Children with autism often have sensory sensitivity, with some self-stimulating through fidgeting to aid concentration and ease stress.
Specialist fidget toys offer little personalisation to individuals’ sensory preferences, and mainstream toys require teachers spend time creating their own resources.
MAKA is a make-your-own magnetic fidget toy, designed to increase focus and ease stress. The magnetic beads snap together with a satisfying clack, designed to engage but not over-stimulate.
By creating their own toys, children gain ownership over their play and form a lasting emotional attachment. The kit comes ready for teachers and therapists to use in schools, complete with instructions and resources.
Thesis project (2015 – 16, completed over 8 months) for the University of Sussex Product Design BSc programme. Winner of the LEGO Award for Playful Creativity.
Co-designed with autistic children in collaboration with teachers and therapists at specialist schools.
Designed to be flexible, adapting to the wide range of abilities in children with autism.
Children are given freedom to create their own toys, gaining ownership over their creative play.
Role-playing workshops helped to prototype early concepts for a customisable fidget toy, as well as test activities before user testing in schools.
Adding the magical qualities of magnets, several iterations were prototyped to explore new design directions.
The second phase of user testing involved going back to specialist schools to run a series of workshops making fidget toys, validating each element of the design.
Branding, packaging and specialist resources were created in collaboration with caregivers to ensure the toys would fit into the specific needs of specialised education.
MAKA’s journey didn’t end with the thesis. The project received a fantastic response from the SEN community, with many parents, teachers and therapists looking to purchase kits. This was just the start.
Winning the LEGO design award gave me the momentum to kickstart MAKA and continue development. I launched Fidget for Good, a social enterprise aiming to teach the benefits of fidgeting and give schools the tools to embrace fidgeting in education.
I grabbed some friends, bought some pizza, and spent a night producing as many MAKA beads as we could. I wanted to get them into as many hands as possible pre-launch to better understand the ways people used MAKA. The aim was to build a MVP and work towards crowdfunding a production run.
Moving from the student world to the startup world meant things got real.
I suddenly found myself wearing many more hats than just the design hat. Diving into the deep end you learn fast, so I entered Sussex Innovations Centre’s entrepreneurial competition Startup Sussex. Here I worked to build a business case around Fidget for Good, validating the value proposition and ensuring a sustainable product/market fit.
Meeting with experts from the worlds of manufacturing, IP law, marketing, finance and fulfilment helped to clarify the complex requirements of shipping a physical product – beyond that of the design.
In the final 10-week stage, six teams worked together and with mentors to develop a business plan and product launch strategy. Here I gained a unique perspective with personal coaching on speaking, building a team and more, before a final pitch to a board of entrepreneurs and investors.
The Institute of Imagination, an ambitious children’s charity with a large cultural space in London, invited me to be a partner at their Maker Faire-style events. Hosted at the Imagination Lab, a colourful warehouse on the Thames’ Southbank in a converted fire engine workshop, the events aim to champion imagination and creativity.
We brought MAKA to an audience of 1,000 at ‘Lab Live: Reality’, letting children build crazy 3D fidget toys. This provided a unique opportunity to speak with parents about the superpowers of fidgeting and learn of their thoughts.
(for now)
Having moved out of the UK, Fidget for Good is on the back-burner for the time being.
Hearing from so many children, teachers and parents has been inspiring and makes the work pay off. The generosity of so many has been humbling. MAKA has grown bigger than I could have imagined, a feat that I couldn’t have achieved without the support of so many.
– LEGO Award for Playful Creativity
– Startup Sussex finalist
– Social Impact Prize finalist
– MOJO Nation
– Toy News
– ARTS THREAD
– Toy Tales
I learnt a huge amount over the course of this project: both during the thesis and from the continued development thereafter. The length meant I could dive into research, undertaking a large body of ethnography to understand people’s everyday lives. This user participation continued throughout, with people engaging in each stage of the design process.
The project also highlighted the power of play as a tool for collaborative design. Whether with peers or users, tackling serious issues in fun ways means you can address any topic whilst staying creative.
