Stephanie Houde and Charls Hill, in their book What do Prototypes Prototype? ➚ share insightful ways to address design evolution. They rightly state that "It is common practice to build prototypes in order to represent different states of an evolving design, and to explore options. However, since interactive systems are complex, it may be difficult or impossible to create prototypes of a whole design in the formative stages of a project."


To oversimply Houde and Hill, and the purpose of prototypes in general, prototypes can be a combination of one or more of the above end goals. They define the role and significance of a design, user's interaction with the design, and ways of application and implementation of the design. They provide information and feedback on evolving design.

Now, toys are one of the most interactive products and systems, and approach from multiple perspectives can be an effective methodology for effecient toy design. Following Houde and Hill's model of what prototypes prototype, below are some examples of exploring toy design and prototyping in diverse ways.

Role Prototype: Brainstorming
A quick low-fidelity mind-map helps in recognizing the different purposes of toys, toy trends and their evolution. The research helps in navigating design process to a direction for the toy concept, broadly laying down feasibilities and possibilities for the said direction.


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Based on the 2021 Toy Trends briefing by The Toy Association, consumers are looking for
    • playthings that can be enjoyed by the entire family such as board games, as we started spending more time indoors due to the Covid-19 pandemic,
    • toys that are not just meant for kids,
    • playthings focused on health and wellness,
    • toys multi-sensory approach, especially audio
    • playthings that are mindful of the current social culture and needs,
    • and, toys that are nostalgic

enter The Rubber Duck...

The research and the mind-map helped in realizing the idea of reimagining The rubber duck. Rubber duck has achieved an iconic status in western pop culture, and is no longer just limited to being a toy. This opened doors for a not-just-for-kids bath buddy.

 What might adults do during bath time?
 Based on small group discussions, here's what adults do during bath time, besides the obvious
    • Listen to Music
    • Sing
    • Think (overthink, relax or reflect)
    • Plan the day
    • Read or listen to news/podcasts

 Reimagining the rubber duck as an adult bath buddy

Look and feel prototype: Keeping the classics


Keeping the classic look

How will the rubber duck look and feel with additional features such as electronic circuitry for audio features or squeezable inputs?

Imagining physical interactions similar to the below examle:



Feel of the squishy rubber duck

look of how the duck will look with electronic components inside it

Role prototype: Branding

Branding is a great exercise in design communication. Envisioning how the final product gets advertised to the consumers helps answer the crucial question of a product's functions in the simplest ways. And a brochure does just that...


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Implementation Prototype: Electronic Experiments

Looking at the different applications of the toy modularly (refer the brochure above), and focussing on individual and isolated applications, here are some experiments with audio and micro:bit compass for the rubber duck...

Self-care and corny companion audio tests using speech synthesis on micro:bit...


micro:bit testing, are you in the mood for caring or corny?

Compass Company tests using micro:bit...



micro:bit testing, it is a compass that talks!

Starting with testing out speech synthesis, the output speech sounds robotic and with static. Some sentences can be distinguished better than others. The documentation for the micro:bit speech library suggests possibilities of improving speech, that hasn’t yet been explored. Issues concerning voice can also be addressed through other microprocessors.

Very limited dataset and basic buttons are used for now, as the focus was to test speech synthesis, and a more complex interface of buttons and other inputs can be compiled at a later stage

further prototypes for the bath buddy coming soon...