This was the first year we taught Toy Design as part of the BSc Computer Games degree. Second year students were asked to undertake a small piece of research into toys, then produce their own concepts and working prototypes, using Arduino as base hardware development environment. The module focused on technical aspects rather than aesthetics.
After a basic introduction to electronics - a reminder to those who had done physics at school - we launched into some toy-hacking. The local car boot sale provided plenty of material, including a talking Elmo, a motorised train, a dancemat game and electronic language lotto. Our electronic labs also had a few old keyboards to deconstruct. These all proved useful for demonstrating the simplicity of the technology underpinning seemingly complex electronic devices.
Students began to play with the kits, experimenting with sketches and different sensors. We showed them how to construct their own large pressure pad sensors (buttons), how to link Flash with Arduino, how to create simple applications using Processing, how to solder components.
Working in small teams, they came up with the following concepts: laser-activated hit-blob game; pressure-pad alarm system for a house (not really a toy); "simon says" game (match the light sequence); musical soctopus.
For non-programmers, "simon says" game was trickier than they expected. The alarm system cautiously worked by showing which doors had been breached on a processing application. Jamie and Kyle's laser-target game was successful and fun to play. Soctopus got the award for best sewing technique...
