KAIT AYRES

Kait Ayres is Arizona born and Texas raised. She is passionate about dance parties, dogs, tacos, people, and design. She loves all things neutral has a deep love for natural sunlight and the sky. Kait was drawn to design because of the opportuninty to play a small part in making someone’s passions and dreams come true, while also getting to create beautiful things in the process. Her degree project focuses on giving parents who have children with learning differences a greater understanding and stance of empathy on what their children go through day to day.

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“FRANKLY, CHILDREN WITH LEARNING DIFFERENCES NEED PARENTS WHO UNDERSTAND.”

Concord is a kit of parts that is designed to help parents of children with learning differences. This project idea was born out of a previous project called Codee. Codee was a dyslexia helper tool that used augmented reality to help children struggling with dyslexia to read more easily; boosting their confidence in the classroom. After heavily researching dyslexia and learning more about what it’s like to have a learning difference, I became really interested in the relationship between empathy and learning differences. When the degree project came around, I decided to focus on this relationship. I began my research wanting to focus on encouraging this ecosystem of empathy within the classroom, between children and their fellow classmates. However, as I dove into my primary research phase and began talking to those with learning differences and their parents, I was struck by how desperately parents wanted to be able to fully understand what their children were going through and also be equipped enough to help them out. This is where my project completely changed and I decided to createConcord. Each part of Concord is a specific result of my research. Concord, like I said previously, is a kit of parts meant to equip parents with the tools and resources to help their children at home, while also engaging the parent and creating this ecosystem of empathy within the home. Concord is a one-time mailable kit that is meant to live continuously within the home. The design and brand of concord is very intentional as it aims to get both the parents and children eager to engage with the kit. The process and final outcome of this project has only made me dream bigger as to how this could really come to life in the real world and even exist past the kit itself. Empathy is one of the biggest tools we have to fight for one another, or even just sit beside each other and know that there’s someone on our team. Children with learning differences deserve to have a team at home and parents deserve to be equipped well enough to make that team happen.