Pixelsumo is the blog of
Chris O'Shea, an artist and designer based in London.
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Innovation in Toy Car Design
Posted March 2nd 2006 under Toys
Following on from my previous toy post, here are some interesting ideas around childrens toy cars. A sign of innovation in toy design coming from interaction designers is Mattel linking up with courses at Royal College of Art and Interaction Ivrea (among others).
Hotcam by Theo Humphries (then at Royal College of Art), is a toy car that records video and sound then plays back through your TV. “When children play with toy cars they tell stories; they provide their own narration, voice-overs, and special effects - rolling cars over and over in slow motion and making dramatically stretched crashing noises”. The rear lights of the car come on when recording, and children can play back the stories to their family and friends. Theo won an internship at HotWheels (Mattel) on the strength of this project.
Floor It! by Micheal Albers & Shawn Bonkowski, allows children to use a remote control car from a free floating steering wheel. Turn left/right to turn the car and tilt forwards/backwards for throttle control.
A child can also build up a race tracking using (easy to remove) rubber stickers and checkpoint gates. The car responds to markers that can be placed on the floor. An oil slick makes it slide, water slow down and a green arrow for turbo boost! Electronic scoring gates provide a ranking and rating system for different types of races and challenges. The scoring gates can also store information over time. The electronic scoring gates provide a way of tracking race results between you and your friends. Speakers in the steering wheel make car engine noises, whilst a rumble unit gives feedback when hitting obstacles. The steering wheel also acts as a carry case for the car and road markers. Fantastic!
(Interaction Ivrea - Some more technical info and background)
Too Fast For Tracks by Christopher Hall (NYU) is a new toy that allows users to build and rapidly change a vehicles course By placing customizable infrared beacons about a space, the user can guide a vehicle around obstacles. This rapid prototyping like structure encourages its user to explore their environment. Watch these great videos.
Sketch-a-move is a conceptual project by Anab Jain and Louise Klinker. These video mock-ups explain it best. A child draws a route on the surface of the car and it follows, creating a track out of any flat environment. Draw a circle and it will spin around, draw a complicated route and it would follow.
Summary.
Many of these concepts have interesting overlaps, such as using any environment as a play surface, customising a track with obstacles, defining a route with drawing or beacons and exploring the stories that children create whilst playing.
I’d be interested to hear anyone’s comments on these, so post away. Also post if you know of any more toys created by interaction designers.
Comments
(March 29th 2006)
Interesting Ideas. But still it need more work, like whether child would like to do that and if yes, for how long and most how many times. What will make more interesting is, how to play with different ways.