Multimodal Design for Enactive Toys

In this paper we will investigate how non–visual senses can be used in toys to enhance and enrich the play experience of all children, while favoring accessibility and inclusion of visually-impaired children. Previous research has shown that – especially for young children developing sensory-motor skills – exploration and play are two tightly linked activities: everything is new and needs to be “investigated” and playful behaviors emerge from active exploration. We will propose a new approach in designing and creating objects that elicit this type of behavior and encourage exploration by providing real–time dynamic, haptic, tactile, auditory, and even olfactory feedback depending on children’s gestures, movements, and emitted sounds. We believe that this design paradigm is highly innovative with respect to previous research and existing products – whose interaction is very often based on static feedback. Interactive and dynamic feedback is intrinsically more engaging and allows a variety of quality learning patterns.