In Fall 2018, the RIT Industrial Design program announced a collaborative studio project with Sesame Street. Our goal would be to develop product concepts that address the "urgency of play" by combining Sesame's classic brand with modern designs.
These concepts would then be evaluated and ranked by Sesame VP of Creative Theresa Fitzgerald, as well as Museum of Play VP of Electronic Games Jeremy Saucier.
• Wholesomeness
• Collaborative Play
• Learning through Entertainment
After aligning with the client, I distill the essence of what this product needs to be into 3 key categories, that engage kids and adults on different levels of play.
• Observing the natural world and actors around them - both kids and adults.
• Gives children the confidence and guidelines to their own play.
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• Connecting with others through different solo tasks within shared space.
• Encourages sharing and develops socialization and kindness.
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• Translates ideas to reality through organizing and reorganizing objects.
• Develops creativity and self-actualization. Allows room for safe challenges and goals.
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• Encourages interaction and awareness of creatures bigger and smaller than them.
• Develops sense of identity and caring for their environment.
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After modeling in CAD and printing in a mixture of SLA and PLA, I assembled and painted roughly 60 individual pieces, and a stock aquarium pump to get the model ready for display.
Presented to the client, and was selected as a finalist for further development. In 2019,this was also exhibited during New York Design Week.
This is quite an old project, being started in 2018, when I had a much more nascent understanding of the toy market and development scope. While I am immensely proud of the final achievement in ambition and execution, there is a lot of room to improve the marketability. Rough cost estimates put this item at beyond $30 cost of goods, which becomes prohibitively expensive for most customers.
Were I to someday revisit this idea and this play pattern, I would be excited to explore bringing down the scale and the complexity into a more affordable range.
