Hard to believe, but the time has finally come for my senior thesis project. Definitely wanted to post the progress up here and get as much feedback as possible to take my project to the next level.
I have chosen the area of toddler footwear, which has interested me for quite some time now, and which I also think has some great opportunity for some exploration and design.
Design Problem Statement: To design a toddler shoe for children who are learning how to walk, which also stresses ultra user-friendliness for the parent-consumer, at a reasonable price point.
It’s about 2.5 weeks into the project (first week was researching and choosing topics), and these are the presentation boards that I presented last week for the first concept review of the semester. I am still waiting on some more questionnaire results (see bottom of post); the ones I have gotten back so far are really interesting…will post them as soon as I can.
Based on the first review from last week, the biggest problem so far is looking at the growth rate of kids’ feet during this age…parents are buying shoes like crazy to keep up. There are a couple possibilities to explore…like material choices (stretchy, etc.) or some kind of footwear exchange system, and so on. My next step is looking at the child’s foot structure at these ages - pictures and drawings are proving hard to find. This week is also the beginning of actual sketch exploration phases too, which is exciting.