Building toy by Diego Beltrami at Coroflot.com

Building toy

Building toy from Diego Beltrami

Building toy

This project was about the development of a building toy for kids made up from a system of a few simple parts that could be connected together. This system should be open and allow for a great variety of free form configurations.
Being that this kind of toys might involve quite a big spectrum we decided to restrict this one’s to building robots. This provides a strong focus in defining both the type of configurations and the overall aesthetic feel of the product taking a big inspiration from mechanical elements.

This project was undertaken along two other designers. Although I was involved in all the phases of the product development my main collaborations were centered along the areas of investigation, strategy and semiotics.

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All of the parts are made in machine turned aluminium. This has the advantage of being a relatively light material that reinforces the semiotics aspects of the product and attractive on account of it being an unusual material for this kind of toys. To help maintain the connections between parts we used a combination of o-rings and magnet connectors that are appealing because of their physical feedback.

Aimed at twelve year olds, we researched the defining characteristics of the age group, their interest and problematics related to their development process. That informed a strategy based on using attractive materials to mantain the kids’ attention, with open configuration as a means to maintain interest in the toys. Also the strategy covered production consideration such as mono-material parts and the use simple manufacturing process.