What's "Kangarobe"?
The Kangarobe is a specialised garment designed to facilitate Kangaroo Care (skin-to-skin contact) for preterm (premature) babies in Neonatal Intensive Care Units who require complex medical equipment.
It features secure attachment points for medical lines and respiratory tubing and a vertical access window that allows nurses to perform procedures without interrupting parent-infant bonding.
Who's it for?
This project is aimed at parents and caregivers of preterm infants who face barriers to skin-to-skin contact due to the complexity of medical equipment. The work is also relevant for nurses and healthcare practitioners, facilitating parent-infant bonding while managing safety protocols.
Approach
The project employed Human-Centered Design as its guiding methodology. This included ethnographic fieldwork in hospital, shadowing nurses to understand workflow constraints, safety protocols, and the barriers parents face during skin-to-skin care. Alongside parent interviews, co-design sessions, and prototyping helped refine the design. Supported by these Design Research approaches, the team developed a garment that balanced clinical needs, usability, and the benefits of extended bonding.
A feasibility study with 25 parent-infant pairs tested the final design in real hospital conditions, gathering structured feedback on usability and safety from both parents and nursing staff.
Contribution
This project makes several contributions. The design of Kangarobe itself is a contribution that is supported by a hospital trial that suggests it increases the amount of time parents hold infants, which in turn is known to be positive. The project also offers design principles for healthcare products that facilitate rather than hinder parent-infant bonding in intensive care settings and demonstrates how iterative prototyping enables design concepts for balancing safety with emotional and physical comfort.
It shows how Human-Centered Design can address clinical barriers while supporting family-oriented care.
Why is it in the Observatory?
The Kangarobe project demonstrates how Design Research can generate novel solutions in safety-critical healthcare environments. Through ethnographic fieldwork, co-design with Neonatal Intensive Care Unit staff, and iterative prototyping, the research revealed previously unaddressed needs and potential solutions at the intersection of medical protocols, equipment constraints, and parent-infant bonding.
While the garment itself is currently a proof-of-concept, the project contributes methodological insight into how designers can navigate complex sociotechnical systems whilst balancing clinical safety requirements with emotional and relational needs and the feasibility study provides compelling early evidence of positive impact and potential for adoption.