Children love watching photos, but until now there has been no products out there designed to let the children truly enjoy the digital family photos.

Field studies of new parents and their children have revealed that although children show a great interest in images they rarely get the opportunity to explore the family’s digital photos. The photos are stored out of the reach of the child and on equipment not suitable for creating a pleasant set up for reliving the memories. Children need a product that supports their desire to benefit from family photos.

Wobble – a new product that brings the family’s personal photos into the child’s reach. Wobble uses the digital family photos to stimulate children’s development of speech, motor skills and cognitive abilities. In contrast to traditional digital photo frames, the display of photos is controlled by motion – creating a rich and fun way of interacting with the product. Wobble is designed to withstand children’s play and to create a comfortable photo viewing situation for parent and child.

In the first years of life a great development is taking place and important skills as motor coordination and language are developed. Wobble is a great toy that supports this development in a fun way and with features that can be activated as the child grows.

The motor skills of new born children are very limited. To meet that limitation Wobble reacts on even simple actions. If turned like a spinning top or easily shaken, it will picka random photo. These features are made possible by the motion control, bringing excitement and curiosity to the children.

As the child grow up Wobble also makes it possible to add letters and written words to the photos. This will help children to associate these with the sound and objects on the photos.

Children love games and challenges. The possibility to activate different games and puzzles using own photos and the motion control makes Wobble an ideal play tool, that can be personalised to the development level of the child.

Motion control and the way photos are organised on Wobble enable parents to easily navigate through their photos using only one hand. With a tip to the left or right the photo is changed and with a tip up or down the category of photos is changed. Even with a child in one arm, it is easy and intuitive for the parents to find the favourite photos to show their children.

This post marks the ending of the Innoshot project, please comment and let us know what you think about the concept.

Check out the entire product report or feel free to contact us if you want to know more about the Wobble concept:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2238147/Innoshot%20-%20Product%20report.pdf

Regards,

Morten Jensen & Mads Busk Larsen

We have now entered the detailing phase of our thesis project. In this phase we are going to work on the details of the product and specify the interaction and system behind the product.

From this moment we will take a break from blogging about the project. We will return when it is time to reveal the final product.

It has been really interesting to run the blog and work with this open process in the first part of our project. We are very delighted about all the comments and are very thankful.

We have now chosen to work further on with the Wobble concept presented earlier and have made the first prototype.

Children loves watching photos, but until now there has been no products out there designed to let the children enjoy the digital family photos hidden away on their parents hard drive.

The Wobble concept introduces a new and unique way of using personal photos. The motion control enables children to watch photos with their parents in a more intimate way. Using their own photos personalises the learning process in a fun and intuitive way.

It is a LCD screen with a round handle protected by a rubber membrane. Sensors inside are making it possible to control the product by movement. Furthermore a speaker and microphone makes it possible to control the displaying through voice recognition. The rugged design of will allow children to use it alone. The one-hand interaction with the product makes it easy to be intimate with the children. Furthermore the concept offers the child a simple and fun way to interact with product on their own. We see potential in Wobble also to be used as a learning tool for the children to develop their motor coordination, speech through voice recognition and when they get older to learn letters and words.

Right now we are working on how to make a visual expression that both appeals to the children and their parents and how to the interaction and learning levels in the product shall be defined and controlled by their parents. We still like to get your opinion on the design and the way of interaction. Lets Wobble?

To kick-start our concept generation we invited two parents and a pedagogue to take part in a co-creation workshop at our university. The aim of the workshop was to generate new ideas, but also to gain a better understanding of children and learning.

After an initial toy talk with the starting point in their children’s favorite toys and a idea generation exercise the work shop participants was asked to make quick prototypes based on the ideas generated.

What did we learn?

From the workshop we learned that tangible interaction and touching various senses are important topics in stimulating children and that the best toys gives the children and parents a starting point to build new a creative games and stories from.

From idea to concept

The best ideas from the prototypes were the basis for new concepts sketched by the project group.

Flexi frame

One of the prototypes from the workshop was a baby mobile with a built in digital photo frame that could be controlled by pulling the strings.

Flexi frame

This concept is a digital picture frame used for babies lying in their bed. The frame is connected to the bed through a flexible arm. The frame shows different photos according to which string is pulled by the baby.

Another prototype was this little sensory machine that exemplifies the idea of making the photo experience more three dimensional. We took this idea further in two concepts…

Photo tent

The idea behind this concept is about giving the baby a sensuous and surprising experience. The pictures are shown on the inner side of the tent one by one. To stimulate the baby the side of the tent projected on changes.

Shape sorting Photobox

This concepts is taking the traditional kids toy, the shape sorting box, to the next level. Now the shapes don’t just disappear, but activate the display of photos related to the shape. E.g. when you place a round block in the right hole  the screen will show you photos of round stuff.

This co-creation prototype we call the wheel frame. The idea is to change photos by turning the wheel. The wobble concept explores this idea of motion control further…

Wobble

A mobile digital photo frame for small kids and their parents. Is controlled by movement, to make it possible to display photos with the product in one hand and the kid on the other arm. Just flip the screen and the next photo is displayed. Place it on the floor for the kid to play with on it’s own.

This little thing is a handheld projector, making it possible for the child to play with photos from home, when they are in the day care centre.

Photo torch

This concepts make it possible for the child to bring photos of mom and dad to the day care centre. The torch can project photos on the wall and is controlled with a scroll button. The projector head can be disconnected and mounted on the wall or somewhere else to project photo by the children’s bed when the child it too young to operate the product on its own.

These concepts are the first in the concept phase we have just begun. Please give a comment if you think they are cool concepts or stupid gadgets or you have an even better idea?

We have now made a very important decision in choosing the innovation track to explore through the rest of the project. The job to be done is:

Teach and inspire children with personal photos

We find this track to have business potential as the competition in the area is relatively low. Our studies also show that the amount of photos taken by the users does not correlate with the way the photos are used afterwards. Teaching and inspiring offers a new possibility to actively use the photos, but also creates a reason to take new and different types of photos.

Why use personal photos?

A large number of products using photos or drawings to teach and educate small children already exist. Very few of these products however take advantage of the great amount of images created by the parents themselves. Using real photos from the personal environment gives the opportunity for the child to recognise related persons or former experiences while learning. This is an interesting potential that we wish to explore further in the project. The challenge of creating photos to be use for the child’s learning is also something we believe will meet new parents interest in photography and add another aspect to their photography experience.

Now what?

We will now step into the next phase of the project where the traditional design work starts – this means that we will spend the next month or so coming up with ideas and concepts for products that make people able to easily use their personal photos to teach and inspire their kids. (Age ½ – 3 years) We will also look more into the theory of teaching minor kids and research on technologies that might be appropriate for the task.

What is your opinion?

We have made this blog to make it possible for you to influence the project and that is why we would love to hear your point of view. Does it make sense to make this kind of product at all? What exactly should it do? What should it look like?

So leave a comment if you have some thoughts or ideas you would like to share with us.

A great trip to Photokina ended. In addition to the fair, we attended a presentation from a trend analysis company talking about the market development in the photo business. Here are some of the highlights from the trip.

3D technology is the big hype and all the larger and some odd smaller Asian companies are putting new products on the market.

The new hybrid/system cameras are in focus and the sales are growing rapidly, taking sales from the compact camera market.

Photo books and greeting cards are growing rapidly in sales. Special services for ordering processed photos and photo books through mobile devices are also emerging.

The amount of product targeted specially at new parents or children is limited.

This week is strategy week and we are going to decide, which innovation track we want to explore further in the rest of the project and present to you next week.

We have now finished the interpretation of our user research material and have boiled it down to 5 possible tracks to explore in the project. We would like to hear your point of view about these themes, so feel free to leave a comment.

Simplify the photography system for new parents

The photography world consists of a lot of different products and applications, and the interviews showed that each couple had their own certain way of handling their pictures. This track is about how the photography system can be simplified and easier to handle by cutting of irrelevant options and functions, making the possibilities more clear and foreseeable for the users.

Awake women’s interest in digital photography

Women enjoy taking pictures of their children, but our interviews showed that their knowledge about photography was much lesser then their cohabiters. “If it just has an auto program, its fine” says one of interviewed. This track focus on how to make women feel more secure about handling digital pictures and broaden their knowledge and interest in photography.

Encourage new parents to better use of photos

Through our studies we also learned that the huge amount of pictures that people are shooting after the arrival of the digital camera is less frequently watched in a social settings. Furthermore the individual photo has lost value with the digitalization. This track is about exploring how people can use their photos in new ways the add value to the individual photo and the experience around the sharing and reliving the story behind the photo.

Raise and educate children with personal photos

One of the interviewed couple told about how they used their own pictures both to entertain their little girl, but also to calm her when she was crying. Pictures effect on children is interesting and the project group sees a potential in using the large amount of personal pictures to raise and educate your own child in a fun way.

Secure photos of new parents

Pictures are an important part of people’s life, but this importance is not reflected in the way people store their pictures. Our survey showed that 25% of the survey-participant had no proper back up of their personal digital photos.

Today we will leave for Photokina in Cologne, a huge fair about photography, to explore trends and the potential of each of these innovation tracks.

The last week we have been busy conducting interviews with new parents and retailers of photography equipment. The purpose of these interviews was to create an understanding and empathy of new parents, understand their relations and feelings towards photos and identify needs and desires among the user group. We have conducted three interviews with three couples with children of different ages and retailers.

How did we do it?

In order to jazz up the interviews we created a set of small assignments for the users to work out along the interviews. This was to create a more lively session and make the participants reflect of their use of photos. The assignments worked as kick starters of the dialog around the planned topics of the semi structured interviews.

What did we learn?

A lot! This qualitative research method gave us a tremendous amount of information which we are currently analyzing in order to identify areas in which our users have unfulfilled needs. What kind of problems are them experiencing today, what would they like to do with their pictures in the future and so on. Interpreting our interview data is a big task, but here is some of the stuff that we already covered:

Story beats quality! We asked the users to show us the photos that mean the most to them and explain why they liked these particular pictures. Common to all the photo we saw was that the picture quality was fairly average and the composition and play of colors was varying for pour to rather good. But the single most important reason why all the pictures were chosen was the story and memory behind the photo. Therefore we concluded; story beats quality…

Pictures are time consuming! We also saw that new parents are shooting a lot of pictures, of which 90% are with the little new baby. This is not a bad thing in itself, but shooting a lot of pictures don’t just mean spending a lot of time running around with your face covered by the camera display. It also means spending time to delete unwanted pictures, organizing and storing pictures, taking back ups, editing, choosing the most important pictures that you what to display in your home and finally finding time to watch all of your pictures again from time to time. So the quantity that the digital image has brought to photography has also created a lot of work to a lot of people. So how can we make photos less time consuming and how can we get people to use their pictures more?

“you really get surprised about how many pictures you can take of such a little child” – Karin, new parent

A good start. Through the use of Participatory, a tool for planning the user activities in a design process, the user group to focus our research at is chosen. The project will focus on…

New parents!

Becoming a parent changes the way people enhance photography. With once the camera is more or less focused on one object.  We see an innovation and market potential in this user group. Can the experience of becoming a parent be even richer?

During this week we will interview and study a selected group of new parents. How are their photography experiences and how have these experiences changed since they became parents? When, why and how do they take pictures and what is important to them when creating photos?

Let us know if you got some good ideas for methods to apply in our research, good questions to ask the parents or if you have experience as or with new parents as well as photographing?

Hi and welcome onboard on the journey of INNOSHOT.

We are proud to involve you in INNOSHOT – our 10th semester project carried out at the study of Industrial Design at Aalborg University. The goal of the project is to create a greater experience around taking, handling or enjoying digital photos and by the end of the trip we hope to present to you an innovative product design that will enhance the current experience around digital photography.

The journey will start today and continue until the end of 2010. Along the way we will be posting information from the cockpit on this site – allowing you to follow the progress on 1^st class.

1^st class means that you will have the opportunity to influence the direction of the project – all you have to do is to give the pilots feedback on the work they present on the site. This can simply be comments with your thoughts and ideas or even pictures, sketches and so on…

So please return regularly to utilize your chance to contribute to the development of a new product within the area of digital photography…