This project was made in collaboration with Xinyi (Clementine) Chang
Hexity | Building Homes for Small Beings
This is a project where me and a team mate worked with 2 co-designers to create a toy de- signed specifically for them. Our co-designers were Ren (a five year old girl) and Johnny (a three and a half year old boy). We met with them regularly to understand their needs and the way they liked to play.
The constraints of this project were that the major element of the toy needed to be wood and created with a tool called a pin router which is good at creating repeated wood components in the same shape. This was a challenging project because the toy needed to cater to both Johnny and Ren at the same time. After spending time with them we discovered that Johnny liked things that were ambiguous and could be put together in many different ways while Ren was more concerned with having livable structures for small beings to take shelter in. From this discovery came Hexity which is a structural building toy meant to provide Ren and Johnny with the freedom to create miniature multi-story cities.
The design includes a system to enable rearranging of the hexagons which uses hair elastics. We incorporated this because we wanted Ren and Johnny to be able to replace any broken elastics easily without having to buy specific parts.
