The first phase of the project was to research different areas of child development that had the potential for new toys. After exploring options I choose to develop a toy for memory training as a means to improve reading comprehension. I found that memory training can be as simple as 15 minutes of practice per day, so I wanted to design a game that could be replayed. I also found that for my age group, the average amount of events in a story comprehension activity would be around 5, so that is the number I would target in my own stories.

With a clear learning goal in mind, I began ideating different designs and playstyles for my toy. After pairing down my favorites from the originals, I ended with a combination of multiple different concepts as my toy design: a game where the player listens from a prompt and has the rebuild the story with figurines.

Story craft using a combination of electronics and figurines to create a fun learning experience. The player puts a story card into the reader, that connects the card via NFC and then plays the story out loud. The player then attempts to rebuild the events in the story but putting the correct order of figurines in the figure readers. The difficulty in stories increases with the higher number of cards, ranging from 3 to 5 events.