Toys are highly constrained in terms of their cost, material, and safety requirements. Still there are innovative ways to leverage computation, novel materials, and physical design to create toys with a high degree of “surprise” and playability.

I’m currently at Ferrero doing R&D and innovation for the toys inside of Kinder egg. In the session I'll present some of my research to share how innovative playabilities and interactions can fit into tiny and affordable packages.

This is a lecture-style session and not a hands-on workshop. There will be Nutella.

Some specific topics I'll share on: • How simple plastic and paper objects can provide inputs into smart devices, without onboard electronics. • How AI is coming into the world of toys; available tools for it. • Physical materials and design methodologies that can enable rich toy user experiences: compliant mechanisms, optical effects, and others.

Some things you might get out of the session: • Open and low-cost technologies you could use in your projects. • New ideas for user-interaction design, apart from toys. • Inspiration for how breakthrough projects can cost less than one dollar. • Some insights into how commercial toy research happens.