Smart? Stupid toy for language learning — 01
Based exploration with Scratch, Micro:bit and LEGO WeDo, the platforms that provide interactive experiences of coding to kids, our team figured out that children have a strong comprehension and adaptability of new technology. Learning coding for the first time is not a ‘coding’ to them, but rather a fun interface to make their favorite game.
We had Lumen, a 7 years old girl, in our class to see how a kid interacts with semi-smart toys that we prototyped quickly in the class. Her insights were surprisingly unexpected in terms of the degree of her comprehension of the toy. Lumen was easily engaged in this interface and voluntarily tried to understand the logic of game.
Her comments were like :
“I like challenging things”
“I like that the cat is going away from the direction I wanted her to go”
While I had a preconception that kids would like smart toys that are capable of doing something miracle, like a magic, kids also enjoy the whole experience of playing with toys that can behave unexpectedly, regardless of it’s a ‘smart’ or ‘stupid’ way!
The word, ‘Stupid’, is hard to be seen in machine learning field, for most of people in this field, quite naturally, are moving forward to smarter ‘Artificial Intelligence.’ Our team wanted to dive into this contradiction of AI’s stupidity that actually can be a compelling factor.
Whenever kids, even us, see someone saying ridiculous words that do not make sense anything, it’s just a fun thing! We were looking for games that can be just simply ‘funny’ without thinking and Hearing Things game came up.
“Sorry, can you repeat that?!”
Rues :
The Hearing Things game has players guessing what they think their teammate is saying by reading their lips. The player wearing the headphones can’t hear what their teammate is saying and has to figure it out to earn the card.
We thought there is an interesting space to play around with this AI’s stupidity in this game by making it say ridiculous words by reading kids’ lips. Also, we were also able to embed educational factor by training kids to learn and pronounce words in more interactive and casual way.
5 Attributes of ‘MIMIME’ (mimic me…) :
Fun
Innovative
Educational
Interactive
Conscious of Parents
First of all, we prototyped the model.
We wanted it to have
Big Lips that can move based on voice
Webcam that read kids lips ( maybe? concerned about hacking)
Small screen on body that has words on it.
Second, we created a storyboard of user flow.
Reflection : The border between game and learning. Experience and smart toy.
