Designing Remote Connectedness between Parents and their Premature Newly Born

Abstract

During a 6 month graduation project a design concept is proposed and developed that is expected to support the parent-child bonding while parents are at home and their child is in the NICU. In collaboration with medical practitioners from the Maxima Medical Centere Veldhoven (MMC) the new system for remote bonding was developed through a multi-iterative design process. The proposed system is designed to enable parents to detect their baby’s need for consoling and to interact with the baby, comforting the child on a physical remote basis. A working proof of principle prototype is build and evaluated with 15 parents of incubator children through a focus group. The goal of the focus group was to evaluate key aspects of the proposed design concept like the need for such a system and the interaction quality with the different products. Although the design has reached a working proof of principle status, more research and development is needed before the system can be tested in the hospital together with babies. Topics to address in the future are the child’s safety and interaction of parents with the system.