Small World Social’s Breastfeeding Support Project is designed to support breastfeeding mothers during the formative first months of her baby’s life. Breastfeeding doesn’t always come naturally to new mothers. Often due to location, many women don’t have the hands-on support of the other women in their family to encourage and teach them. Breastfeeding Support Project aims to bridge this gap and allow mothers the support they need.
The Australian Breastfeeding Association celebrates its 50th Anniversary in 2014. The Association is volunteer run and built on the commitment of mothers helping mothers to breastfeed with confidence and success.
The Association receives over 7,000 calls from concerned mothers each month, seeking advice and assistance with breastfeeding problems. Small World Social is proud to be working alongside dedicated volunteers to help nursing mothers in Australia.
The trial is now just over the mid way mark and all five babies are doing well. The mums have settled into their new routines and are smitten with their lovely little ones.
The project has cemented, what are sure to become life-long friendships from this very special group of wonderful women.
Tony Kerr has continued to work through the camera angle issue, developing three new prototypes for testing in the studio week. The new designs aren’t just brightly coloured they have a new surface shape that is capturing the babies chin angle more clearly. The newest prototype introduces a convex mirror system that expands the field of view. A hinge has also been introduced into the design and this will better accommodate differences in angle and position. Tony has put in some really long hours on the project over the last week and is determined to crack the design problem. RMIT’s industrial design team (Scott Mason and Liam Fennessy) are continuing to support the project team.
Earlier this week, Small World Social welcomed another two Australian Breastfeeding Association volunteer counsellors into our Melbourne studio to trial the technology of our Breastfeeding Support Project. Jeanette and Leanne were not only impressed by the hands-free capabilities of Google Glass, but they were passionate about an online breastfeeding information portal. The counsellors cited difficulty in accessing information as a common barrier to new mothers seeking help and learning more about their health and their newborn’s development.
The first handful of participating mums received their trial packs, earlier this week. Small World Social is excited and proud to be working alongside these frontier women as they welcome their babies into the world.
It’s been a busy week for the project team getting everything working and tested for the first group of five pioneering women involved in the trial.
Melbourne the project team of Maddy, Kim and Lucy have been working closely with the San Francisco’s team of Ethan and Elloise to fine tune the content that is to be displayed in Glass. They have to test the equipment and develop the support and training materials.
The plan is to run the trial in small groups of five women to progressively iterate and improve the approach.
The first volunteer counsellors from the Australian Breastfeeding Association, Jess Leonard and Lynn Ng visited the Melbourne studio to be trained this week and are excited by the possibilities of the project.
The team is continuing to work through the challenge of the camera angle. RMIT’s industrial design team have taken a second pass at making a bracket that slides on with a mirror reflector. This approach worked better than the first pass, in that it was light weight and captured the footage however the team were worried that sliding the bracket off and on over the prism lens may scratch it. Mum’s in the trial need to be able to remove the bracket to get their wifi connections set-up at home.
Tony Kerr has joined the project team to help support solving hardware related challenges. With a distinguished international aeronautic engineering career and an RMIT graduate he is a very wise owl welcomed by the young owls in the project team.
Trial participant Lauren Clarke and her daughter Ava-Rose were featured in the Progress Leader this week. The article by Greggory Gliddon profiled the project, how the technology works and the possibilities for Glass for remote and rural health.
Today the Berwick Leader (News Ltd) featured one of the Breastfeeding trial mothers, Sarah Jane Bailey, and spoke to her about her experience with Google Glass and Breastfeeding.
The article, written by Brittany Shanahan, featured Ms. Bailey and her son Patrick and covers the highs and lows of Breastfeeding and the possibilities the new technology holds for the future.
You can read the article here.
Trial participant Laura and her baby Grace were featured in today's Geelong Advertiser. The article by Mandy Squires, profiled Laura, the project and the future of technology for Healthcare in regional Australia. Great work Laura and Grace.
The Australian Breastfeeding Association celebrates its 50th Anniversary in 2014. The Association is volunteer run and is built on the commitment of mothers helping mother to breastfeed their babies with confidence and success. The Association receives over 7,000 calls from concerned mothers each month, seeking advice and assistance with breastfeeding problems. Small World Social is incredibly proud to be working alongside such dedicated women to help nursing mothers in Australia.
EGO Pharmaceuticals has served Australian families for over 60 years. Creating innovative treatments for common skin problems, EGO's commitment to their customers is unparalleled.
To celebrate the end of the Breastfeeding trial, EGO generously helped us reward our participant mothers with complementary Skincare packs for them and their babies.