A Tangible Color-Picker Toy Designed for Young Children

Abstract

We present a tangible color-picker toy, designed for children aged approximately up to six years. Since the purpose of this interactive toy is to support visually impaired children during therapeutic exercises, we employed a practice-based design process for balancing its physical properties and play elements. Appropriate stimuli (both visual and haptical), play affordances, interactive behavior, and additional device properties (e.g., product safety) were explored together with therapists and children drawing on a series of (interactive) prototypes. Hence, the artifact embodies shared knowledge about how exercising can be supported with therapeutic toys from the perspective of children, therapists, and interaction design researchers. In practice, the toy amplifies color by means of LEDs to provide strong and active visual stimuli when pushed against a colored surface. Its physical design is minimalistic, allowing young children to safely grip it and therapists to flexibly integrate it into exercises, madeup stories or motivating games for therapy: https://youtu.be/yOuUJILskyc (demo video showing latest prototype versions; accessed 12 Feb 2019).