1. Story Toy : A toy for kids to write their story with
Utkarsh Dwivedi
IIT Guwahati
d.utkarsh@iitg.ernet.in
Rupam Das
IIT Guwahati
d.rupam@iitg.ernet.in
Linu George
IIT Guwahati
linu@iitg.ernet.in
Keyur Sorathia
IIT Guwahati
keyur@iitg.ernet.in
Shambhavi Deshpande
IIT Guwahati
shambhavi.d@iitg.ernet.in
ABSTRACT
The project delves into the area of Tangible devices of
Exploration for Children. The project aims at encouraging
children to explore and giving them the opportunity to capture
their endless imagination, through interactions which are
seamlessly integrated in an a child’s natural playful environment.
The project looks upto the possibility of a child’s toy to become
his or her recording element, through interactions which are the
most natural while playing with a soft toy of the like. The
outcome of the project is a very favorable soft toy, with functions
of capturing a photo and recording a small story, operated
through the interaction of pressing and squeezing of this soft toy
Categories and Subject Descriptors
D.3.3 [Design]: Human Factors, user Experience.
General Terms
Documentation, Performance, Design, Reliability,
Experimentation, Human Factors
Keywords
Tangible Interaction, Children, Exploration, Observation,
Storytelling, Play.
INTRODUCTION
The project delves into the area of Tangible devices of
exploration for children. Children of the group 7-11 years, also
known to have reached the concrete operations stage, are
explorative in nature and have a tendency to like remembering
and contemplating over various happenings in their surroundings.
They are also very imaginative and can create very interesting
mappings in between the real world and their imaginations. This
project aimed to come up with an exploratory interactive toy, to
encourage children to explore more, to give them opportunities to
capture their surroundings through their imagination.
1. RESEARCH
1.1 Literature Research
The literature research we conducted was majorly in two
studying various tangible interactions, various kinds of toys and
games which children play.[1, 2, 3] The literature research gave
insights into what kind of behavior we can expect from an
interactive camera when given to a child of the age group of the
concrete operations stage. Work by Piaget[4, 5, 6] divides
cognitive a ability of children across four learning stages, namely
sensory motor stage, pre operational stage, concrete operational
stage and formal operational stage. Of these, children at the
concrete operational stage show the most inquisitiveness for
exploration. Thus we defined our target age group. This age
shows a growth of gender specific behavior, such as socializing
and leadership in males, caring attitude in females. These body
of work on behaviors influences the design of toys, so we looked
into the defining characteristics of toys for this age group and for
both genders.
Toys for young boys, bore aggressive and excitement as the main
emotion. They tried to encourage social play, construction and
completion. While toys targeted at young girls, were attractive,
soft and encouraged nurturance, manipulation and creativity.
These qualities were considered in our design. The
characteristics of the children at the concrete operational stage,
were sociocentricity, symbolism, logic and reversibility.[7, 8]
Thus we began to generate ideas that encouraged, creativity, and
constructivism and allowed children to share ideas making a
gender neutral toy.
Primary Research
We went deeper into constructive toys like Lego, and DIY kits, to
see how they function.
We did a focus group study in a group of four, about various
experiences as a child, about all our observations about children.
Our discussion was focused on how children behave with a
camera, and how they behave with toys. We discussed upon the
situations in which a child can and cannot take a photo, the
issues due to which parents have a problem in giving a camera to
a child. We researched upon the kinds of camera which are given
to a child, and the way a camera can be given to a child such that
they handle it without disturbing. *some blah citation*
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific
permission and/or a fee.
Conference’10, Month 1–2, 2010, City, State, Country.
Copyright 2010 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0010 …$15.00.
2. 1.2 Brainstorming
After selecting the idea of storytelling we began modelling this
idea in the shape of a toy. Here we also looked in to tangible
interactions to be defined as constructive to our idea. Work by
Ishii in the coupling of physical representation and its
computational relevance was
worked upon.
We found some relevant
interactions to capture the idea
of taking photos and storing
audio to save a moment. Thus
we defined the building block
of our idea.
2. DESIGN CONCEPTS
Now we narrowed down our collection of interactions in physical
toys relevant to our concepts.
2.1 Proposed Design concept
We propose a design of a teddy like toy form, with the
interactions are squeezing the heart of the toy to click the
photograph, and begin an audio recording with an embedded
microphone.
3. PROTOTYPING
Camera used is a PS3 eye camera, Arduino Uno with force
sensor. PS3 eye’s inbuilt microphone is used for the recording.
The project was coded with a combination of Processing and
Arduino language API.
The recorded audio and photo are sent to a software on the
computer to be cataloged for future reference. Thus a child can
take photos and audio in a disjoint manner to sew together a
narration supplemented with photographs.
4. CONCLUSION
This project has shed light on the design of toys and their
interactions. Smart toys allow children to gain strategy
forming and planning skills.
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks to ACM SIGCHI for allowing us to modify templates
they had developed. Thanks to EI Lab for all the knowledge and
equipments.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Multilevel Design and Role Play: Experiences in
Assessing Support for Neighborhood Participation in Design
In: Proceedings of DIS´2002 (Designing Interactive
Systems). June 2002, London. ACM. In press. Accepted as
exhibit (Preprint version)
http://www.ehornecker.de/Papers/DIS_final.pdf
[2] Talking about Artifacts: Preschool Children’s
Explorations with Sketches, Stories, and Tangible Objects
(Demetra Evangelou, Jennifer Dobbs-Oates, Aikaterini
Bagiati, Sandy Liang, & Ji Young Choi, Purdue University)
http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v12n2/evangelou.html
[3] Introducing Piaget: A guide for practitioners and
students in early years Book by Ann Marie Halpenny, Jan
Pettersen: Routledge, 22-Aug-2013
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=XQ2CAAAAQBAJ&dq=
piaget+tangible&source=gbs_navlinks_s
3. [4] Cognitive Development: Piaget's Concrete Operations
(Angela Oswalt, MSW, edited by Mark Dombeck, Ph.D.
Updated: Jun 9th 2010)
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id
=37677&cn=1272
[5] Cognitive Development: Piaget Part II (Angela Oswalt,
MSW,
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id
=37678&cn=1272
[6] Cognitive Development: Piaget Part III (Angela Oswalt,
MSW, edited by Mark Dombeck, Ph.D. Updated: Jun 9th
2010)
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id
=37679&cn=1272
[7] Angela Oswalt, MSW, edited by Mark Dombeck,
Ph.D. Updated: Jun 9th 2010 Emotional and Social
Development
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id
=37687&cn=1272
[8] Angela Oswalt, MSW, edited by Mark Dombeck,
Ph.D. Updated: Jun 9th 2010. Emotional and Social
Development: Social Connections
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id
=37689&cn=1272
[9] Barbara Landau, Linda Smith, Susan Jones. Object
Shape, Object Function, and Object Name (Journal of
Memory and Language - J MEM LANG 01/1998; 38(1):1-
27. DOI:10.1006/jmla.1997.2533)
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/242087591_Object
_Shape_Object_Function_and_Object_Name
[10] Mary Gauvain What do young children know about
objects?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/088520149
4900094
[11] topobo for Tangible Learning (Hayes Raffle and
Cristobal Garcia | hayes@media.mit.edu, crisgh@mit.edu
MAS 712 Technological Tools for Learning. Professor
Mitchel Resnick and Leo Burd. May 14, 2003)
http://www.topobo.com/tangible-topobo.pdf
![Story Toy : A toy for kids to write their story with
Utkarsh Dwivedi
IIT Guwahati
d.utkarsh@iitg.ernet.in
Rupam Das
IIT Guwahati
d.rupam@iitg.ernet.in
Linu George
IIT Guwahati
linu@iitg.ernet.in
Keyur Sorathia
IIT Guwahati
keyur@iitg.ernet.in
Shambhavi Deshpande
IIT Guwahati
shambhavi.d@iitg.ernet.in
ABSTRACT
The project delves into the area of Tangible devices of
Exploration for Children. The project aims at encouraging
children to explore and giving them the opportunity to capture
their endless imagination, through interactions which are
seamlessly integrated in an a child’s natural playful environment.
The project looks upto the possibility of a child’s toy to become
his or her recording element, through interactions which are the
most natural while playing with a soft toy of the like. The
outcome of the project is a very favorable soft toy, with functions
of capturing a photo and recording a small story, operated
through the interaction of pressing and squeezing of this soft toy
Categories and Subject Descriptors
D.3.3 [Design]: Human Factors, user Experience.
General Terms
Documentation, Performance, Design, Reliability,
Experimentation, Human Factors
Keywords
Tangible Interaction, Children, Exploration, Observation,
Storytelling, Play.
INTRODUCTION
The project delves into the area of Tangible devices of
exploration for children. Children of the group 7-11 years, also
known to have reached the concrete operations stage, are
explorative in nature and have a tendency to like remembering
and contemplating over various happenings in their surroundings.
They are also very imaginative and can create very interesting
mappings in between the real world and their imaginations. This
project aimed to come up with an exploratory interactive toy, to
encourage children to explore more, to give them opportunities to
capture their surroundings through their imagination.
1. RESEARCH
1.1 Literature Research
The literature research we conducted was majorly in two
studying various tangible interactions, various kinds of toys and
games which children play.[1, 2, 3] The literature research gave
insights into what kind of behavior we can expect from an
interactive camera when given to a child of the age group of the
concrete operations stage. Work by Piaget[4, 5, 6] divides
cognitive a ability of children across four learning stages, namely
sensory motor stage, pre operational stage, concrete operational
stage and formal operational stage. Of these, children at the
concrete operational stage show the most inquisitiveness for
exploration. Thus we defined our target age group. This age
shows a growth of gender specific behavior, such as socializing
and leadership in males, caring attitude in females. These body
of work on behaviors influences the design of toys, so we looked
into the defining characteristics of toys for this age group and for
both genders.
Toys for young boys, bore aggressive and excitement as the main
emotion. They tried to encourage social play, construction and
completion. While toys targeted at young girls, were attractive,
soft and encouraged nurturance, manipulation and creativity.
These qualities were considered in our design. The
characteristics of the children at the concrete operational stage,
were sociocentricity, symbolism, logic and reversibility.[7, 8]
Thus we began to generate ideas that encouraged, creativity, and
constructivism and allowed children to share ideas making a
gender neutral toy.
Primary Research
We went deeper into constructive toys like Lego, and DIY kits, to
see how they function.
We did a focus group study in a group of four, about various
experiences as a child, about all our observations about children.
Our discussion was focused on how children behave with a
camera, and how they behave with toys. We discussed upon the
situations in which a child can and cannot take a photo, the
issues due to which parents have a problem in giving a camera to
a child. We researched upon the kinds of camera which are given
to a child, and the way a camera can be given to a child such that
they handle it without disturbing. *some blah citation*
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific
permission and/or a fee.
Conference’10, Month 1–2, 2010, City, State, Country.
Copyright 2010 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0010 …$15.00.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/storytoy-140428005523-phpapp01/85/Story-toy-1-320.jpg)
![1.2 Brainstorming
After selecting the idea of storytelling we began modelling this
idea in the shape of a toy. Here we also looked in to tangible
interactions to be defined as constructive to our idea. Work by
Ishii in the coupling of physical representation and its
computational relevance was
worked upon.
We found some relevant
interactions to capture the idea
of taking photos and storing
audio to save a moment. Thus
we defined the building block
of our idea.
2. DESIGN CONCEPTS
Now we narrowed down our collection of interactions in physical
toys relevant to our concepts.
2.1 Proposed Design concept
We propose a design of a teddy like toy form, with the
interactions are squeezing the heart of the toy to click the
photograph, and begin an audio recording with an embedded
microphone.
3. PROTOTYPING
Camera used is a PS3 eye camera, Arduino Uno with force
sensor. PS3 eye’s inbuilt microphone is used for the recording.
The project was coded with a combination of Processing and
Arduino language API.
The recorded audio and photo are sent to a software on the
computer to be cataloged for future reference. Thus a child can
take photos and audio in a disjoint manner to sew together a
narration supplemented with photographs.
4. CONCLUSION
This project has shed light on the design of toys and their
interactions. Smart toys allow children to gain strategy
forming and planning skills.
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks to ACM SIGCHI for allowing us to modify templates
they had developed. Thanks to EI Lab for all the knowledge and
equipments.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Multilevel Design and Role Play: Experiences in
Assessing Support for Neighborhood Participation in Design
In: Proceedings of DIS´2002 (Designing Interactive
Systems). June 2002, London. ACM. In press. Accepted as
exhibit (Preprint version)
http://www.ehornecker.de/Papers/DIS_final.pdf
[2] Talking about Artifacts: Preschool Children’s
Explorations with Sketches, Stories, and Tangible Objects
(Demetra Evangelou, Jennifer Dobbs-Oates, Aikaterini
Bagiati, Sandy Liang, & Ji Young Choi, Purdue University)
http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v12n2/evangelou.html
[3] Introducing Piaget: A guide for practitioners and
students in early years Book by Ann Marie Halpenny, Jan
Pettersen: Routledge, 22-Aug-2013
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=XQ2CAAAAQBAJ&dq=
piaget+tangible&source=gbs_navlinks_s](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)