JBL Orb

Work

The Sound of Play - A Sound Experience for Children

Dec 2016

Interactive Design | Group Project

Research & Analysis for Design

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Intro

In a nutshell

"Sound that amplifies life" - that's what the American audio electronics company JBL tries to deliver with its brand. We were asked to design an audio experience for children given no limitation to its form.

Challenges

When designing an audio experience for children, there are thousands of possibilities. We found that at the cross-section of children and sound, is "play". So the natural extension of the research was the design of a toy.

Solutions

Humans are naturally tactile creatures, especially children. This is how we explore the world when we're small. During the design process, we combined all our senses: touch, sight, and hearing into one object for a new play experience. We call it Orb.

( For visitors in mainland China, please click HERE )

Field Trip

To better understand how children play and what interests them most, we went to many popular sites in Hong Kong, including the science museum, parks, game centers, toy shops and played with the kids.

Below are some interesting findings.

Boys enjoy rough-and-tumble,

competitive gaming

Girls like either one-on-one with a toy

or cooperating with each other

Plush toys are the safest choice

for children under 3

Older children are more task driven

"Let's make noise" is more important

than "Let's make music"

Research

Desk Research

We conducted research on child development and designed a chart based on four variables.

The first variable is age. We divided children from 3 to 12 into different age groups.

Next, we focused on development milestones based on four aspects - physical, mental, emotional and social, as well as writing and language.

Then we moved on to abilities and interests. We looked into what children can, and like to do while playing.

Last is types of play. We mainly divided them into free-play and constructive/rule-based play.

Development Milestones

Abilities & Interests

Types of Play

Full Research Chart

Competitive Analysis

We looked through popular interactive sound games and toys for children and found out that they have several things in common. They are all:

Easy to play with
Easy to hold in hands
Easy to clean
Built with children-friendly materials

like foam and rubber

Have an app that comes with it

And I put some of our favorites in the right column for your information.

Toy | Otamatone

Otamatone

A singing toy with sound emerging from a "mouth" on the notehead.

Re: Sound Bottle

Re: Sound Bottle

An environmental sound collector and remixer.

Toy | Skoog

Skoog

A foam cube that acts as a controller for making music.

App | Sound Box

Sound Box

A melody maker that introduces children to sound and music.

Ideation

We did four rounds of whiteboard ideation and were attracted to two kinds of ideas.

Playful interactive games like sound cubes and DJ bricks, and sound products like the natural sound collector. You can click on icons below to check out our three initial ideas.

Ideation

But how did we come up with Orb?

From our previous concepts, we selected the most important features and combined them into one new exciting product.

Concept

Concept Development

Orb comes with 2 modes of interaction.

Free Play Mode
Various instruments - drum/piano
Sound visualization

Rule-based Play Mode
Memory game
"Simon Says"

Technical Evaluation

We used Arduino as the core technology and layered on MP3 decoding shield, an LED matrix and finally capacitive touch.

Arduino Uno

microcontroller board

Adafruit capacitive touch sensor

& Copper tape

LED stripes

Prototyping

From soldering wires to coding the LED stripes, from testing the capacitive touch to putting every part together, we learned through trial and error.

We also sought help from professional programmers and made everything happen just in time.

Iteration

Storyboard

Since this project aims at designing a sound experience for children, we decided to bring the prototype to our users - the kids, both for user testing and shooting the video.

For storyline, we followed the classic Kickstarter structure to let the team members tell the audience the story of and behind our project.

During the shooting process, there were a lot of incidents. For example, kids fought for the new toy and didn't let newcomers play with them. One little boy even took our prototype away... but all these lovely details made the story alive.