Designing my own Tinkering Building Block

The purpose of these sketches is to play with already simple ideas, but then give a new flavor or twist on them.

Sticks Combiners
As hot glue guns are used a lot in crafting, and are quite... permanent... I was looking for a reusable option or an option that is at least less permanent. Hence, the sticks combiners. With designing for a sustainable toy, I thought: we should do the sticks from the forest!
The only drawback is that each stick is not... a mathematical (long) cylinder and that not all sticks have the same thicknessess... An interesting designchallenge, bit sadly I lost momentum for this idea.

Wooden Disk Combiners
Thinking further on reusing sticks, I was looking into thinker logs, logs that a person could cut/saw in smaller disks (with defined width) and then this 'thinkering product' would combine these wooden diks together. Sadly, it isn't safe for a child, or any unresponsible person of any age, to chop wooden disks in the woods. Ofcourse, it is possible and can be done in a supervised way, but that is not the learning goals I would like to go for. The aim is to have a ready-to-use item, that doesn't contain missing pieces in this way. A way that could be dangerous to retrieve for some...

Moving on...!

The purpose of these sketches is to play with already simple ideas, but then give a new flavor or twist on them.

Rope Puzzle
For this idea, the shape consists of holes. These holes will be the foundation of connecting the other pieces together. The rope will go through the holes, which can become different combinations. These combinations create for multi variability. However, as I put in my material table, this product would not be very expressive or have an educational value. Hence, this idea is discontinued.

Modular City
As the previous idea became too complicated as a 3D object, I began to combine 2D images into a 3D space. Based on the concept of building blocks that are lasercut, I began to look more into stackign shoving pieces together in a repetitive manner. With multiple shapes and houses, this could create a bigger storytelling scene, such as cities or landscapes.
Looking at my material table, open endeddness and free play does exist in this shape, but the pieces wouldn't apply to other world settings outside of this context. The pieces have too much of an own context, which indeed looks friendlier, but does not still have the shine I was looking for. I was looking for more pieces that could still be used outside of its functionality in its own context. And no, not a pieces that would look only good as decoration outside its own context.,. Which meant I eventually shifted to even more fundamental pieces. These pieces were more abstract and indeed more of a building block.

This logic toy was inspired by programming and how variables work in a code. This indeed used more fundamental pieces in which their logic can be used more outside of their own context. These parts are variable meaning that one can redefine what the value is of this variable. In this case the variable will be the direction or moving behavior of the catapillar: the catapillar will then be defined by its pieces, as preset sequences.

But then, reality kicked in. With a real version of this idea already: Fisher-Price's Think & Learn Code-a-pillar. So yeah... Going back to the drawing table again.

The programming logic captivated me, but with what metaphor to choose?

Then with hardware in mind, a new concept emerged. Microcontrollers and the concept of electricpulses is all defined by switches, logic gates. Very logic components (pun-intended) are the building blocks (pun-intended). Therefore, the building logic gates building blocks. Below the square and the rectangle version of the first shape design.

Working on a 3D model for these shapes, was a fast way of prototyping. The pieces were flat, to keep a top-overview of the pieces, such that the user could see all the information on the front (or actually top) side of the building block.

As I slowly started to see the 3D printer more as a tool, (than a challenge in terms of the tinkering space), I managed to print the pieces in 3D with as less technical hurdles as possible. The prints all fit on this 3D printer plate.

The two first editions of the pieces were as the 3D model intended (luckily). The squares were a bit questionable to me, but I foundout that the tolerances for these pieces were quite low: if the 'female' trianges turned out to be smaller than the 'male' triangles, the piece would still fit in it. (The puzzle pieces were another story in terms of that).

Putting the pieces into a context, some information to the users was missing. Even with adding the text for the ports, what would be a goal the users would work towards to? What are the posibilities? aka, what is the context for the users to exceed?

Adding instruction exercises, examples and the connecting logic table to it! These cards create a context for users (seed) that they eventually can transfer to their toolbox. The cards will act as the boundaries in which the creativity can emerge and what they eventually can exceed. of this p=building block, for the users to exceed.

The extra information cards provide extra insights in what the logic table for a specific circuit is and some real-world application, to spark the user in their imagination. What is this fliplflop used for and how does it work?