Not your ordinary baby products — Designing a better baby bottle

 5 Groups, 4 weeks, one final presentation that sparked excitement and lively exchange of thoughts. Together with Babisil Baby Products (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., a collection of innovative solutions for babies' daily care activities was designed by our students at SUSTech School of Design.

「DS223 Client Product: Object」

Studio teaching and industry-based projects are two main aspects that defined the design education at SUSTech School of Design. This approach is represented in full in the course DS223 “Client Product: Object” led by Professor Enza Migliore. The course emphasized the contemporary model of new parents facing the challenges of the “URBAN” life and the keyword for the design results is “WELLBEING”. Divided into 5 groups, the students are given the task to complete an industry-defined project in collaboration with Babisil, a company that creates premium-quality baby products. The main objective of the project is to design innovative solutions to make babies' daily care activities easier, more enjoyable, and more comfortable while meeting Babisil’s requirement for original proposals to widen their market competitiveness.

As the course progressed, the 5 groups worked through the complete product development process which included research, prototype, test, and improve the product under the guidance of Babisil design team and Professor Migliore. Our students learned to capture client requirements and user expectations as well as came up with design ideas that were both innovative and fun considering the key issues raised when parents are involved in a new urban lifestyle made of speed, constant commitments, and pursuit of a career, as well as the new awareness about both physical, psychological, and emotional growth of the child along with that of the parents during the period of COVID-19.

Presentation by HU Hongyi and HAN Yuanning (Group 1)

Presentation by JIANG Hanxi and HU Chengwei (Group 2)

On April 6th, 2022, the final review of the project took place online due to the pandemic. Experts from the Babisil team and faculty members of the SUSTech School of Design community were invited to join and evaluate the works of each student group. Each group presented their final product concepts that fulfilled certain design goals and led the audience through their design journey. “Ori”, the concept presented by HU Hongyi and HAN Yuanning (Group 1) focused on the sustainability, reusability, and multi-functionality of a baby bottle that “grows with the baby”. “Relittle” is a product that aimed to improve user-friendliness based on research on ergonomics designed by JIANG Hanxi and HU Chengwei (Group 2). “Loop-Loop”, just as the name suggested, is a series of stackable baby bottle sleeves that provide an infinity of possibilities for the babies to play with while being fed, presented by YU Hanxu and QIU Guo (Group 3). Thorough market research on products that blend milk led to XUE Renchao and ZHANG Chenghao (Group 4)’s concept of designing a baby bottle with improved and simplified milk blending functions. A key issue addressed in JIANG Yutong and ZHANG Zimo (Group 5)’s presentation is to give milk bottles a second life, donut-shaped and sphere-shaped bottles were designed not just for feeding babies but also for playing and planting, etc. Each presentation was put together effectively to show different stages of ideation. The concepts developed showed substantial research through different channels including literature research and surveys, design skill development by utilizing 3D modeling and rendering to prototype the design, and thoughtful consideration of materials and evaluation to reflect on the whole design development. The presentations met with great success and received rave reviews from the Babisil team and our faculty members. “Today, we are all so impressive to hear about the high-quality presentations. The students are awesome and very high-quality. Their creative ideas and research for customer behavior are excellent,” Dr. Angie Lee commented.

Final Product by YU Hanxu and QIU Guo (Group 3)

Concept Video by XUE Renchao and ZHANG Chenghao (Group 4)

Final Product by JIANG Yutong and ZHANG Zimo (Group 5)