The beat goes on: helping mums bond with their unborn child
is a pillow designed to strengthen the emotional bonding by allow pregnant women 鈥� and their babies 鈥� hear and feel each other鈥檚 heartbeat from inside the womb.
It then doubles as a sleep aid for newborn babies, allowing parents to record their own heartbeat for the baby to snuggle up to for comfort at nap times.
For Franziska Seehuber and her co-founders Jessica Watts and Anna Natlacen, their invention was driven by a desire to solve a very personal problem for many expecting parents 鈥� a perceived inability to bond with their unborn child.
Answering a project brief on 鈥榩atient centric care鈥� and 鈥榙estigmatizing mental health鈥� promoted by Westmead Hospital, the students found that 40 per cent of 800 surveyed pregnant women said they were struggling to connect with their unborn baby.
One expectant mother was quoted as saying she feared whether she would be able to love the child once it was born.
The three students devised in response to聽 the topic 鈥楧esign for Wellbeing鈥� while undertaking the course at the .
This project is a true example of how taking on a human-centred perspective can lead to the design of a highly desirable concept.
鈥淲e did a lot of user research with pregnant women聽 to find out their needs and issues during pregnancy. We came up with over 40 ideas to solve their problems and went through the whole design thinking process until we shaped our final idea,鈥� said Franziska Seehuber.
PetiteBeat was so successful that the team were recognised by the University of Sydney鈥檚 听,听and the business聽accelerator program聽聽 As a result, the students are poised to launch their start-up business.
鈥淭his project is a true example of how taking on a human-centred perspective can lead to the design of a highly desirable concept that fosters true needs of expecting parents and contributes to their wellbeing.鈥� Said Dr Lecturer , Design Lab at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning.