Collaboration Toy
Spatial Dynamics
Fall 2019
RISD

A community engagement game designed to ensure active participation in critiques and discussions. To address the common issue of some students dominating the conversation while others remain silent, I created a toy inspired by the balance and motion of seesaws. From experience, there will always be a group of students that dominate the critique and another group of students will just be silent, engage by using eye contact. I design a toy that was inspired by the gravitational elements of balances and seesaws. The toy works by having eight people and each person will be assigned a wooden board. As a person speaks, he or she will pull the board by one metric, about 1.6cm, and there are three stages in total. The game is to make the toy still balance after the critique. This toy allows everyone inside the discussion to have equal chances to talk and engage, preventing anyone from speaking too much or too little. This will bring people together to discuss work more interestingly, as everyone is promoted to speak, allowing more ideas from a variety of people.