Children are considered to be very carefree, but they also experience worries that can be stressful for them. For example if they had a fight with a friend or a change in their environment. Digital technology also often has a bad influence on children. With this project we wanted to support children in those situations.
Research shows that the best way to comfort a child is to spend time with them, listen and build daily routines.
This inspired us to create Sound Stories, a concept that strengthens the relationship between parent and child and gives them a daily routine together, during which the child can express and process their daily experiences. We wanted to create a moment of comfort and bonding between parent and child, to unwind and relax at the end of the day.
Sound Stories is an auditory storytelling experience, where parents can give full attention to their child and together create spontaneous and imaginative stories. Sound Stories provides the opportunity to choose an environment from the dial and a character, activity and object from the cubes to build a story. Those elements support the storytelling by giving inspiration of what the story can be about.
This enables the creation of a magical ambience using sounds to create an engaging and impactful storytelling experience. A story with sounds.
Our concept focuses on 3 aspects.
A FEELING OF TOGETHERNESS
Parents can use Sound Stories as a source of inspiration to together with the child build bedtime stories. By rotating the dial they can set the ambience of the world the story is taking place in, by selecting from a choice of nature sounds. Other elements, such as characters, objects or activities can be selected by placing cubes into the device while creating the story. Here the child can engage and is an active participant in the creation of the story instead of being a passive player by just listening to it.
A MOMENT OF IMPORTANCE
When a child is happy, sad or angry all they want is to be heard. Sound Stories creates a moment where the child feels important and gets the opportunity to express themselves, which influence the story and contribute to building a world together with the parent.
AN OPPORTUNITY TO REFOCUS AND BE CALM
The whole process of telling a story helps a child to refocus and feel relaxed before falling asleep. Sound Stories has a sleep mode, which is activated after the storytelling is over. All sounds fade out until only the subtle sounds of nature is left. Thus a calm environment is created where the ambience of the story echoes in the background, while the child falls asleep.
Sound stories is an experiential process of helping a child unwind before going to bed.
It is a tool that enables the child to express themselves and engage in an activity that is meaningful and integral for the development of a healthy relationship between parent and child.