Toy Design Workshop
Spring 2006
http://itp.nyu.edu/toys
Office hours Thursday
10:00 –12:00
Toys are an important element in the learning process of young children. Toys are always interactive and can easily take advantage of the tools and disciplines of thought we use at ITP. Toys make it OK to develop something just to be fun. We were all kids, so no-one knows better than us how to invent toys. This class is centered around the creation of toys for children of ages 5 - 12. Students in the class have an opportunity to research, design, prototype and test new ideas for toys using both digital and non-digital materials. Projects are developed individually and in teams. An effort is made to test the designs with children and educators, and receive feedback from professionals including people from "Mattel". A selection of projects from this class will be presented by the students at Mattel's "Student Design Summit" in LA in July
Class 1 Jan 23:
Introduction , Assigning research topics to groups, assigning groups for short term design assignment.
Research topics:
What’s out there – A survey of toys available for the age group 5 –10 . The goal is to try and categorize the toys by the official parameters such as, age and gender, but more importantly try to come up with new categories such as educational, motor skills, fantasy, aspiration, open-ended-ness, smart-toys, construction, group / individual etc.
How they play – Observe children at play, with and without toys. Try to isolate groups of behavior, are there similarities and differences between genders, ages, groups vs individual . Do children play differently in a supervised environment ? Do they use the toys as intended ? what props to they use when toys are not available. Ask them which toys they love most and why. Try to observe as many children as possible in as many situations. Check the literature for observations on children play and development.
What grownups think – Talk to teachers, parents and scholars (school of education, child psychologists ) what they think the roll of toys is in a child’s development. What educational / developmental / emotional goals should toys address. What toys are good and bad in their perspective.
Short term design assignment - design a toy based on the concept of amplifications i.e.. making small things big, making weak things strong, making soft sounds loud and in general empowering the kids with extra abilities.
Class 2 Jan 30:
presentations of short term design group assignments
Class 3 Feb 6:
presentation of group research
Class 4 Feb 13:
Visit From Mattel
Class 5 Feb 20:
Presentations of initial toy ideas (group or individual)
Class 6 Feb 27:
demonstration of working with VectorWorks to create drawings for prototypes
Class 7 march 6:
presentations of sketches / interaction scenarios
Class 8 march 20:
Visit at Fisher-Price / Scholastic (tentative)
Class 9 march 27:
presentations of drawings for prototype
Class 10 Apr 3:
presentations of prototype for kid testing
Class 11 Apr 10:
kid testing / guest visit
Class 12 Apr 17:
Presentations of kid testing videos
Class 13 Apr 22:
Individual / group meetings refining the final presentations
Class 14 May 1:
Final Presentation with Mattel
Who has access to:
Children – to view, interview and later test the designs .
Teachers, psychologists to interview and review our designs
Toy makers / designers. To interview and review our designs
Discussion topics for first class:
What is the difference between toys and games.
Are all toys interactive ?
Should toys be designed gender-specific ?
Is it enough for a toy to just be fun ?
Toys used to be adaptations/simplifications of real objects to help kids pretend they are grownups (small kitchen and pots, model cars and power tools) but now many toys indulge into the kids fantasy world (transformers combining robots and dinosaurs etc.) Is this the way of the future, is it OK?
Do smart and enticing toys reduce the motivation of children to socialize (and there skills ) as computer games are said to do.
Is there a specific aesthetic for children, is there a different design language for boys and girls ?
Any really good or bad toys you wish to discuss ?
Any initial ideas for toys ?