NY Toy Fair 2009 – Day 1 Cool Tech Find

On opening day of the 2009 Toy Fair event in New York City, I began my search for new toy products that include unique application of technology for the benefit of enhancing play. While I only covered a small fraction of the show’s floor (7 hours of isle wandering), I came across a few products that caught my eye. One being a digital facelift to the classic Rubik’s cube, promoted by a company called Techno Source.

Let me start off by saying that I am not a Rubik’s cube fan. I never could figure out those darn things. But I thought a couple of tech features applied to this toy were really groundbreaking.

First, users interact with this non-twisting cube by touching the different surfaces with a finger. It immediately comes across as an iPhone touch interface. Slide a finger along a row of lighted tiles made the cube “rotate.”

Next, the cube has a built in accelerometer used to determine the active display face. Once the accelerometer has figured out which way is up, it only allows the upward face to be changed through touch. This way a users holding the cube with both hands from the side will not alter the puzzle’s surfaces in unexpected ways.

There’s a button to give you a hint if needed. Also included is multiple levels of undo so you can roll the surfaces back to a point where you think you may have made a mistake. When the TouchCube is rested in its docking bay to be recharged, the cube puts on a unique visual display. Think of this as your new digital lava lamp.

The Rubik’s TouchCube is available for purchase in the Fall and is being offered for a suggested retail price of $149.99. Check out video below to see the product in action.

Can video games be successful vehicles for learning? Over the years many companies have tried to create video games that not only entertain, but also deliver some learning value. Very few of these products have succeeded in being fun to play as well as helped achieve their desired learning goals. Many “edutainment” product fail in the consumer marketplace as well as in the classroom. However, a very small number of such games reach some level of critical success in both of these domains. Why is it that few succeed where many fail? What should developers of such products be doing to increase their chances of success? What assumptions made along the way are incorrect?

Over the last year I’ve worked on a presentation to suggest a few of the difficulties in creating effective learning games. The video included below is of a presentation I delivered this past November at the annual Dust or Magic Children’s New Media Design conference, though some version of it has appeared in a number of other presentations I shared with others in 2008. After taking a look, let me know your thoughts; What is important to think about when developing video games with learning in mind? What products do you think achieve success in this area? Which ones miss the mark completely? Where do you look for inspiration? Enjoy.

This past week I was at Northwestern University to participate in a conference called Interaction Design and Children (IDC). It’s a fantastic event where researchers, developmental psychologists and technology inventors and experts gather together to share information, research, and advice about creating effective interactive experience for children through technology.

There were many interesting presentations and posters offered which I hope to touch on in the coming days. One presentation in particular I enjoyed was delivered by Erik Strommen, founder and developmental psychologist of Playful Efforts. Erik and I were on a panel together along with Kathleen Alfano, the Director of Research for Fisher-Price. The panel was moderated by Edith Ackermann, who is currently a visiting scientist at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. Among Edith’s amazing credentials is that she also worked with and studied under Jean Piaget. All of us discussed the importance of research in the creation of successful interactive technology products for children.

After opening remarks from Edith, Erik began his presentation by stating he would not be showing any Powerpoint slides because he is a member of the “Informal Society for the Suppression of Powerpoint” (Erik worked at Microsoft for many years.)

Next, Erik discussed the difficulty of testing interfaces for software and technology toy products that don’t exist. In many cases, researchers will be brought into a product development team to explore the effectiveness of an interface that has yet to be built. In such cases when you’re called in, it’s your duty to determine how best to guide the development of these new interfaces.

An important quote Erik mentioned that’s worth repeating:

“New interfaces raise a blizzard of never before asked questions that challenge conventional wisdom. Only after collecting data and seeing how such interfaces work with children can you determine how effective these new interfaces will be with children.”

Here are a number of tips Erik mentioned to guide successful child/interaction research:

• Seek out “parallel literature” to inform your design.
  You may not find exact research you’re looking for regarding the new interface you wish to build, but you can learn a lot about how to inform your design by reading similar interface studies. For example, Erik recommends checking out “studies on social interaction and discourse patterns” to inform social interface design.
  

• When prototypes don’t exist, fake it.
  Erik referred to this as “Wizard of Oz” testing. This is when the “man behind the curtain” may be carrying out audio or other functionality needs as part of a down and dirty prototype to test with. Always remember you may not be able to recreate the entire experience this way, just the crucial testing parts. How you define the testing will effect your mock-up. Focus ONLY on the developmental issue that need to be answered. DON’T focus on the technology! Be concerned with timing and vocabulary in your prototype scripts.
  

• Understand the schedule and development process of your client.
  How much time do you have and where in the development process do you have the opportunity to make changes in the design? Definition of the interaction with your user needs to be defined up front. It is a deliverable that affects the entire development process, so work fast and deliver your findings early before crucial product development efforts begin.
  

• Keep everyone informed.
  Let everyone on the development team know when findings will be presented. Keeping team members informed as to the time when conclusions will be shared better allows for changes that can be incorporated into the development schedule.
  

• Be specific with your research question.
  Don’t ask overly broad or numerous questions that will keep you from ever finding the mission critical answers you need to inform you product development team. Remember, generally speaking, companies don’t want to pay for research and they don’t want to schedule research. But be ready, once the information is available, everybody will beat a path to your door for the results! Also be aware that the broader your research question, the more complicated your prototypes will become.
  

• Make friends with the engineers on your team.
  They will be your best allies for creating prototypes. Engineers also care about having answers as to how best to develop for a specific audience
  

• Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  Early prototypes can be very different from the final product. You may not have the right characters or correct voices in your prototype but if you ask the right question, the results of your test will be invaluable. Remember, it’s the interaction that you are interested in testing. If visuals or character voices aren’t correct it will not threaten the validity of your testing.
  

• Document what you did and the conclusions of your research.
  People will challenge your results and you may not remember everything you need in order to support your conclusions. You may also need to refer to your notes in the future when conducting similar studies.

At the end of the Erik’s presentation, he showed a number of prototypes used in technology toy testing.

To see video of Erik Strommen’s presentation at the IDC event, click below:

[The following is an article I wrote for the May 2008 issue of Children’s Technology Review. For those unfamiliar with this monthly magazine, it’s a great information resource to all the latest software, gaming, and technology products being released for children.]

Last month, I was presenting at a conference for education publishers when someone raised his hand and asked “What’s a Webkinz?” Hmmmm, I thought. Doesn’t everyone know about Webkinz World? Shouldn’t everyone know about this site and others like it without the excuse “I don’t have kids.” The next day, somebody asked me, “What’s an avatar?” I was starting to understand that there were still plenty of publishers firmly stuck in yesterday’s Web 1.0 world. But don’t worry. We’ll fix the problem the way we developers always do – with a Patch.

The Web 2.0.1 Patch is designed to help you become more thoughtful when creating interactive experiences for children (and it works well for school or library websites, as well). Installing this Patch in your brain is a quick and painless process as long as you have a USB 2.01 port just behind your left ear. Or, you can follow these three steps.

STEP 1 – Create an account for yourself in a virtual world like Club Penguin, Pirate’s Online, Nicktropolis, Second Life or any of the many virtual worlds that are popping up all over.
Once you have an account, test it out and play with it. Keep in mind – like many other Web 2.0 products available you may not see the benefits immediately, but you will see incremental improvements every time you come back to visit one of these virtual worlds.

STEP 2 – Upload digital photos to Flickr or a video to YouTube.
Don’t forget to include some tags that describe what you’re uploading so for others can easily find it. Once you have posted something, control your excitement, pat yourself on the back, and email friends and family with a link to your newly posted UGC (User Generated Content)!

STEP 3 – Create a personal profile on Facebook, LinkedIn, or any another similar social networking site.
If you don’t know one that’s right for you, ask a smart computer friend what she uses (chances are she will have already installed the 2.0.1 Patch and will be familiar with the requirements). If your techy friend is not available, casually ask someone under the age of 20 what sites they use. Don’t tell them that you are setting up a new account. If you do, he or she might give you that “Web 1.0 look” and then slowly back away.

Here are just a few of the benefits you’ll be able to enjoy from downloading and installing this Patch:

• You will start from, and work from, a central plan.
  If you’re designing a site or service with social features, there will be no more “winging it” or making it up as you go along. Thinking through the design of your new web idea, writing it down, and sharing it with all of your team members are more important now than ever before.
  

• You’ll test your work with your target audience.
  The Patch works best when testing is considered at the very beginning of your product’s definition on paper and throughout the development process. Some of you might explain “We never had to test our products during the Web 1.0 days!” Yes, in many ways the Web 1.0 days were a simpler time, and a time we will all look back on with nostalgia. However, the hustle and bustle of today’s fast-paced Web 2.0 world demands ongoing testing.
  

• After you install the 2.0.1 Patch, you’ll have zero tolerance for UI (user interface) mistakes.
  If buttons or other interactive controls don’t function as they are supposed to, your product will be in violation of the User’s Agreement. It is important to think through the entire user experience fully before launching an interactive product. This requirement can’t be overstated. You can’t blame it on Flash, Microsoft or some browser error. That’s the 1.0 baby talk of the past.
  

• If you are a Web 2.0 savvy developer, keep in mind that it is possible your audience is not acknowledging that he or she is a Web 1.0 user.
  Education outreach and friendly intervention is an important component of the Web 2.0 vision. Take the time to gently explain how their actions are hurting others around them. Also explain the benefits of the Web 2.0 universe. (Note: This should be apparent in the development documentation you will have recently created for your plan). To keep your Web 2.0 chops fresh, try out the latest ground breaking technologies, like the iPod Touch interface, for example. You may not know how to find it at first, but be diligent.

These steps can avoid wasting countless hours and dollars, and they can prevent you from having to install the 2.1.1 Patch and a 2.1 Update. In the end, keeping your Patches up-to-date can result in better products and happier users.

June has been a busy month with conferences and events. There are many newsworthy items to report. Among them is my recent visit to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Game Jam event held recently outside of Boston. This gathering of developers, programmers, and a few artists and teachers, was for the benefit of creating learning games to be used on the latest XO laptop (what the OLPC device is often called.) While I could only attend the opening night of this weekend long event, I finally had my chance to test out this new machine. Many details about the XO can be learned from the OLPC website and from an independent OLPC news source called OLPC News. Here are my first impressions of the B3 (Beta 3 XO laptop) device:

• The laptop is much lighter in weight and smaller in size than I expected. Opening up the folded laptop was initially hard to do. The little green network “ears” on the machine need to be rotated out of their holding position in order to unlock and open up the laptop. Once you have the monitor up and the laptop open, you also notice that the monitor pivots on the vertical axis so that the monitor can be flipped around and folded back into the computer, just like a tablet PC laptop.
  
  
• As I had heard from many others and saw for myself, the monitor is really impressive. It’s screen is very crisp and easy to read.
  
  
• Next, a closer look at the keyboard: Yes, the QWERTY keyboard was a little small, but ergonomically a great fit for young hands. These smart laptop designers have done what no other computer manufacturer has been able to do to date. They have removed the caps lock key. (Finally!) There are also a number of navigation buttons in the top row of keys. These keys allow the user to quickly move around the operating system.
  
  
• I wanted to see if it was true that an SD slot could be found on the device. (You know, one of those slots where you insert a tiny card into a digital camera, for example, in order to save your digital photos.) Well, indeed, a slot can be found just under the bottom right of the monitor. This SD slot can be used for creating backups of important files, but I’ve also learned that someday a version of Windows could be used through this slot. In an interview with an Argentina news group posted on YouTube , Nicholas Negroponte states this slot was included mostly for the benefit of Microsoft (look at section 4:20 – 4:47).
  
  
• What surprised me the most about the user interface was the gaming controls at the bottom left and right of the monitor, just below the built-in speakers. Yes! Gaming controls! (Why hadn’t I seen them earlier in the press photos?): A “D-pad” on the left side of the monitor and shape buttons (triangle, circle, square and “X”) just like those found on a Sony Playstation controller on the right. (See image below.) The development language for the laptop is an open source subset of Python called Pygame. The way in which one accesse these game controls were not specifically called out during the Game Jam event, but for an overview of how to develop games in Pygame for OLPC, see this video.)

Overall, the laptop left me very impressed. There are a number of small rough edges to smooth out, but it’s amazing to see just how far this OLPC machine has come.