Guru's Day insights

Guru’s day has been a huge success and my favourite event of the year so far. The Gurus assigned to me were Giulia Carbin, a Senior Designer at Studio PSK, an award winning communication design agency. Marty Dunlop, a UX consultant based in Edinburgh, and Lorraine Clarke, a researcher at the university with a background in industrial design. However I also got the pleasure of speaking to many more interesting people throughout the day.

I learned a lot from this session but there is a few main things that I will take away from the Gurus’ comments. I will need to look into what utensils are most in need of adaptation, what utensils give parents ‘the fear’? What utensils do kids want to use?

Can a personalisation element be added to the product?

Materials to consider are plastic, rubber and cork, for non slip, easy cleaning and comfortable to grip.

Do children value feeling like they are using something they normally wouldn't be allowed to use more than owning something of their own and having a proud sense of ownership?

I also want to increase parental involvement in research as although my product is designed for children it will be marketed at adults.

My next steps will be to create a survey for parents to complete, and start making prototypes! Thats something else i realised from gurus day, I'm going to need to prototype sketch models A LOT! The more proof I have of an efficient product the more likely I will be to be able to test some of them with children.