kind of OT: Parents of newborns/toddlers - Would you mind answering a few questions for a school project?

I'm a product design major at Columbia College, and my studio class is working on child safety products - stuff like those corner bumpers, door stops, cabinet locks, outlet plugs, etc... I'm gathering some research to find either opportunities for a new type of safety device that hasn't been utilized yet, or ways of rethinking a current product for either a longer (or second) life, or easier recycle-ability(is that a word?).

So if you wouldn't mind taking a moment to answer any or all of these questions, or feel free to add anything else you might find relevant.

-What is your biggest safety concern in the home? And your smallest?

-Where did you get your safety products? What do you plan to do with them when your child grows up?

-Does material or color affect your purchase decision? why?

-Did you have an idea of what safety product you needed before you went shopping? Or, did you buy a safety product you didn't plan on once you got to the store? If so, what prompted that purchase?

-Do you recycle? To what extent?

-Do you have a price limit for these types of products?

These are just a guideline for the type if info I'm looking for. Any information relevant to your methods of protecting your baby in the home would be of help to me in this project.

Thanks in advance parents,
Gabe Weiss

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Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on February 5, 2009 at 11:01am
did you check the family group in the groups section?
Permalink Reply by GabeW (not the other Gabe) on February 5, 2009 at 11:16am
Just joined and posted a note,
good idea Julie.

Julie Hochstadter said:
did you check the family group in the groups section?
Permalink Reply by GabeW (not the other Gabe) on February 9, 2009 at 4:55am
bump
Permalink Reply by Jim Behymer on February 9, 2009 at 7:13am
Hey Gabe, I have 3 kids, one of whom is still a toddler, but I don't really have any opinions about safety products. My wife is in some mothers' groups though, maybe she and her friends could help you out. I'll ask her to pass along the questions.
Permalink Reply by Jane Healy on February 27, 2009 at 6:00am
My kids are presently 11, 9 and 5
-What is your biggest safety concern in the home? And your smallest?
That the toddler would escape out the front door! :::snort:::
We bathed our kids in a full size bathtub when they were little; I worried about them hitting their heads on the faucet Smallest: that they would eat lint or something off the floor...

-Where did you get your safety products? What do you plan to do with them when your child grows up?
Babies R Us, Walgreens, The Right Start Grows up: gave them away to friends or donated them to charities

-Does material or color affect your purchase decision? why?
I hated the all white motif of so many of the products out there. Baby bumpers, etc. Would have preferred brown or black for anything that was furniture related.

-Did you have an idea of what safety product you needed before you went shopping?
Yes
Or, did you buy a safety product you didn't plan on once you got to the store?
Yes
If so, what prompted that purchase? Marketing; hadn't thought of the need for some of the stuff until I saw it and went "oh! I hadn't even thought of that one"

-Do you recycle? To what extent?
Yes. A LOT. We try to eliminate the need to recycle, but we reuse a bunch of stuff (packaging etc) and try to recycle what we don't. We generally have a med bag of garbage each week and two full bins of recycling (paper, cardboard, aluminum, plastic, metal cans, glass).

-Do you have a price limit for these types of products?
I tend to be cheap, unless the item is extremely well made and seems to be something I can put to a future use (e.g. a good bike trailer for my kids, which is now becoming my shopping trailer). Pricing would really depend on the product. If I thought that it would really meet a need that I had, I'd be willing to spend more. We put a safety gate at the top of our stairs... that was worth spending some big duckies. I refused to buy most of the stuff out there because I thought it was either wasteful, ridiculous, or just too expensive.

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