Beginning of the prototype

Hello again!

Another work session have ended and we can now see our prototype beginning to take shape!

This week we have been working with different parts of the activity wall. On one side, the physical materials for which the kids will touch and "think" with their hands. On the other side we have been working with the technical gadgets.

• Our prototype consists of a large piece of wood as the very foundation. To raise up the wooden board so we can make holes where the children should fit the shapes, we have sawed off thicker toilet rolls. Also we are looking for good padding for the wood as well as different fabrics for the children to touch and feel.

• For the technical aspects of the prototype we have now connected the arduino board with RFID-sensors. The result was that we can turn a diode on and off with the sensor. Here is a short video showing the result:

RFID-sensor

Have a good day and see you later!

Great feedback leads to changes

Hello! We got great feedback on our mockup this Monday morning. 

Our first idea was this ”throw in holes”-game. The age group was 4 years, but probably more suitable for even older children. We had several persons who gave tips how to transform this toy to younger children by skip this ”throw”-game to more ”get the shapes to fit in holes”. The problem is that this toy isn’t something fun for the children. Well, how can we make this fun? 

Our new idea is therefore to combine our first idea with this new ”get the shapes to fit” idea. This results in a game for children to match geometrical figures at time pressure and with ”sound and light”-feedback.

We also got great feedback from different groups how we could indicate who's turn it is to play if two player mode. The most common answer was to have some sort of indication in the top corners. For example have one figure in left corner, and another figure in right corner. Each of them have a led to indicate who's next to play.

The interaction should be as following:

• The child chose one or two player mode on the front by touching an image of one/two farmers. 

• The feedback what user should play next will be indicated on the top left or right corner. (See attached image) 

• One of the geometrical shapes lights up, the child now need to grab the right shape and put it against the lightning shape on the wall. This is time limited, for example the child have 5 seconds to finish this mission. If the shape is correct, a animal sound will play and some lamps will blink. 

• The number of completed missions will be shown by getting points, 1 point per mission. The points are indicated at center top. 

Design

Here is a preliminary sketch on how we want our activity wall to look like (see image below).

We are thinking about having different type of holes in shapes of circles, squares, rectangles and triangles. The idea is that besides just having fun with the toy, the child should have the opportunity to learn and separate the different geometrical shape. Depending on the size of the hole, there will be different points in scale of 1 – 10.

To make it easier for the child to separate the geometrical forms we are considering using diodes around each hole. Every geometric shape is going have its own colour.

Furthermore, the design we have today consists of an on/off button on the right side of the wall and on top there will be 10 diodes representing points. For example of the child manages to score worth 1 point, 1 diode will light up, then if a 3 pointers I scored, the total score will be 1 + 3 an therefore 4 

diodes in the top will be light up. Finally, when the child reaches 10 points the counter will restart.

If we look at the design from a side perspective, we want to be in a triangular shape with a hatch so the child can go and take the balls that have been thrown. 

Morning hack

At todays lab session we got the opportunity to play around a bit on an Arduino board. Combined with their software we could program the Arduino hardware from the computer to make diodes blink and shine on a bread board. On the bread board we connected the diodes with resistors and off course the Arduino board.

At first it went smooth and we succeeded at once to make the diodes shine. We then went on to connect an on/off-switch. That was a little bit trickier but we managed to make it work. After that we expanded our circuit and put in a bigger diode.

Here is the result in form of a short video:

From this lab session we got experience of using diodes and make circuits that will come in handy when we will use it in our upcoming project.

First ideation session

Hello!

Today we have had a ideation workshop within the group. We used the knowledge from our observation at the playground and from the toy store, as well as the observations from other groups discussed at the lecture.

We've decided that our activity wall will be focusing on the little older children at age 3-4 years. We'll try recreate the "lilla sportspegeln" activity when throwing balls in different sized holes. This activity wall should be able for kids to play on them self, as well was compete with their friends.

A first sketch can be found down:

The wall have different sized holes that give the user different points. When the hole is hit, the user get points that is counted on the screen.
The ball is then coming out form bottom, how we don't know right now.

We will continue on this sketch later and check what materials we need.

Start

This is the first post. Hello!