Manu

What it does

Manu is a child-friendly handheld that reawakens children’s touch and fine-motor skills eroded by screen time. Three research-tuned vibration bands and patterns turn one minute a day into focused sensory training, aiding learning and emotional well-being.

Your inspiration

A survey of 1,500 teachers found that 77% say today’s children handle scissors and pencils less adeptly than peers did five years ago. Since COVID-19, children have swapped outdoor play for screens, spending an average of four to six hours a day in front of devices—a habit that starves their touch receptors and stalls fine-motor development. Yet experts still prescribe traditional fixes such as block play. NHS data link weak fine-motor skills to poorer academic performance and even mental-health issues. I set out to revive children’s sense of touch by adapting lab-proven vibro-therapy validated in elderly-care and disability research.

How it works

Manu is offered in two formats tailored to children’s developmental stages and preferences. Both versions share the same components: a motion sensor, a vibration generator, a battery, and a processor. They deliver a one-minute training session through three specific vibration frequencies and patterns that stimulate touch receptors and fine-motor muscles. Manu Ball (ages 4–8): Children grasp the Manu Ball with both hands and “collect” LED light as they train. The LED ring signals the start and end of the session. When each session finishes, data are sent to a caregiver app so parents can track progress, and the child’s virtual companion “grows.” Manu Play (ages 8+): A palm-size screen is added, letting older children play a one-minute brain-boosting mini-game. During the game the same vibration frequencies and patterns stimulate the hands, so cognitive activation and tactile training happen at the same time.

Design process

I developed Project Manu through a co-design programme with 31 children, 17 families, 13 specialists, two schools and a government agency. Interviews and hands-on workshops let me capture the needs of the core users—children, parents and teachers—and translate them into clear usability and safety requirements. I then reviewed technical feasibility with child-focused firms and vibration-therapy specialists. After securing ethics approval from the Royal College of Art’s ethics team, I ran a parent-supervised study with nine children. Each child completed the 9-Hole Peg Test five times before training; I discarded the first run as a learning trial and averaged the remaining four. After training they repeated the Peg Test three times and I took the mean score. Short-term effect: one minute of training produced an average ≈10 % improvement in fine-motor speed. Long-term effect: after more than two weeks of daily use, average improvement rose to ≈30 %. Children who already had strong fine-motor skills improved only marginally, while those with poorer baseline skills showed the greatest gains. Although the sample was small, the results are highly encouraging and validate Manu’s potential for real-world impact.

How it is different

Modern tools are needed to foster tactile perception and fine-motor development in the digital era. Manu offers an innovative design-engineering approach that fulfils this demand. Building on research methods validated with children with disabilities and older adults, Manu synthesises and advances core technologies to solve problems shared by a much larger population of children and thus delivers greater impact. Because the laboratory techniques used in earlier studies were inconvenient, appeared risky and were difficult to access, Manu was redesigned from the ground up—through extensive user interviews, research and workshops—into an intuitive, child-friendly solution. Instead of making tactile and fine-motor training feel like a daily chore, Manu turns it into an enjoyable ritual. Using hand-movement sensors, LED feedback and an interactive display, children can improve tactile perception and fine-motor skills in a fun, engaging way.

Future plans

User studies, interviews and workshops have shown that potential users view Manu very positively. One school has even requested fifteen prototypes, explaining that it intends to use them during break times to train children’s tactile perception and fine-motor skills, and to recruit volunteers so that the training can continue at home. I therefore plan to build additional prototypes and broaden my testing. The programme has two main goals: (1) to expand the sample size to one hundred children, and (2) to assess the long-term impact by tracking changes in effectiveness and fine-motor development after more than three months of continuous use.

Awards