How it works:

This is a plastic toy, designed to offer a fun and engaging visually assistance to counting for children between the ages of ages of 2 and 3. It is composed of a sturdy plastic construction of a beehive, accompanied by 9 colorful bee shaped beads. Each bee has a unique number embossed on it, depending on its placement on a plastic wire frame. By embossing it, the user also gains the benefit of feeling the shape of each number in addition to seeing it on the bee. This allows the user a more direct interaction with the numbers. Each bee can also be moved by the user along the wire frame to circulate around a flower and hive, simulating a flying motion. At the bottom of the hive is a block that marks the end of the path, embossed with the number zero. This block helps the user recognize the symbol that represents no bees being present, 0.

 

This toy encourages math skills through pattern and color repetition, fine motor skills, and coordination. The bright colors of each bee, following a ROYGBIV color progression, makes it intuitive to associate the order of each number by following the accompanying color of the bee it is on, thus helping the user develop early math skills.

 

 

Design intent:

This toy should be composed of 12 total parts. While there are only 4 types of parts, we chose to make each of the nine bees distinguished by embossing a different number on each one.  This will help the user better distinguish each bee and number, which in turn helps him/her remember the numbers better. This is especially helpful for our targeted age group, as most users in this category learn and associate strongly with their hands.

 

The simplest part of the toy is the beehive, which acts as the base of the toy. The three key parts of the design are the placement of the block, the hole in the block where the bottom end of the plastic wire frame is soldered, and the hole on the top of the hive where the flower is meant to be soldered in. The flower part is non-crucial to the structure of the toy, but acts as a visual aid for the user’s association of the activity. However, the flower’s shape was designed to allow the bees to pass just under one of its petals as it circulates on the wire frame toward the center. The wire frame itself must remain close to the measurements and specifications in order for it to wrap around the base efficiently and for the toy to function properly. Furthermore, the rod at the center of the top spiral of the wireframe meet the right specifications, within reason, to allow the top spiral to remain relatively horizontal, which would allow smoother level movements of the bees around the wire frame on top.

 

One of our first priorities in designing this toy was the safety of the toddler using the toy. We knew we had to have a toy large enough to prohibit a toddler from swallowing any parts but small enough to be portable, so we dimensioned the toy to be 15 inches tall and 9 inches wide. However, because we designed the bees on the small side, we decided to keep the bees permanently attached to the plastic wire frame surrounding the hive to avoid swallowing or losing the bees. Furthermore we wanted to ensure that the weight of the hive would not be a problem for the toddler or the parents. In terms of portability, we needed to ensure that the toy could be carried in a large bag. With regards to child safety, had to ensure that a child would not be able to seriously hurt him/her or others should they decide to pick it up and throw it (toddlers are prone to tantrums). Therefore we decided it was best to hollow out the hive so as to decrease the mass of our product and reduce the amount of materials necessary.

 

Difficulties:

Beyond designing the toy itself, our biggest issues with this project stemmed from either dimensioning or mating the assembly itself. Although creating the base of the hive was relatively easy, it took us some trial and error to create the spiral that the bees would slide down on. We wanted to just attached the spiral from the base to the flower and have the bees slide down, we saw no practical way of doing this with only one spiral. As a solution, we separated the flower from the base and added an additional loop of the plastic wire frame for the bees to rest on before they are sent sliding down. This is where we also faced some difficulties with mating the assembly– while we understood that the bees would best slide down using a path mate to the spiral, we could not access a concentric mate for the bees and the spiral path in the assembly window. Instead, we had to mate the bees tangent to the spiral, which allowed the bees to follow the path, but with less accuracy than a path mate. Our final obstacle was in creating our engineering drawings, because while the hive itself was not incredibly difficult to dimension, we were unsure of how to best dimension the spiral. This is also why we made the flower and the base separate parts, as the flower vastly over-complicated the base’s dimensions.