Stampline
About 50% of human population wears glasses. Despite growing numbers of visually impaired, therapy and training programs, especially for kids, are still very limited. As my Bachelor thesis I developed Stampline – stamping set which combines treating strabismus and nystagmus with creative development dedicated to pre-school and early school children.
The set includes: 6 3D-printed stamples with unique shapes, a backlit table, plastic tiles with patterns, an ink pad and a set of carbon paper. The whole setcan be stored in a dedicated box.
Collaborator / Client:
Bachelor Thesis, Child therapist Małgorzata Kahl
Technology & Materials:
SLA print, plywood, acrylic glass
Year & Place:
2021/22; Warsaw, Poland
Development
Starting point
Design principles in this project, creating therapy tool for visually impaired kids. Easy and relatively cheap to produce and transforming therapy into engaging, fun activity, derived from my own childhood.
As a person with sight problems I was lucky to be placed in a kidergarten with dedicated program for visually impaired. For a scale, there are two kindergartens like this in Warsaw – city of more than 2 milion people. It shows how people with sight problems are not being taken care off properly in modern society, and how big privilege it is to receive proper treatment from the earliest stages of life. It definitely needs a change.
Process
The project started with a research and talks with Małgorzata Kahl – kids therapist at the
Raoul Wallenbergs Integrational Primary School No. 339 in Warsaw. Those meetings gave me significant knowledge not only about the methods currently used at schools, but also insights on what children find fun and engaging. Amongst these activities the one I noticed the biggest potential was stamping – mostly used in hand-eye coordination and depth perception, but depending on a stamp shape the activity can change.
Stamp shape I developed has additional, very important dampening effect on strabismus and nystagmus because of the distractors – thin lines which repeat the edges of the main shape of each stamp. These stimulate the eye, making the exercise more difficult with each subsequent stamp, therefore requires more concentration from the practitioner.
Technology chosen for the stamps is 3D SLA printing, which enables the precise reproduction of the model, regarding the thickness of distractors (2mm). Backlit by LED tape, the table is made of plywood and acrylic glass. The transparent plates, made of acrylic glass have additional UV-printed patterns. The entire table can be stored and transported in a dedicated plywood box.
The logotype is based on the Komu font in a B variant
SLA printing
Gluing the box
1. Place the table
2. Form a pattern using tiles
3. Place and clip the tracing paper to the table
4. Turn on the light and prepare stamps
5. Start stamping
Result
Final project
Stampline set was created and tested at Raoul Wallenbergs Integrational
Primary School No. 339 in Warsaw. However, projects like this requires years of testing and checking on the participants after significant amount of time.
One of the most important thing about Stampline is that the excercise has no condition for feasibility. Therefore, making mistakes is not only acceptable, but actually desireable.
Children prints
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