Discovering the Interplay of Story and Stimulating the Imagination

Walt Disney once said, “Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.” Understanding the minds of children was something I pondered for the last six weeks. I pondered this thought because I began to develop a toy for seven-year-olds to teach how to identify emotions. Throughout my childhood, I was bullied and struggled to develop socially. While growing up, I learned to figure out how I felt and identified why I felt that way. Due to this experience, I wanted to teach children to recognize emotions and develop empathy through playing with a toy.

To create this toy, the process began with understanding the user. Understanding the user started with doing market research, looking at children anthropometry, emotional development, how emotions are affected, and how social skills are taught at home and in the classroom. Through teaching Bible classes and working at an advanced preschool, I have had experience working with children for many years too.

I began ideating multiple ideas and conceptualizing how they could work. Through feedback, I narrowed down these ideas to a couple of concepts. These concepts included a memory game, a toy to build a face, and a spinner to land randomly on an emotional face and let the child act it out. I also perceived a toy as an environment, where a child could identify emotions inside of it. These toys included ideating play tents, toy houses, and an inflatable. From critique, it became evident that I was not teaching how to identify emotions well. Also, physically creating some of these toys was unfeasible due to time and constraints.?

Realizing this was a problem that needed to be solved and having a novice mind in the toy industry, I reached out, interviewed, and sought advice from industry professionals. This advice came from mentors, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, teachers, and administrators at Gwinnett County Public Schools, the Lego Foundation, Brick Scholars, Samepageon, Universal Creative, Walt Disney Imagineering, Storyland Studios, and of course, parents of young children.

One of the first people I reached out to was Christopher Stapleton. Christopher is a world-renowned experiential architect and mentor. He has worked on projects like Broadway theater, film, and themed entertainment. Through conversations with him, we began evaluating emotions and how emotions are affected through mediums. I realized that when it comes to emotions, people do not just identify them, but they go through the process of managing them through experiences. Experiences can evoke emotions, while emotions can also evoke experiences. From my childhood, I realized that what I really wanted to teach children is how to manage their emotions.

Christopher also introduced me to the idea of the interplay of story, which consists of evaluating three elements that allow the imagination to flow and experiences to be created: play, story, and game. Play looks at how people think, who they are, and their response to a story. Story is a universal language to send the right message. Game communicates the story in the right way. Christopher was kind enough to have, check-ins, critiques, and feedback to help elevate not just my toy but my understanding of the process of applying the interplay of story in mediums.

Christopher also connected me with Khalisa Phillips, a psychologist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Khalisa’s insight was helpful as I took away a better understanding of the different kinds of toys out on the market and why children used certain ones. I also learned more about what kind of toys children play with at stages of their life. It was also surprising to hear that many toys she evaluates these days are going back to being wooden and made of natural materials. Check out this site for more information: https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/pdfs/blk_media_adg.pdf.

Talking with employees of Gwinnett County Public Schools, such as principal Allan Gee, they teach emotions through demonstration and less through play. I remember growing up in this school system and having kitchen playsets, lofts, and multiple toys to learn through play. I found that most of those items are no longer present in the classroom, and instead, teachers demonstrate emotions to the children. Learning is very structured these days. Some of the curriculum considered comes from SEE (Social, Emotional, and Ethical) Learning and Random Acts of Kindness Lesson Plans. I talked to many adults that are both parents and educators that work with young children in elementary schools too. After talking with them, they agreed that interactivity, talking through ideas, and doing listening activities helped children understand emotions and how to manage them. Through the process of talking and acting situations out, one could learn how to manage their emotions. Check out https://seelearning.emory.edu/ and https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/for-edu ios cators to learn more about some examples of curriculum used today.

I also spoke with Bo Stjern Thomsen. Bo is the chair of learning through play and the vice-president of the Lego Foundation. Along with speaking to him, I talked to Megan Oteri. Megan is the founder and director of learning and development at Brick Scholars. Talking with them, I realized that learning through play transforms the imagination and provides the ability to let the imagination flow. The concept of play is so intuitively valuable and innovates the human experience. Learning through play transforms the mind, experiences, and the individual as a whole. Understanding individuals and the human mind allows one to understand what people want to learn (or what one to learn but may not realize it yet). Once we know and understand what people want to learn, creatives then can create a framework to accomplish it and execute it. For more information, check out these websites: https://www.legofoundation.com/en/learn-how/knowledge-base/, https://www.legofoundation.com/en/about-us/organisation/chair-of-learning-through-play/, and https://www.brickscholars.com/.??

Elaine Zhang is the owner of Samepageon. Samepageon means “communicate on the same page." I connected with her to talk about her experience in the toy industry and how their products communicate brand identify through toys. Through this process, I learned about different types of toys on the market and got to play with their newest character ring, The Little Finch. This toy created an experience by providing just a little bit of joy to one's life through its colorful design, ease of use, and transportability.?

I also wanted to connect with young professionals in this process to understand their perspectives. Meghan Burns studies industrial design and wants to work in themed entertainment as well. We discussed how toys could use stories. We also talked about how many aspects of the design process to develop small products can be applied through the medium of themed entertainment. This idea goes back to the interplay of story and game. While the play and story can be similar, the game in which the storytelling occurred can be different.

Don Carson, Michael Melilli, and Humberto Kam are all industry professionals who work in theme entertainment and provided some advice on applying concepts used in large-scale immersive experiences to small-scaled toy designs. This advice included looking at how technology could affect a toy, how storytelling allows the audience to connect with a character’s feelings, and how the simplest toys can be the most effective to let the imagination flow.

?A part of why I chose to teach emotions is because I want to work in the themed entertainment industry. Themed entertainment is all driven by emotions. Joe Rodhe, a lead Imagineer for Disney's Animal Kingdom and the current experience architect for Virgin Galactic, talks about emotions in the last episode of the Disney+ series, The Imagineering Story. Joe says, "Human beings are emotional first. They have to find their emotions. That's what runs this thing, emotions. You have to let yourself feel emotion in order to do this work."

Because story is the universal language to convey a message, I knew I would want to develop a story that the toy could tell. Richard Stone is a mentor of mine and a co-author of Story Intelligence, where he talks about the seven powers of story. Through his book and our conversations, we discussed how stories affect emotions. When emotions are affected, they affect the process of thinking. This affects the experience. The question then became, what story do I tell, and how would I then do it?

Going back to the drawing board, literally drawing out and writing down feedback on whiteboards, I was trying to write out a story that the toy would tell. I looked at what is this process of managing emotions. I looked at it as a three-step process. This process included identifying emotions, responding to them, and reflecting on them. I broke down each part of the process through play, story, and game. Breaking it down allowed me to look at who I would be affecting, the message I was going to send, and how that message was going to be told. I began connecting how these different ways of communicating the message would still connect to my design goals that the toy is easy, fun, intuitive, stimulating, random, and repeatable. But something still was not adding up.?

I realized I misused story. Before I had gone through this process on the whiteboards listed above, I should have established what my story was and the message I wanted it to convey by the end of it. By establishing the story in the beginning, I would let the story be the toy’s backbone and the game/way would guide the storytelling. I have always heard how important story was but applying it through a medium allowed me to see its importance. This experience showed me that while the story transcends the media, the storytelling depends on the media. This moment was when the lightbulb turned on. I realized to teach a child to manage their emotions through a story, the story would have to be about story itself.?

I then went back to the drawing board and thought about how I could teach a story about story. After some ideation, I came up with a story for children to tell stories through blocks. The story was that kids met this wise wizard on a path, but he was old and could not remember events from his childhood or how he felt during them. By drawing two cards, one with an emotional face and another with a life event, a child could act those two elements out using blocks and wizard figurines to show the wizard. I quickly realized through user feedback that while the toy was fun to play with, the toy was not communicating the story well.?

I talked with Richard Stone and Christopher Stapleton some more, and we broke down stories and what they are. I thought about what are fun ways to tell stories through miniature media. Mad libs came to mind. A mad lib is where one fills in the blanks of a story, usually with words that do not fit with the story’s content. These random terms in the content of a story make people laugh and have fun during the process. I wondered how I could apply this random aspect of storytelling through a toy.?

I quickly drew out an image of a three spinning wheel on an axis. One wheel would be a character wheel, a world wheel, and an event wheel, each with cards attached to their faces that dealt with these story elements. Characters provided the empathy, worlds provided the context, and events provided the motivation for a story. When spun, the wheels would land on different combinations of story elements on a row. The child could use these elements together to create a story. I built a mid-fidelity prototype with 3-D printing and machine shop tools to cut and build the toy. To help act out the scene, I designed a face shield mask with dry-erase paper on it and a slit cut-through it that the child could draw and on, wear and see-through.

Both models were effective but could be revised. The spinner's experience would improve if the cards on them could be interchangeable. I needed to refine the materials, finishes, and colors too. The face shield marker mask was effective but heavy. To elevate the toy's experience, the mask could be a clear material.

Using Autodesk Fusion 360 and Keyshot, I remodeled and rendered the spinner to define the sizing and dimensions. Then, I made the mask into a hexagonal board with clear plastic a child could draw on and hold up to their face. To further allow for imaginative exploration, I provided a hexagonal card with different at-home items listed on it that could help create the story.?

After branding, color theory, type analysis, and logo design, I titled and created my experiential toy, Spinning Stories. Spinning Stories allowed children to spin, draw, and create stories and manage their emotions through storytelling. Children would spin three wheels for story elements and use those to create a story. They could draw it out on a board or use items at home to develop their story.?

The stamp of approval comes from the child and the parent. After having a five and a seven-year-old play with Spinning Stories, the children loved the toy. Immediately without any instructions, they began spinning the toy and drawing out the story. They were smiling, laughing, and goofing about as they tried to figure out how a princess on a pirate ship would survive while robots came alive at the same time. The children would hold the board to their faces and draw out silly images. The kids took the story element cards in and out. They could identify which wheels the cards went with since the cards’ backings were color-coded. At the same time, the parent was very impressed by how the toy taught children how to manage their emotions through storytelling. The parent thought the toy allowed for multiple ways of play, looked safe, was well made, and would last a while. Spinning Stories was both fun and educational.

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article for a class that talked about how “product design” needs to go and experience design needs to sign through because the experiences economy is the way of the future. While experiences seem to be the way of the future, I learned through creating this toy that product design is just as important as experiential design. The product often contributes and can enhance the experience. They work together but are distinctly different. In the case of Spinning Stories, children can experience their own creative worlds through their imagination and learn through play. But what is also important to realize is that adults can play too with an open mind like a child. From creating Spinning Stories, I learned the power of stories can be applied in all mediums we work with and in everyday parts of life. So whether it is in a toy or a theme park, through the interplay of story, one can effectively apply play, story, and game to stimulate the imagination and allow for creative exploration within all generations.

To see this process visually, click here.

To see children playing with the toy, click here.

? 2021 Matthew Waller