Flip

Flip Intro

There is something kind of magical about swimming when you are a child. Do you remember growing up and watching your shadow as you swam in the pool, trying to mimic a perfect dolphin kick and imagining you were a mermaid rather than human?  We all shared these sorts of memories and a few of us decided to create something that enhanced the sense of wonder kids’ get when they play and swim under water.

Value Proposition

1. Swimming is a great form of exercise. One of the core objectives of Flip is to help kids to become healthy and competent swimmers.

2. However, another goal of this design is to make kids learn and care about water animals. Traditionally, aquariums have been a way of bringing people, and especially children, closer to sea life. By triggering a sense of wonder and appreciation in visitors, aquariums are an effective way of teaching people about sea-life preservation, and it’s also just really fun to learn about these animals and their habitats.

Ideation

We saw an opportunity to create a device that not only encouraged children to swim more, but also generated their interest in preserving sea creatures and their habitats through a fun interaction.  We eventually imagined designing a pair of webbed aquatic gloves that would track acceleration.  It would then sync with an educational mobile app in order to generate animal profiles real-time.  Our desire is to promote learning through animal-metrics.

In our works-alike glove (see images below), we used simple material like fabric, Velcro and a pre-made fin to mock-up a simple casing that would be easy to work with.

Aqua Glove Demonstration Prototype