Concept Research
Background Research
Children’s Toys
（1）Types of Children’s Toys:
（2）Musical Toys
Music Sensation and Aesthetic Education: Musical toys can help children develop a sense of music and aesthetics, enabling them to better understand and appreciate music.
Auditory and Language Development: By listening to and imitating sounds and rhythms in music, children can enhance their auditory perception and language development.
Learning and Memory: Learning music theory, lyrics, and notes can improve children’s memory and cognitive abilities.
Emotional Expression: Music is a form of emotional expression, allowing children to express their emotions through music and enhance emotional intelligence.
Why Children Use Musical Toys
Music Co-creation aims to explore, experience, and create music together, fostering an environment for social, cultural, emotional, cognitive, and musical learning. Music Co-creation is significant for children’s musical enlightenment, helping them develop an interest in music, aesthetics, and interpersonal communication skills. Traditional music collaboration methods, such as vocal and instrumental ensembles, often require extensive knowledge of music theory and vocal or instrumental training, which many preschool children lack. To reduce the learning barriers for children in music collaboration, the design field combines the use of digital technology. Music Co-creation Tangibles, a medium that enhances the fun and interactivity of music enlightenment education through music co-creation.
Product Concept
Design Objectives
Lower the learning threshold for children in melody composition, help them understand the basic music theory, enhance the fun of music initiation, and encourage children to create their own music.
Target Users
Children aged 4-12 years old.
Product Design
The toy is composed of different colored building blocks and a chassis with fixed holes. The chassis incorporates sensors that can detect the position of the building blocks, creating music with corresponding tones and rhythms.
The holes on the chassis follow diamond and petal shapes, visually representing different rhythms. There are two tracks on the chassis, with each loop representing a musical phrase. Based on a 4/4 time signature, the outer diamond track has four holes, each representing a quarter note, while the inner petal track has eight holes, each representing an eighth note. The central hole represents a quarter note, sounding four times in each musical phrase.
Different colors of building blocks represent different tones. We have chosen four tones: drum, piano, pipa (a traditional Chinese string instrument), and finger snap.
Innovations
Most music toys on the market are limited to preset music segments, lacking sufficient flexibility. Faced with the unpredictable nature of children, using such products often results in situations that exceed the expected settings, preventing music toys from fully realizing their original functions. The mainstream music toys at present are mostly positioned for music classrooms, typically requiring assistance from adults such as teachers or parents. Alternatively, they are simply performance-oriented music composition tools, lacking education on basic music theory and rhythmic concepts for children.
Our innovation lies in the desire to integrate music theory knowledge into the process of children’s melody composition, enhancing the effectiveness of children’s music enlightenment. The top board tracks of our product employ different shapes corresponding to the playback rules of different tracks. By using visual shapes to represent different rhythms, children can intuitively learn the basic concepts of music while playing.
Workflow
Children can place building blocks on the holes of the base, with blocks of different colors representing different musical tones. Each hole on the base corresponds to a specific rhythm, and when the base sensor detects a building block, it plays the corresponding tone and rhythm.