Client: Tokidos
Project: Game Cubes
Year: 2021
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Strategy
Industrial Design
Prototyping
DFM
An educational and screenless gaming experience for kids
Tokidos is a Canadian startup focussed on creating the next generation of screenless, educational games. The system consists of 5 cubes, each with a simple LED interface, a button and speaker – all of which can sense each other’s location.
With this setup it’s possible to build a huge library of really fun games, interacting with the cubes by shaking, pressing, swapping and moving.
The end result is a rich and collaborative gaming experience that’s great for kids to play on their own or with adults and friends.
We supported Tokidos from very early mockups to batch production.
Process
Tokidos is a rich and collaborative gaming experience that’s great for kids to play on their own or with adults and friends.
Building a Product Strategy
This project needed a solid strategic foundation before starting any design work. We spent time looking at the landscape of other products in the space, doing a deep-dive into the technology, its benefits and tradeoffs and understanding the various use cases and needs of different types of children at different ages.
We brought all this research together into a comprehensive design strategy, with a series of design principles at its core. The aim of which was to make Tokidos stand out in all the right ways and highlight the things which make the system unique.
The language of gameplay
In any project for children, getting the design language right can be a real challenge. It needs to appeal to kids playing with it, the adults buying it but also support the strategic goals of the brand.
It was also important to not forget that fun is at the core of this project and we worked hard not to lose sight of this. The Tokidos team had done some great work building a really engaging ecosystem of games and our role was to take the spirit of this gameplay and translate it into the physical design work.
We tried to do this by opening up several alternative creative work streams to explore different looks-and-feels to test with kids.
Prototyping & Mass Production
The ultimate aim for this collaboration was to help Tokidos get to a batch production stage for crowdfunding. We worked alongside some great electronic engineers and creative technologists to engineer the product inside and out, creating custom PCB, a BOM, a manufacturing and assembly strategy and sourcing playbook to give Tokidos everything they needed to push ahead with making the system in batches.
Tokidos went on to run a successful crowdfunding campaign and aiming to ship a production version in 2023.