PRAXI
Created in collaboration with the students of the Lebanese American University (LAU), PRAXI is a buildable educational toy. It is intended to teach children aged 9-12 a few principles of animation as a means of encouraging creativity.
Collaborators:
Alexander Hom
Adian Basalay
Jared Teiger
Mohen Li
Yeji Han
Duration: 4 months
x
The students at LAU were able to put us in contact with the Collège de Saints-Cœurs (SSCC) school and as a result we were only able to test with children aged 9-12
Brief
Design a fully functional maker space kit in collaboration with the students of the Lebanese American University (LAU)
SO...
...How do we Design a makerspace kit for Lebanese children aged
9-12 that encourages
creativity?
Survey Says...
10 teachers
5/10
Claimed parents were too busy to help their children with take home assignments
6/10
said children preferred play based learning as opposed to standard lecture proceedings
9/10
said children preferred interactive activities as their preferred method of learning
*We surveyed 10 teachers from the SSCC school to get a better understanding of the educational system surrounding the children*
Ideation
We immediately began brainstorming ideas for interactive toys making sure to remain sensitive to cultural norms and ideologies
We narrowed down our ideas to three: music box, animation, and story telling based on production feasibility
User Testing
We tested our three initial ideas at a local library to see if our toys were consistent with the cognitive abilities of children in our target age range
*We discovered that children in the age range 9-12 required more assistance than we had initially thought which led to us reassessing and redesigning our concepts*
Testing continued
With our refined prototypes, we introduced a pre and post test to gauge the effectiveness of the toys as teaching tools. The prototypes were tested locally at Parsons Elementary and at SSCC
Test Results
Parsons
Animation: 46.58%
Music: 25.29%
Storytelling: 4.88%
SSCC
Animation: 46.16%
Music: 28.57%
Storytelling: 16.00%
With animation leading in effectiveness both locally and abroad, we further refined our animation idea based on general feedback from the children and landed on PRAXI
PRAXI
Named after the Praxinoscope, PRAXI is an animation toy that encourages children to create short stories and watch them come to life.
The children feed in an animation slip into the drum, then crank the handle and watch the animation display on the mirrors.
MECHANISM
PRAXI is fully 3D printed, as we needed it to be fully produceable via the local facilities available at LAU.
pinion
gear
ball joint
socket
keyed shaft
crank handle
When the children spin the crank handle, that becomes the input motion. That rotation transfers 90 degrees through the bevel gears. Then the ball joint connects to a keyed shaft, transferring torque at an angle for smooth rotation. The keyed shaft locks into the drum through a female slot and makes it spin consistently.
drum
mirror core
