About this project
Toyji is a smart toy gaming platform for personalized learning.
Its educational games use interactive, customizable and 3D-printable smart toys as game controllers in a way never seen before.
Toyji is for ages 3+, and it works with iOS and Android devices.
These days we often end up secluded as we bury our faces in screens displaying entertaining content. In children this often ends up impeding development of language, social, cognitive and motor skills. We wanted to tackle this.
Many families rightly want to balance screen time concerns with the educational benefits of smart devices and Toyji is designed precisely to get this balance right in a way that fits families’ unique schedules and preferences.
Toyji's educational games and tangible gaming technology develop general and curricular knowledge, coding, language and social skills, three-dimensional thinking, motor skills and a solid understanding of concepts like distance, weight and sorting.
Scheduling Needs: We know kids have a specific schedule - and so do parents. That's why Toyji integrates families' meal, screen and bedtime plans. Parents can set daily hour limits based on their children's age, and for example, when it's bedtime, Toyji characters will suggest they both go to bed at the same time to play some more the next day. Or around lunch time, your child can eat alongside their character also eating in the game at the same time, even chatting about the benefits of different foods.
Real-life exploration of children's interests: Toyji offers real-life recommendations based on your child’s preferences in the game. If, for example, your child really likes visiting the Fire Station on Toyji, the companion app will send you a notification, identifying nearby fire stations so you can arrange an exciting field trip!
Well-tailored roles for parents: For parents, who would like to join the games and play together with their children, Toyji has well-tailored roles that still allow children to lead the games.
Safe and Healthy Gaming: Toyji’s games are educational and violence-free, and they do not feature any commercials. Moreover, our infrared technology works very much like remote controls, so it does not involve any health hazards.
Technology: Our unique portable gaming hardware can detect up to 16 smart toys simultaneously on a tabletop board by sending their ids, positions and rotations in real-time to your tablets via Bluetooth Low Energy technology to play games designed for Toyji with Android and iOS tablets.
Interchangeable Toy Bases: Toyji's smart toys have interchangeable and mountable bases. Both these toy bases and the pad are battery-operated. Toy bases have shapes designed to accommodate educational games such as coding, sorting and counting. The toy pad and toy bases have two-way communication between one another and the tablet, opening up endless possibilities like toys changing colors. (Standart Pack comes with 3 Toy Bases - Circle #1, Square #2, and Triangle #3)
Smart Toy Customization: You can create your own 3D-printable toys and characters using our toy creator utility and get them 3D-printed and delivered through our interface. Character progression is saved into the toys, so they can be used in other Toyji pads, like when visiting a friend for a play date.
Companion App: With our companion app, parents can arrange screen time preference and schedule activities like meals, sleeping and toothbrushing.
Portability: Toyji is portable and easy-to-carry as a toy box. You can bring your toys and everything in one place to anywhere you like.
Night-Lamp-Like Display: Our charging system is easy to use with docking stations for toys. You can also display your toys in your room with a beautifully illuminated toy charging station and even use it as a night light.
Toyji Universe is a story-driven "virtual pet toy simulator" game, in which you control your characters called Jixies with smart toys to progress in the game by taking care of them, unlocking achievements and leveling up.
Interactivity: Toyji's characters are interactive. Using IBM Watson technology, the smart toys can answer questions with artificial intelligence, recognizing speech.
Farmhouse: Farmhouse is the main game that comes in the starter pack. It is a virtual pet simulation game where you take care of Jixies, modify them, level them up and play mini educational games. Farmhouse has 5 main locations: 1) Bedroom, where you can change your characters' looks, rest and learn about health; 2) Game Room, where you can play games that develop motor skills; 3) Bathroom, where you take care of Jixies and learn about hygiene; 4) Kitchen, where you can eat and learn about benefits of different foods and cooking; 5) Garden, where you can play learning games about farming, crops, planting and animals.
Toyji has an out-of-the-box coding game called Magic School. It comes with the Coding Pack and aims to teach algorithmic and computational thinking using Toyji's toy bases. All 8 toy bases have their own shapes, numbers, changeable LED colors and an arrow that shows directions. These help convey the basics of coding to children in a fun and visual way.
Within the Magic School game, there are story-driven adventure mini games that include coding tasks and users can combine functions, numbers and directions in real-time to complete tasks.
We've been working on this project for 2 years, completing 4 prototypes, 20 games, pilot projects with schools involving 80 students (ages 3-6) and usability testing with families. Toyji's content was synchronized with the host school's curriculum and was used in STEM labs. We created special games that involved learning about numbers, planets and body parts, and they became a permanent part of the school's lesson plans.
We worked with experts, pedagogues, teachers and parents to improve the educational quality of our content and user experience.
We attended BETT London Educational Technologies Fair in January 2016 and Game Developers Conference San Francisco in March 2016. We also met with board game enthusiasts and collected a lot of feedback to improve our hardware and games.
We went through 4 prototype cycles as we worked hard to perfect user experience, continually strengthening the relationship between design and concept. All the feedback we received culminated in the newest version of Toyji and its personalization emphasis.
The specifications of Toyji's smart toy pad:
The specifications of Toyji's smart toys:
Toyji works with iOS and Android tablets that supports Bluetooth 4.0 (Low Energy) or higher.
We started this project, because we really believe in it. This is especially true for Cem, who wanted his toddler daughter to be able to play with tablets for fun and for learning, without losing touch with the real world. Our founders have 19 years of experience in game design, IT, embedded systems and startups combined, and our experienced team members come from various backgrounds.
If you like Toyji and want to help us, please share it on Twitter and Facebook by clicking the below links. Thank you!
Risks and challenges
We're manufacturing a product for children and that always has its challenges. Throughout the past two years, we've always paid utmost attention to safety and health standards in every aspect of our designs, as we went through four prototypes.
We already have signed agreements with key suppliers, and our hardware components and manufacturing process are mature enough to the extent that we feel confident about delivering our product on time.
That being said, we are also keeping in mind that there could be possible factors that could delay our delivery date and we want to share these honestly with you:
- FCC and Regulations: Going through certification and license processes take time. There are many regulations to abide by and there could be delays as our paperwork is processed.
- Usability tests: We're constantly conducting usability tests with different families and if we encounter a problem that needs to be fixed that might take time.
Questions about this project? Check out the FAQ
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Funding period
- (45 days)