SENSORY POD
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INCUBE
Incube Sensory Pod Live Project
This design was awarded the first place prize by the manager of Incube and will potentially go into production. The winning prize was a certificate and a cheque for £500. This competition taught me very useful knowledge about certain requirements needed for certain designs and clients.
Although the brief stated that the pod was to be designed for children who have autism or ASD, I wanted this product to be inclusive for all children. In order to do this, I designed the outside of the pod to be bookshelves, turning the design into both a sensory pod and a library.
The interior walls that are hidden on the inside walls of the pod are completely covered in different types of sensory materials such as two-toned sequins, Velcro and acoustic panelling. Whiteboard walls also present in the pod.
The pod was designed to be completely modular, allowing extra walls to be added or taken away depending on the size available. There are three different wall sizes available and they are all flat pack in there design. There is also enough room for either four small seats or a custom seat that I designed to go along with the pod.
As this design is also a den and library it will appeal to a lot more schools as it offers multiple uses for different children, and as its modular sections can be added or removed if space or finances are an issue.
As an interior designer, I had never designed anything like this before and chose to do I a lot of extra research to insure that what I designed would be appropriate for children, not only for children who have ASD but also making sure it met all the regulations needeed for general safety. First of all I looked at shaping, and I discovered that children with ASD prefer the aesthetics of spiral shapes over more jagged edges but enjoy the touch of jagged shapes more than smooth surfaces. Many children with ASD also do better in spaces free of busy, repetitive patterns, ideally patterns are minimal, organic, or subtle abstracts. Some children also prefer warm and fuzzy textiles whilst others prefer cool, smooth surfaces. To get round these issues I designed the pod in a spiral shape but insured that the interior contained several types of sensory materials to appeal to everyone. Once I had the shape I wanted, I then needed to chose the right colour scheme. Colours like red, white and yellow can be overwhelming whilst colours like blues, greens and purples are heavily advised and preferred by children with ASD. My design could be ordered in two different colours, green and purple. This can easily be done with my design due to the modular structure of the pod. With lighting it was proven that natural lighting works best but if the space does require extra lighting then LED lighting is the best option, used again with colours such as green or purple.