Kaliko

 

Design Project 1
Project squad: Play to Learn
February 2019 – June 2019

During my first big project, my team and I designed an interactive set of personalized stuffed animals named Kaliko and Kaliko Jr aimed at enhancing the bond between parent and child. The big Kaliko is for the child and the Kaliko Jr keychain is for the parent. The stuffed animals come with a set of activity cards. When parent and child do a fun activity as described on one of the cards, they scan the cards. This will make Kaliko’s ears dance and go up. The ears will also go up when Kaliko Jr. sleeps in the pouch of Kaliko at night. If parent and child will not spend enough time together, the ears of Kaliko will slowly go down. The goal of our product is to show parents how much fun it is to spend time with your child through affectionate and stimulatory play. Kaliko makes the bond between parent and child physical and hereby strengthens it.
The first thing I discovered during this project, is that designing from the perspective of play is a great way to stimulate my creativity. Secondly, the importance of research is something I have learned. Because we did a lot of research, our design has a strong basis. This made designing and pitching easier and I could confidently defend my design if it was questioned.
Another thing I discovered the importance of, is the existence of a network. First of all, you must know people to do user tests with. It is also very useful to know people so they can help you with realizing your design. Lastly, it is great to know people within different fields so you can interview them about your design.
What I am very proud of, is the fact that my teammates and I succeeded in setting our own brand. By giving our design a catchy name, consistently using our corporate identity and logo, making a website and writing a business plan, we are recognizable and know how to put our product on the market. I had a big influence in all of these and I learned a lot of new skills from this.
By engineering the ears for Kaliko, I enhanced my technological skills. My confidence has grown, not only because I came up with the winding-mechanism, but mainly because I came up with quick solutions when problems occurred along the way.
Lastly, I learned a lot about teamwork. I became better at giving constructive feedback, which is absolutely necessary for improving each other’s work. I also learned a lot about my team members and how we could complement each other.
If you would like to know more about our product, please visit our website or have a look at our final report.
 

During my third year I analysed the project from a business and marketing perspective. I created personas, a customer journey map, a value proposition canvas, a service blueprint, a stakeholder onion map and more and evaluated the opportunities arising from them. In short, it was concluded Kaliko is a viable and unique concept, but it would benefit from becoming more sustainable, for example by introducing the possibility to bring Kaliko back to the manufacturer when it is no longer used. All analyses can be found in this combined report.