Project Introduction
This project was fascinating for me, throughout its development I felt more “growing pains” than I have yet in this class. It put my mind through a figurative taffy puller and aided me greatly in teaching me how to deal with the issues that arose most frequently. I based this project and its research off of my own transitional object. I did research for this same object in our integrative seminar class and the knowledge I gained there gifted me with some problems I wished to solve for these products.
This is the original photograph I was working from.
Iteration 1 (Includes elements from the past): Concept/Project Development
1) My initial inspiration for this iteration came from my own experiences and history relating to using a transitional object. For a long time I’ve considered making my blanket into many different objects so that they’d have a function going on into my adult life. Entertaining this idea I was inspired first to make a pillow like object, almost to act as a set. If I were to go back and do this project again, I might just stick to the pillow idea to keep it simple however while working on this I decided to incorporate a sort of baby Bjorn/crib/backpack object that I ultimately was quite disappointed in. Not only did it not translate to me in a way that I liked but it was also very hard for the audience to read. It seemed un-necessary to the design despite the intent of my project and I found this very frustrating. It was difficult for me to produce something more than just a simple pillow but less than something too complicated and at the end of this project I found myself wishing I could have just scrapped this part.
Most of the research I was doing for my integrative seminar paper surrounded the psychological effects of transitional objects as a whole. I learned that the need for a transitional object was a direct consequence of a baby’s lack of swaddling. According to my research babies need to be swaddled for much longer than most parents believe and this is often very important to a child’s development, because of this children will attach themselves to an object that mimics the comfort they may receive from a long swaddling period. I wanted to highlight this with my cloud and feel as though I fell flat. Looking back I don’t know how I could’ve solved this issue without scrapping the entire idea as a whole.
2) 
Iteration 2 (includes ideas for the future of this object): Concept/Project Development
1) 
This was the favored product of the two developed and during the critique I found that the viewer’s opinion was consistent with my own. With this piece I was inspired to develop a transitional object that could grow and develop with its child. The use of my blanket aided me in designing a sort of relaxation based use for it and although I did not initially picture it being used as a means of “beautification” the thought of making it into fashion was interesting and very valuable. I wanted to highlight the aspect of relaxation one associates with something like a blanket and this process was made easy by drawing inspiration from the design of vintage bathrobes (female, male, and unisex cut). I faced very few struggles when developing this product and wished the other process had gone as smoothly as this. I was ultimately pleased with this final product and am happy that others could see it as something worth developing.
2) 
Final Reflection
Both products went through very different design processes in their development and to date I found this project to be the most difficult for me. I felt a strong lack of frustration regarding the problem solving aspect of these projects and despite the frustration I found myself learning a lot. I learned a lot about my own process as a designer, different media, and adding useful features instead of useless ones. This was a big gap I didn’t realize I had and consequently I felt as though I’ve grown and stretched a lot.
I was pleased in my critique that many people were able to fixate on the aspect I was most proud of (selfishly) however I wish people could’ve dug into me more about what I lacked. Possibly even offering suggestions about how to solve the issues I had with my “past” iteration. However thinking about the real world application of my robe was thrilling. I’m glad people were able to pick up on all of its different uses and I wish I could’ve developed a similar clarity for both pieces.
