Mariana Benitez

Alejandra Coronado

Team

Creating a 90% wooden set for people with special needs

Challenge

Year

2013

Wooden kit of 4 products that will make teenagers with autism learn and grow up with products that will help them enter this new stage of adulthood.

Teenaria

I had the opportunity to do my social service at the Fundación HACE ( is a non-profit association dedicated to promoting awareness, integration, and understanding of the autism spectrum condition).

During my two years of social service at Fundación HACE, I took care of children of different ages, from babies to teenagers. This led me to notice the different needs that each child had depending on their age.

Talking with Blanca Hernandez, director of the Foundation and mother of Luis German, she told us that one of her biggest concerns is that Luis German is growing and today there are only products and/or toys for children but there are no activities for growth, there are only children and adults. He commented that it was as if children would become adults and not go through adolescence.

This conversation led my team and me to think about what is experienced during adolescence and what a child needs when growing from a child to an adolescent and this is where TEENARIA was born.

Wooden kit of 4 products that will make teenagers with autism learn and grow up with products that will help them enter this new stage of adulthood.

Background

Teenaria is a set of elements that help teenagers with autism that help parents to teach their children the basic activities that they should develop and know when they grow up.

This set consists of 4 elements, the first one is a recipe box, in which the parents will leave the necessary ingredients to prepare the food and the user only has to follow the order of the numbers to learn how to make recipes and the order of the ingredients, something that is essential for a teenager.

Another product in the set is a wallet to understand how money works and to gain control over the subject.

The wallet has the proper and accurate compartments for both coins and bills.

The third product is a customizable key ring so that it can be distributed according to the rooms that you have at home and that each room has its key and in the same way that serves to store things, thus following the routine of leaving the key that goes in the right bedroom.

And the last product is a book of stories and culture of both countries and food, in this case, the theme was pasta where with different textures and volumes explains the different types of pasta, sauces, and the best restaurants in the city, being a new and fun way to learn about the world and its cultures.

Concept

All Projects

The team with the tutor Vanna Trotta after Winning Best of the Show in the Open Room 2013 in the University of Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey Campus Guadalajara.