Berzowska says newborns to three-year-olds can use Baby Tangos. Like many toys on the market, they offer a different kind of interaction depending on the age of the child.
“The toy grows with them,” Berzowska says.
There were also several reasons why she preferred working with a soft shell rather than a hard one. Describing herself as “a bit of a tech nerd,” Berzowska gets excited when she replaces a toy’s whole circuit board with just a textile.
“There is a lost opportunity when it comes to plastic toys. Kids just push buttons and the toys make sounds. They teach a simplistic interaction,” she explains. “Because we don’t have buttons but rather a whole continuously embroidered sensor, it becomes much more abstract, much more ambiguous and much more open to children creating their own narratives and explorations.”
Berzowska also thinks soft dolls create a much more pleasant sensory experience than their plastic counterparts.
“It encourages this kind of full-body contact and the development of feelings of empathy and physical connections with another thing.”
To flesh out the Baby Tangos, each of the five models will be given names and backstories. The first two prototypes are named Mello and Lue.
The dolls are not ready for a mass release just yet — Berzowska and her team want to conduct further research to validate their claims about the toys’ developmental benefits.
Learn more about the Department of Design and Computation Arts.