When looking to design a product for children, my group of designers and I decided to focus on a group often overlooked in the product-design world : children with autism. Our target audience is children from ages 5 - 10 who have been diagnosed with level two autism, but is available to anyone who feels like they would benefit.

As designers, we believe that design should be well-crafted with intentionality and the needs of the user at the forefront. Along with creating items of high quality, they should in tandem be easy to replicate in a mass production setting to reach the highest amount of users. The overall product should accomplish the needs of the intended audience while creating an empowering sense of self to comfort its users. 

As a result, we created Cuddle Buddies. Cuddle Buddies is a practical stuffed animal that offers stimulation to autistic children, serves as a functional tool for learning, and acts as an aid for focus. We built a prototype of one of our buddies, Billie the Bunnie, with the amenities that make the product specific to our audience. He has weighted beads that can be both heated or chilled for comfort, a pocket on his paw that can have essential oils dropped in for either stimuli or comfort, and crinkle material in the ears for auditory stimuli.