Student designs a better world
Xu Yuanyuan at work on a design
Toys designed for autistic children have been on display at Shanghai Library as part of an exhibition featuring the creations of local university students.
The toys require children to match colors and sizes, and there are cheerful words of encouragement when they get it right. There are reminders when mistakes are made. The toys are said to be helpful in training autistic children in language acquisition and muscle coordination.
The “Hedgehog Garden” toys were designed by Xu Yuanyuan, a student at East China University of Science and Technology.
Xu, who is in her third-year study of product design, took a course last year in which the teacher encouraged students to design products for public welfare or vulnerable groups, instead of for profit.
At the time she had read reports about the A Café, a charity where young autistic teenagers worked as baristas and waiters with clients played by volunteers to help the children develop social skills.
“Many people believe that autism is a topic far from us, but I did research and found that actually there are more than 2 million autistic children in China,” Xu said. “Although some statistics show that only 0.7 percent of Chinese children suffer from autism, lower than the 1 percentage point in the world, for a family with an autistic child it is 100 percent. And many families cannot afford related education costs, so many autistic children miss the best time for receiving education. I want to do something for them.”
With the help of schoolmates who are volunteers with the Red Cross Society, Xu had the chance to observe autistic children and their families.
“I saw a child beat a toy car repeatedly while normal children would imitate driving,” she said. “After checking with some medical and educational books, I found that autistic children lack responses with the outside world and thus lack guidance in playing. They cannot understand the complicated rules to play with the toys that are on the market. They like repeating simple things.”
She also found that most of the existing toys for autistic children were designed by parents or academic researchers. But they were small in number and those available abroad were too expensive.
In a paper in medical journal The Lancet, she learned that training at home is an essential part of treatment for autistic children, besides in schools and hospitals.
The “Hedgehog Garden” designed for autistic children
Her designs were based on applied behavior analysis, a widely accepted rehabilitation training approach for autism. Each skill is divided into small steps and children have to repeat each step. This helps autistic children gain abilities that children aged between 2 and 4 should have, such as matching, pointing, naming, sorting, arranging, symbolizing, accomplishing and understanding. All these abilities are very important for children in language learning after the age of 5.
The toys can also help train children with movement, such as sitting, crawling and squatting, and are helpful for muscle development.
“These toys are not totally different from ordinary ones. But as children with autism show slower growth in understanding, their toys should be easier to play with than those for ordinary children of their age so that they can understand them,” said Xu.
She chose some cold colors, such as blue and green, which are more favored by children with autism. The objects in the hedgehog garden don’t look very realistic as they are difficult for autistic children to understand, she said.
As such children like grasping things and repeatedly beating them, Xu made some parts of the toys difficult to grasp so that children have to practice more and develop more hand strength. All the products are in large size so children also need to crawl, squat, kneel and sit when playing them, thus practicing muscle coordination.
Parents can check how the children have learned on an app on their phone. Xu said this function was expected to give parents encouragement and the incentive to continue with such training.
“I’m glad that the toys have aroused public and media attention after they were displayed,” said Xu. “We will seek to have them used by autistic children later to see the effect and make improvements accordingly.”
Xu Yuanyuan's hedgehog. Toys for autistic children should be easier to play with than those for ordinary children, she says.
In addition to her toys project, Xu was recently named as a role model at the university due to her outstanding academic studies and fruitful creative designs for vulnerable groups.
Xu ranked No. 1 among her classmates in terms of academic performance in the past three years and has won top awards in various competitions with her designs that aim to improve the lives of vulnerable groups.
One of her designs was a bicycle for senior citizens. Wearing VR glasses, elderly people can ride safely as it is stationary. But they have the sensation of movement via the glasses. The design won an innovation pioneer award in a competition for services for the elderly.
Another design was a wearable belt to guide visually impaired people on the sidewalk for the blind. It can also detect missing of bricks on the sidewalk and report it to the system so that authorities can repair the road as soon as possible. It won top prize in this year’s “Challenge Cup” innovation competition.
Xu also has a patent for the design of a crop straw disintegrator that farmers can use at home.
“Many farmers burn straw on the land, polluting the air, as existing disintegrators are usually big and expensive so that villagers have to share, which is inconvenient,” she said. “I hope that my invention will make the process easy so that farmers will crush the straw instead of burning it.”
She added: “I think designers should not only design for money, we should also care for those who need help. I hope my designs can make the world a little bit better.”
