The Technology Behind didofy Pram Designs

August 28, 2022

The idea behind didofy was born after our founders became first-time parents. They couldn’t understand why pushchairs were so complicated to fold – even trained shop staff struggled with them. Having to put down baby and instead concentrate on folding the pushchair seemed like madness. The brief was simply: to design and create stylish, functionally brilliant and easy-folding pushchairs that parents will love and be proud of. At didofy, we know that family life can bring about plenty of challenges, and we strongly believe that folding a pushchair shouldn’t be one of them.

Lotus

The Lotus is a clever 3-in-1 travel system that opens and closes simply at the touch of a button. The Lotus is didofy’s first model after several years of careful and detailed research and development. Sitting within the premium end of the pushchair market, the Lotus takes the engineering brilliance, quality and detailing one would expect but with some very convenient twists that sets it apart. It is AutoFolding at the touch of a button and also has an invaluable in-built mobile phone charger. It is a truly unique and patented innovation!

The Design Process

We started with a simple brief of creating a premium 3-in-1 travel system that can open and close itself. After exploring many options, the best method to achieve this was to use an actuator for folding. This decision was critical as it ensures the Lotus has a robust and reliable folding method via a single moving part - the actuator. All that was needed was to ensure that the actuator had an electricity supply to power it during the folding and unfolding cycles.
The next phase involved the engineering of the frame with 5 key requirements – safety, stability, reliability, weight and smooth easy fold. Innovation of this kind takes time, with over 20 prototypes created – each one improving on the last until the balance between the 5 key requirements was perfectly optimised.
On completion of the design, the Lotus was tested extensively both within the confines of our R&D lab, and also out and about in the real world. After 3 years of complex and detailed engineering work, the Lotus was ready for production and the unique innovation released to the world.

The Lotus Key Features

AutoFold
The Lotus fold has a real wow factor. The unique AutoFolding function certainly gets attention, but the real beauty behind it is how easy it makes life for parents, grandparents and carers. It was also important for us to ensure there was a manual fold option.

Mobile Phone Charger
The clever in-built mobile phone charger is invaluable when out and about. This was a critical feature during the design phase and is one that many parents have thanked us for.

The Finished Product

After years of innovation, the Lotus is now an award winning, unique and innovative 3-in-1 Travel System. The Lotus also has patented technology around the innovative AutoFold. The Lotus is available at many didofy independent retailers as well as online.

Learn more about the Lotus here!

Aster

The Aster is the ultimate innovative compact-fold stroller. The Aster takes many years of didofy’s extensive knowledge and heritage, packaging it up into a category-leading ultra-compact stroller. The Aster uses didofy’s MagicFold system that folds it down at the touch of a button.

The Design Process

The design brief for the Aster was to develop a reliable, safe and highly practical ultra-compact stroller to make life easier for parents-on-the-go. As with all didofy products, we knew that the fold was critical and had to set it apart. A real challenge was to achieve such a fold whilst also ensuring it remained lightweight and with a hand luggage sized compact-fold. The MagicFold was developed using a combination of springs, weights and gravity. This folding mechanism alone was worked on extensively - tweaking and improving it for almost a year.
The didofy 5 key development requirements – safety, stability, reliability, weight and smooth easy fold - were at the forefront of the Aster during R&D. Numerous prototypes were developed, improved and iterated. After a couple of years of development, optimising the balance between function, weight, size and style, the Aster was ready for production.
The Aster went through the didofy testing program, which includes the same stroller travelling more than 10,000km on a rocky rolling road travelator, as well as numerous internal and external stability and safety checks.

Aster Key Features

MagicFold
Having a stroller essentially fold itself into such a compact size always gathers admiring glances. The bigger benefit is that it enables parents, grandparents and carers to hold their child whilst the stroller folds when out on adventures.

Hand Baggage Size
The Aster folds up into a compact size that fits on most planes as hand baggage and weighs just 6.2kg.

The Finished Product

The Aster is a multi-award winning stroller that has surpassed the original design brief of being a reliable, safe and highly practical ultra-compact stroller to make life easier for parents-on-the-go. As the name suggests, the Aster’s fold is magical. The Aster is available at didofy independent retailers as well as online.

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