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When toys come to life: considering the internet of toys from an animistic design perspective

Published: 19 June 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Children's play objects are increasingly shaped by technological innovations that can transform them into hybrid, internet-connected toys, a phenomenon referred to as the Internet of Toys. Previous research has presented user research on connected toys, but little is known how to approach them from a design perspective. This paper investigates whether and how an animistic design perspective can foster a fruitful exploration of the design potentialities of connected toys. It addresses this question by analysing three design concepts of connected toys that were developed in the course of an R&D project. These included a high-tech bracelet with digital passport, a card game with a customizable 3D-printed figurine, and a robot as a board game play mate. The results show how the design qualities of connected toys can be categorized on a spectrum ranging from a certainty-driven, problem-solving logic to an uncertainty-driven, animistic design perspective. The contribution of this study is a better understanding of how connected toys emerge in a broader ecology of children, toys, and data that all act upon each other. By embracing the uncertainty in this complex and fluid network of subjects and objects, the animistic design perspective allows to explore a broad set of design opportunities relevant in the realm of the Internet of Toys.

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cover image ACM Conferences
IDC '18: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children
June 2018
789 pages
ISBN:9781450351522
DOI:10.1145/3202185
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 19 June 2018

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Author Tags

  1. animistic design
  2. connected play
  3. connected toys
  4. internet of toys
  5. strong concept
  6. uncertainty

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IDC '18
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IDC '18: Interaction Design and Children
June 19 - 22, 2018
Trondheim, Norway

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IDC '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 96 submissions, 29%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

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