RISD grads’ design targets need

When Maeve Jopson and Cynthia Poon saw Megan Lamontagne’s reaction to a toy they made as part of their final project in industrial design last year at the Rhode Island School of Design, they knew they were onto something.
Megan, now 13, of Cumberland, is blind and has motor-skill deficiencies that make balancing difficult, a condition caused by shaking baby syndrome, said her adoptive mother, Vickie Lamontagne. She has trouble sitting up, though she is full of vigor and, as Jopson noted, “sassy.”
Megan attends Meeting Street in Providence. The nonprofit provides individualized attention and therapeutic and educational services not only to disabled youth and young adults with various challenges, but also to those without disabilities. The philosophy of inclusion is a priority there, said Robert Fricklas, special-education director.
The toys, or “o-rings,” are a set of stackable rings filled with soft material of differing densities that children, disabled or not, can sit in or use to throw balls through and play with in other ways, Jopson and Poon said. Having created the o-rings with Megan in mind, Jopson and Poon were thrilled to see the way Megan took to the inverted cone of rings they presented to her at Meeting Street in May 2013.
“She sat inside them and was rocking back and forth,” Jopson recalled. “Generally, they couldn’t let her sit on her own. She pulled her shoulders back and was engaging with her whole body and even her therapist had never seen her do that. It was incredible to see.”
Fricklas said the simple design of the o-rings is a key feature.
“It’s universally designed,” he said. “It’s well-designed and it’s durable, attractive. It gets students with special needs and without special needs to want to manipulate it, play with it, and we’re able to build skills on several levels: fine and gross motor skills; attention to tasks; [and] social interactive skills.” Lamontagne said that when she tried out the o-rings at home, not only did Megan enjoy sitting in them, but she played with Lamontagne’s 10-year-old granddaughter, throwing a ball through a large ring and then trying to get the ball through progressively smaller rings.
“They’re definitely beneficial,” Lamontagne said. “They’re portable and Megan likes them. She’s a very social child, so she needs to be able to be integrated in settings where she can get that [support]. With a wheelchair, she stands out, but with the o-rings she doesn’t stand out as much.”
The o-rings constitute a product that Jopson and Poon are working to refine, manufacture and deliver through their startup, a public-benefit corporation called Increment Studios based in their “live-work” space in Providence.
And the concept might have never evolved as it did were it not for the collaboration with Meeting Street, the RISD graduates said.
As Jopson and Poon collaborated in the fall of 2012 in a class called “Design for Entrepreneurship,” they initially explored ideas for toys for a project sponsored by a donor of the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Mass. That class served as precursor to their final degree project at RISD.
“We did a lot of research at Perkins,” Jopson said. “We were just setting out to find a need in the blind community.”
The mission in design is typically to fill a need, she said.
The duo discovered that many toys for the blind were not durable and were modified from games for sighted people.
“They had a library of games they’d made that didn’t exist anymore because they didn’t last,” Jopson said.
As Jopson and Poon experimented, other RISD students referred them to Meeting Street, which provides services for a much broader range of disabilities. Brendan R. Foley, a teacher of students with visual impairments and a certified orientation and mobility specialist with Meeting Street, contacted them. And with Lamontagne’s permission, Foley introduced them to Megan. “They asked to come in and see what we do at Meeting Street and what our population is like,” recalled Foley. “They were trying to figure out an idea for their project at school and knew they wanted to create a toy.”
He challenged them to create a toy for kids with disabilities that can also be played with by nondisabled peers.
“The benefit immediately was, Megan got a toy,” Foley said. “They it turned into lots of kids having access to it. Looking more long-term, their mission is to provide toys for the disabled that nondisabled peers want to use. Moving forward, we’ll hopefully be exploring some of their other toy ideas. It’s primarily for recreation, just to play. It can be challenging to find something our students can play with and want to play with.”
The design of the o-rings is relatively simple, Jopson and Poon said, and the message of inclusion led them to keep it simple.
“Messing around” with 15 to 20 different concepts, they settled on four stackable rings with different colors and fillings. The blue and red ones have denser upholstery foam inside. The orange ring has filler in it like the stuffing found in a stuffed animal, and the yellow ring contains bean-bag filling, they said.
Together, the rings weigh less than 10 pounds, and they are covered in polyurethane that is like vinyl but softer, nontoxic, easy to sew, durable and watertight.
Since they came up with the toy as part of their degree project, they were able to use grants totaling about $3,000 to defray the cost of making the toy, Jopson said.
While creating the toy, Jopson and Poon knew they wanted something that would be a “seating solution” to keep Megan safe. At the same time, they wanted it to be colorful and bright. “And having multiple parts would encourage her friends to play with her because there are enough parts to share,” Jopson reasoned.
They have since adopted Meeting Street’s mission of inclusion as their own.
“We fell in love with their mission of inclusion and the idea that education play and products should not be just for a kid with special needs but for all kids, so the kid with special needs can engage with others who don’t have a disability,” Jopson said.
On Dec. 3, the partners and RISD graduates will participate in a weekend conference hosted by TASH, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for human rights and inclusion for people with disabilities of any kind. Edwin Canizalez, training and events manager, said that of the 600 who applied, 200, including Jopson and Poon, will present their projects and ideas. In addition to presenters, about 1,200 people are expected to attend, he said.
“The theme this year is the future,” Canizalez said. “Our researchers and presenters have always been one step ahead of others in the field. [Increment Studios’ proposal] can be used by kids with disabilities and without and that’s important. It’s exactly the type of world we envision. And it’s a new idea, and it has the potential of being adapted elsewhere.”
Poon said that as a public-benefit corporation, Increment Studios is a for-profit social enterprise in which founders publicly announce what social issue or purpose they intend to serve. In their case the mission is to make high-quality, inclusive toys.
Increment Studios is taking orders for the toy but still very much in the middle of devising a business plan, Jopson said.
As they work to refine a product that’s marketable, the business partners are trying to get costs down and line up studies that may demonstrate therapeutic efficacy, even though the primary use of the o-rings is intended as a toy, Jopson added.

No posts to display