Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, What Toy Reflects Me Best of All?

A week from now, I will be speaking on behalf of frog at Toy Con's Sandbox Summit, the toy industry’s annual conference. And while I don’t want to divulge all the details of my seven-minute presentation and follow up panel discussion on “Pay Attention/Play Attention,” I can’t contain the growing sense of urgency I feel toward rethinking the future of toys, games, and education. As an expert in emotional, sensorial, and participatory design, I have collaborated with kids on everything from game design to medical identification and technology in the classroom. And the growing theme among children and teens is they want more control to create their life experience as well as the tools and the ability to help change their world. Ultimately, they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Granted, not every child can sport my daughter’s pink shirt that reads, “I’m a designer…just like my mom,” but the fact is, they should.

Not only our world — but our children’s world — is shaped by design, from the two year old with leukemia who has made his IV cart a “ride on” toy, to the high school students who are using design thinking to tackle social problems through Design Ignites Change (an educational initiative on whose advisory board frog sits). We owe it to them, and ourselves, to expand and explore the game, toy, and education opportunities we provide them. We often underestimate their ability to co-create, their capacity to feel and their depth of understanding. They have grown up with war, divorce, and large-scale tragedies like 9/11, and they know about the issues affecting our planet like sustainability and recycling. In their world, friends can die from cancer and peanuts can kill. And with far more wisdom than some adults can muster, they write the White House and get an answer, turn to Twitter for social support, and not only desire, but master DIY (do it yourself) projects.

Our kids are asking tough questions and if we are lucky, they are inviting adults to help answer them. Take Sofia Wardle, who, with the help of her father, created an online interactive artistic maze to help communicate her rare blood disease called histiocytosis. Sofia collected beads — not because she liked to make necklaces, but because through the Beads of Courage Program she received one for every medical procedure she had to endure and by the end of her eight-year life, she had well over 1,000. I recall a TEDtalk on climate change given by the well-known venture capitalist John Doerr whose 15 year-old daughter told him, “I’m scared and I’m angry. Dad, your generation created this problem. You’d better fix it.” He took her at her word and began his personal quest to see what he could do to help his daughter and the world.

And then there is my daughter, who at the age of five came up with the idea of a Trike-A-Thon to benefit a two-year old with cancer. The idea is simple — have fun riding a bike while helping another child in the process. In my daughter’s mind, she can be a real hero, not a comic book version. She also believes she can create her own cellphone (ala Build a Bear), make a machine to save the planet and design a dress with three-dimensional picnic accessories so she’s always ready for a snack at the park.

At frog, we harness this type of powerful thinking through co-creation and participatory design. We invite children to be a part of our design process in the earliest stages to uncover their emotions, desires, and needs. We’ve done this for Disney — we could do it for many others. I suggest we rethink our definition of play by reflecting on what our children are really asking for. Now, more than ever, we need their partnership to help foster and stimulate what our world can be. And while I could get a Masters Degree in life from TED.com, my wish is for a similar, but "smaller" version called KIDGlobal. Just think what we could learn from those younger than ourselves.

- Laura Seargeant Richardson, Principal Designer, frogTX