Background
Kids enjoy birthday parties because they become the center of attention, get lots of presents and receive applause when they blow out the candles on their cake. So, they want to continuously relive the birthday situation when they are playing. Fisher Price has a birthday party toy based on “Dora the Explorer” but the toy is simple, small and too focused on serving pieces of cake to other people. The most exciting moment of the birthday party is blowing out the candles and receiving applause and presents. For this reason, the project “Happy Birthday” will allow kids to enjoy that exciting moment over and over again.
Goal/ Project conceptThe concept of the project “Happy Birthday” is that the child will enjoy reenacting a birthday party by assembling many pieces of cake blocks. The 3 dimensional cake blocks will help the child to develop sense of structure and their power of reasoning. Also, the child learns about the process of building blocks by seeing and listening to different feedbacks when the child completes each level.
User ExperienceThis block toy consists of many pieces of a 2 layer cake as well as many small candles and one big candle for the center of the cake. There are also ornaments for decorating this birthday cake. When a child completes assembling these blocks, the child can light the LED candles and listen to the Happy Birthday song. When the child blows out a candle, the LEDs are turned off and the child listens to a celebratory message that includes applause sounds. The child can play over and over again.
Presentaion file URL:
http://itp.nyu.edu/~jsl398/birthday/birthday_pt_02152007.html
