TOY Blog

AN AUDIO PLAYER DESIGNED FOR CHILDREN

As a designer I feel a sense of slight satisfaction in seeing beautiful products; if I then discover that they are not only beautiful to look at, but also easy and fun to use, well designed in all their parts, this satisfaction grows with the desire to share my reflections about it. This brief digression is to explain my state of mind when I discovered Yoto, an audio player designed for children…actually calling it audio player is a bit resizing, but let’s go one step at a time!

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DESIGN SERVING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR KIDS

Artificial Intelligence is making giant strides and it begins to be perceived naturally also in the market of educational toys. If few months ago we talked about more or less static robots, and the discussion that ignited the most careful parents was about the amount of data that a voice assistant could steal from an unwitting child, well today we introduce you to Moxie; in addition to being the latest news in the field of AI for children, it is also proof that design serving artificial intelligence for kids can open new roads for interaction with robots.

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AN IMPORTANT INNOVATION FOR THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN AND PARENTS

If you believe that there’s no more room for news in the educational field, if when you think about innovation you only consider Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence and if you divide the child’s emotions into extreme happiness and hysterical crying, well after this article you’ll need to change your mind. In our relentless hunt for stimulating projects, we came across QUID+, a young Italian editorial company that represents an important innovation for the education of children and parents.

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A SLEEP TRAINER FOR CHILDREN

If you have always dreamed of sleep like a baby in adulthood, just know that, according to the Italian Society of Pediatrics, 25% of children under 5 years of age suffer from sleep disorders and after 6 this percentage drops around at 10-12%. These data leave little space for interpretation and tell of a widespread problem that affects first and foremost the development of children. These are some of the reasons behind the design of a sleep trainer for children.

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AN EASY-TO-BUILD ROBOT

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that the ‘child-friendly coding‘ is an hot-topic for us (if you have not read the past articles on the subject, you can retrieve here or here); our attention comes both from the boom of products that have populated the toy market and from the great educational potential of these games. In this article we present Robo Wunderkind, an easy-to-build robot that has just successfully completed a second campaign on Kickstarter.

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THE GUIDE TO DESIGN WITH RESPECT FOR CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

The designer’s job has radically changed in recent decades, it continues to evolve and receive interesting stimuli and facing challenges of global impact; we are not telling you anything new but it is good to stop sometimes and think about how our profession is closely linked to a social context and observe how it influences and is influenced by technological and human progress. I have recently made these thoughts when I discovered and deepened the project ‘Design for Children’s right guide’, or the guide to design with respect for children’s rights and to act at the core of the creative process.

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A TOY WITHOUT INSTRUCTIONS

When we play (or we played, that’s up to you), we are used to following instructions, opening a booklet that explains how that toy works or listening to indications, a more or less rigid path that guides us in a sequence of actions. What if all this was limiting for a child? What would happen if instead of following consequential steps, was given a final goal without caring about the route? We find out with Rigamajic, a toy without instructions that challenges different clichés related to the sphere of childhood and the toy world in general.

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LITTLE INVENTORS FOR HUGE IDEAS

There’s something magical between 5 and 12 y.o. If you’ve ever chat with a child of this age, you can understand what I mean; it’s easy to be fascinated by the great imagination that develops from the post-childhood growth phase, until adolescence. What I mainly envy as a designer is the spontaneity in the invention of a game, an activity or an object totally free from economic or functional limits. It is no coincidence that different techniques for generating ideas, such as brainstorming, encourage to become child again, to free the flow of thoughts from any productive or practical constraint, on the assumption that there are no wrong ideas, to become little inventors for huge ideas.

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STORYTELLING THROUGH DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL GAME

L’innovazione nel mondo del giocattolo può nascere in tanti modi, con un nuovo materiale, una nuova tecnologia o delle idee fuori dal normale. Capita altre volte che la differenza parta da una strategia, una serie di scelte e azioni che porta un’azienda a posizionarsi su un piano diverso rispetto ai suoi competitors. È il caso di Sago mini, uno studio di progettisti di giocattoli, un luogo di contaminazioni ma soprattutto un’azienda, un brand che si occupa di progettare uno storytelling tra gioco fisico e digitale per bambini in età prescolare. Questa realtà canadese è interessante in particolare per l’approccio aperto al progetto e per la pianificazione aziendale che ha portato avanti dal 2013 ad oggi.

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