emily conrad

One of my side projects of late is an iPhone app for kids that encourages and rewards experimenting with food and food combinations. We are reluctant to call it a cooking app, because it is more related to exploring, finding, and experimenting in ways kids may not be able to do in real life. The team includes myself as the Lead Interaction Designer, Jesse Lowe as the Lead Programmer, and Laurie Filiak as the Visual Designer. Just a few days ago we noticed we had not accounted for a huge part of the experience; the soundtrack. This is a new territory for me, including a Composer as part of the team. Audio for the most part is perceived as annoying on websites, and would be an experience nightmare if it was part of software design. Even for an exhibit design an audio soundtrack is rarely considered. But when it comes to handheld devices with the goal of creating a complete experience, music jumps way up in priority. Music becomes even more important when your audience is kids.

Children have the amazing knack for remembering songs, even when exposed to them in utero. Back when I was pregnant the first time around, musicologist (and my future colleague) Gideon D’Arcangelo interviewed me for his radio show Listening In: The Delivery Room . This interview explores the role of music in the delivery room, but we also spoke about playing music for babies in utero. I confessed that I exposed my daughter to more Ratatat and Blondie than she could probably stand (which serendipitously led to me spotting Deborah Harry more than once in those 9 months). Four years later, she still has an inclination for both musicians.

In short, my point is that audio plays a huge role in kids entertainment. Something that Disney, Music Together, and Yo Gabba Gabba are both well aware of, in their own very different ways. And this project has encouraged me to think about the role of music in the overall experience. I have been asking myself and talking with our composer Austin King about how the music will complement the visual and interaction design, and how sound in general help give the player directive. I found myself having to go back through the wireframes and think about the final app not in terms of user flow, but musical flow and composition.

We are still a month out from deployment, but will certainly post more about the project once everything is complete.

It’s finally here! A few months back I had an idea that might get my three year old to stay in bed in the morning, and to go to bed consistently at night. This idea was prototyped out by myself and the talented Jeff Gray using an Arduino Teensy, RGB LED, an Ikea Fado light, and a prototype desktop application to customize settings. I tried out the light on my own “Early Bird”, and it worked with great success. My family watches the light transition from pink to blue at 8pm every night. So we decided to make the light real and have it prototyped by a factory that specializes in LED lighting. We’ve decided to produce a very limited run of the Early Bird Light, and will be announcing the product very soon. It’s made of solid aluminum and an etched glass globe. The software allows you to customize night time, morning time, and nap time, and your little one can help select the color for each time period. A full RGB spectrum is available to choose from. And the software is super easy to use and very cute. Here’s a sneak peek!

In my family, we’ve had our eye out for the new Junior Tag Reader from Leapfrog since it came out in January. I’m often impressed with the design and capabilities of LeapFrog’s products, especially after such a wildly successful experience with Learn and Groove . I got that hideous thing at my babyshower and was so inclined to return it, but my mother discouraged me. Turns out to be my daughter’s favorite toy to this day. But now that she is starting to outgrow it, we’re happy to move forward too.

The Tag Reader is a book companion that can be tapped or dragged over pages to have the image or text be spoken outloud. It reinforces language skills in children and gets them excited about reading, at least in theory. We thought we’d test it out for ourselves.

How it works:
The Twitter version (Thanks @andrewmiller): “They use the Anoto pattern of tiny dots tracked by the pen’s camera. each combo is unique, so the pen knows which “page” it’s in”.

Also known as Digital Ink, the paper has these tiny 2-Dimensional bar codes (like mini QR codes) that are visible to the naked eye, but indecipherable. Each image or text has it’s own unique code that the pen reads. So it’s like a scanner at the grocery store, or even something like a phone reading a QR code, which makes me think this will all doable through mobile someday.

The Interaction:
Blue is fascinated with the pen, it’s white and bright green with two buttons. It even has two rubber nubs on top that look kind of like eyes. At first all she wanted to do was turn the pen on and off because it makes fun sounds. Buttons and fun sounds can entertain her for a good while, and did until I showed her what she’s “supposed” to do (lost points there).

Books and pens don’t mix in her mind, this is pretty much how we’ve trained her. So she didn’t immediately grasp it. And with books, she likes to quickly point and touch an image and say what it is, or even better what sound it makes, over and over (rib-bit, rib-bit, rib-bit). So she carried over this behavior and used the pen as a pointer to quickly tap the image. And it spoke, so she didn’t immediately. It was like watching her learn a new language pattern. But she quickly got the hang of it and then charged off to something else next.

I’m curious to watch her grow into this new toy. If she’ll have the patience to listen to it, and do more hovering over the pages and less jabbing with it. The book we got (there’s only a handful of them available, and the pen can only hold the information for 5 books) was Dora, so it alternates between Spanish and English. This was confusing to her because there’s no visual cue explaining that the pen is spaking about the same object. For example if the page could respond to the pen by outlining the mango, Blue might better understand the mango is being described in two ways.

And one thing that I don’t understand is why we have to listen to the anonymous and often annoying voices, why can’t I just record myself or other people familiar to Blue? I’ve been doing a lot of this sort of prototyping on my own . It just makes sense to supply this sort of capability in a flawless interface, which btw the website that you have to log into to initiate the Junior Tag reader is not. The more toys I play with, the wider the market seems to grow.

Tomorrow we have a plane ride and will see how it goes. I know at this point I’ve gotten more fun out of the Reader than she has, so hopefully that will change.

As a technologist, and electronics enthusiast, I’ve noticed a huge push in the DIY movement for arts and crafts. As a mom, and in the spirit of Ruth Handler, I know I want my daughter’s toys to be made for her needs. Spinning off the concept of personalization, I began recording my voice, my husband’s voice, and our family members who she knows and loves but does not see them as much as we’d like (we’re in NYC, my family is from Ohio).

The toy exists as a prototype; a box with yellow square, blue triangle, and red circle. When my daughter picks up the red circle, she hears her grandmother’s voice say “red circle”, and the blue triangle is her grandfather’s voice, and so on. There’s also a place beneath the circle or triangle for her grandparents pictures so she can make the audio visual connect. Everything is wooden (except the electronics), and all paints are non toxic. My daughter, who is 2 yrs old, loves it!

The big idea, and differentiator, behind this toy is the audio – it’s your voice your child hears, you’re the one teaching them even if you can’t be there all the time. And it’s a way to connect to family members who may not be near by. The child will still hear her family member’s voice and recognize the picture. What grandparent wouldn’t want that?

Many of the toys she plays with now (Leapfrog’s Learn and Groove in particular) showcase anonymous voices singing ABC’s or teaching colors. And for a while she would spend hours with these toys! I have been working with a child psychologist who has emphasized the need for a child to hear her mother and father’s voice for comfort, but little is known of this connection other than comfort. Seems to me, our loved one’s voices play a huge role in our development.

At this point the prototype is up and running and I’m working on a next iteration of the interface and would like it to be more “in the round” and to tell stories, as opposed to a box top with shapes (though Melissa and Doug seem to be doing just fine with this idea). I want to make it easy for parents to record their own audio, and fun so the child learns through play.