JUST DANCE

Just Dance is a project proposed by childcare KOBER and dance organization deStilte. We were asked to create a new tool that could help pedagogical workers and children with language delay to prepare for a collaboration with deStilte. 

The collaboration between the two organizations is called KunstUK. DeStilte focuses on communicating without words. In collaboration with KOBER, they want to teach children a form of non-verbal communocation through workshops and performances. A way to convey their feelings and emotions without just using words.

With a group of three we created a tool for both the pedagogical workers and the children they work with that ensures that they can be properly prepared for collaborations with deStilte.

Our tool is a set of three dices that you can use in several ways. The dices make use of different senses such as sight and touch.

The Texture Dice

This dice has different textures on all sides. Through these textures, children can learn the difference between, for example, hard, soft, coarse and smooth. The textures are attached with Velcro and can be easily changed.

The Senses Dice

The senses dice contains four types of senses: hearing, touch, emotion and sight. The children can roll these dice when a dance/movement has been made. The dice also include questions that the pedagogical employee can ask the children. In this way, the pedagogical employee learns how to ask open questions to the children.

The Emotion Dice

The dice has six different emotions, which can be changed just like the texture die. With the emotion dice the children can dice an emotion, based on this the pedagogical employee will play music. If the children do not understand what the emotion means, the pedagogical worker can explain this in a verbal or non-verbal way.

The three dice are the first step in learning non-verbal communication. It prepares the children and educational staff for the Silence workshops and performances. The interchangeable sides of the dice make it suitable for multiple ages. For the young target group of two to four years old you can take a directive approach and for older children there is more room for your own input.

You can find more about this process in my portfolio¹ made for the minor I followed. 

#ProductDesign #UserExperince #Research

¹ These items are in Dutch