Field study: Examples from a toy store

The source for these toys are BR-leksar (sorting on most popular for age 1-4 years).

Some examples of characteristics:
Press on a button to make it move
Press on a button to make some sounds
Colorful
Fluffy
Figures that does not have any interaction at all
Costumes sets such as nurse or police with interactive look a like parts

Things to think about:
It should look inviting and not scary
It should probably not contain small parts that children can eat
Sturdy construction

Field study - how do young kids play?

In order to create a fun toy for kids, we needed to investigate how young kids play. I talked first with 4 year old nephew. Right now he is very much into dressing up as superheroes, police officers, fireman and knights. He also likes to playing with cars and toy weapons. He uses a lot of imagination and like stuff that is load and fast. He doesn't like to play with animals or dolls. When I asked about acitivty boards, my sister claimed that only toddlers like those kinds of games. He used to play with different kind of acitivty boards when he was around 1 year old, but that wouldn't be of interest for him today. He have a lot of interactive toys where he can interact with the toy by controlling and making ít create different kind of motion and sounds.

I have also talked with my other sister who have a one year old son. She also claimed that acitivty boards was for very young children. Her son uses them a lot and like them. At the moment he is into turning light on and off, play in the sandbox, play with water and stacking blocks. He also likes toys that sound a lot and uses different kinds of materials where you can spin and twist in order to create sounds. My sister meant that at his age he need to have toys that are very simple since he can't concentrate for a long time. She meant that he doesn't understand multiplayer games yet, although he is very much into mimic things. She said that at his age, children like to mimic their parents, and when they get older they use a lot more imagination in their play. Since children like to mimic their parents they often are very interested in stuff that the parent uses, like mobile phones and tablets. All my nieces and nephews think that it is really funny to play with different apps on the tables, including the one year old. The important aspect is that it needs to be simple at a so young age, and that the interaction should include playing and exploring different materials, shapes, sounds and colors.

Reverse engineering laboration

This friday we had an lab where we did a morning hack session. Each of us had brought an electrical device to the class and the task was to choose one device and investigate its functionality by seperating and exploring the parts. We took my old pool thermometer and seperated all parts and discussed how it worked. It was fun, altough the device didn't have so many parts so we finished quite early. The rest of the lecture we therefore brainstormed about our upcoming project. We have agreed to create some kind of activity board, but exactly how it should work and the target group is not decied yet. We want to use LED-light and buttons to create some kind of interaction. We have access to Arduino in the group and also a 3D-printer, so we have good opportunities to create something fun and explore with different shapes, materials and light effects.

Below is some pictures from the morning hack :)