a burden. Also, to inform them about the changes that happens and suggest rememdies or ways to reduce discomfort. 

Doula work, a tapestry

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Adriana Stedman

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At the outset of this project I wanted to design a way of sparking dialogue around the health disparity and lack

of care black birthing people often experience in medicalized spaces. Through much secondary and primary

research, my intention shifted paths. The racial bias and internalized racism at the root of this neglect

is reflected in the over use of medical intervention, preconceived notions that black people feel less

pain, lack of access and a history of violence inflicted upon black people. Not much googling can tell you that in America, black birthing people are 3-4 times more likely to die in birth than a white person

1. These statistics are not uncommon and studies have also been done in the UK reflect these realities.

Unfortunately since Canada doesn’t record race based data within the health care system, I had to use

first hand experiences. The horrifying statistics and history of trauma often causes generational stress

and mistrust of the medical system. After submerging myself in this research, trying to understand how

design intervention could help address this issue and grappling with the overwhelming idea of tackling racism, I decided to view the project through a more positive and hopeful approach by celebrating doula care. According to a 2015 study, black birthing people are 36% more likely to receive a c-section,

but with the assistance of prenatal doula care, there is a significant reduction in c section ratesÇ. Another case study done through a nonprofit organization in Washington D.C in 2017 showed that when women

of colour were supported with a doula 74% of women gave birth vaginally with neither infant nor

maternal losses. Regardless of the many statistics proving that doula care actually saves lives, the many personal stories surrounding doula work gave me direction in addressing the problem through design.

Organs Loft: A Transparent View Of the Female Reproductive Organs

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Victoria Kallergis

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This project is a model highlighting the female reproductive organs with the intention to empower and connect young individuals who will experience or are currently getting their period. Transparent and interactive depictions of these processes don't exist within the typical reproductive education curriculum, which provides less of an environment to spark conversations and understanding amongst the younger generation regarding these topics. I believe a deeper understanding of these organs and processes can initiate a healthier relationship with oneself which is why this project is centered around empowerment through comprehension and connection.

Crochet &  Role Play

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Sherlly Han

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It is a project about crochet, material exploration, role-play, empathy and baby blanket.

Through crochet and its material and process immersion, I put myself in possible futures, motherhood and used this as a method to develop radical empathy.

Pelvic Floor Awareness Campaign

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Elizabeth Lum

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This project is to raise awareness about the pelvic floor with handmade flower pins and a website. There are resources to reach out, forums to share experiences, and techniques to strengthen the pelvic floor

Bun in the Oven

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Ryan Holloway

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My final project is a discursive video

based project regarding the idea of transience, nurturing and neutrality. The Sensuality of the Mundane

(re-examination of traditional imagery and ideas) aims to develop and express a story, through the act of bread

making for children 9-13 regarding pregnancy from the act to birth and post birth. I started by reflecting upon

my own story of listening to adults talk about adult issues as a child and neither being completely involved

nor ignored from the convrsation as a non-participant and stakeholder in it. I then started to film from what I remember as a kid. From my head looking up and thinking about where we as people start to see the world

differently. By re-centring our inner child the sensuality, beauty and curiousity that which is life to a young

person still can be examined through wandering and wondering about that which life comes from in the actions

of the mundane and often unappreciated.