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Explorative Research Towards a Solution that Allows Babies in an Incubator and Their Parents to Share Heartbeats.The goal of this explorative research was to explore relationships in which one or more participants that (may) have difficulties communicating or it may altogether be impossible and the possibility to support such a relationship with a wearable. After a first exploration of possibly relationships in this category, the relationship between a parent and their premature child in a glass womb was chosen. This situation is emotionally taxing for both parents and the child. This explorative research did not yield a prototype, but did yield useful and interesting results.
Abstract: Sometimes a child is born to early and has to spent time in an incubator. This is a difficult time for both the parents and the child. While in the incubator there is limited time for skin to skin contact or other interactions. This paper presents an explorative user study among Dutch and English parents to find if they would like a, wearable, solution to share their heartbeats with their children, as well as the other way around. To accomplish this, a questionnaire and indepth interviews were used. The results show that, when a child has spent time in an incubator or is spending time in an incubator, being aware of their heartbeat could cause more stress and is not desired by most parents. Parents did feel something for a one-sided solution where the child would receive their heartbeat, and think this would be beneficial for their child. | ||
