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Talks and Poster Presentations (with Proceedings-Entry):

F. Güldenpfennig, P. Fikar, R. Ganhör:
"A Tangible Color-Picker Toy Designed for Young Children";
Talk: CHI'19 Workshop on "Doing Things with Research thru Design: With What, with Whom, and Towards What Ends?", Glasgow, UK; 2019-05-04 - 2019-05-09; in: "http://thingsofdesign.info/papers2019/", (2019), 4 pages.



English abstract:
We present a tangible color-picker toy, designed for
children aged approximately up to six years. Since the
purpose of this interactive toy is to support visually
impaired children during therapeutic exercises, we
employed a practice-based design process for balancing its
physical properties and play elements. Appropriate stimuli
(both visual and haptical), play affordances, interactive
behavior, and additional device properties (e.g., product
safety) were explored together with therapists and
children drawing on a series of (interactive) prototypes.
Hence, the artifact embodies shared knowledge about how
exercising can be supported with therapeutic toys from
the perspective of children, therapists, and interaction
design researchers. In practice, the toy amplifies color by
means of LEDs to provide strong and active visual stimuli
when pushed against a colored surface. Its physical design
is minimalistic, allowing young children to safely grip it
and therapists to flexibly integrate it into exercises, madeup stories or motivating games for therapy:
https://youtu.be/yOuUJILskyc (demo video showing
latest prototype versions; accessed 12 Feb 2019).

Keywords:
Therapeutic toy; Research Through Design; Cerebral Visual Impairment;

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.