TOY R US

Research question

What makes a toy worth playing with?

Four forms of playability

Play, build, operate, collect. Every result is also a new start.

TOY R US breaks the idea of playability into four forms: play, build, operate and collect. The four run as one loop. Each stage takes what the last one leaves behind and hands something on: a loose idea is made, then made again differently, the result is set to work, and what it produces is collected and opened again as a new start.

Playwith imagination

What it isMaking what you imagine visible.
Takes inGesture, touch, mouse or a reference image.
Works throughToy Imagination Printer: one p5.js canvas, two Arduinos, a thermal printer.
Hands onA drawing printed as a receipt: a loose idea you can hold.

Buildwith modules and rules

What it isMaking something, then making it again differently.
Takes inA loose starting point: random, a letter, typed text or a Library import.
Works through01 · Construction System: four mediums. 02 · Toy Grammar: limits, pins, Playground.
Hands onOne form in four mediums, then 26 letters, words, posters and motion.

Operatewith systems

What it isA defined system, activated.
Takes inForms that already obey a rule set.
Works throughServo arm: six servos, each with an ID, an axis and a range. Poses written as commands.
Hands onVariations, never quite the same twice.

Collectwith variations

What it isCollecting as organising meaning.
Takes inEvery output and every variation.
Works throughThe Library and the book.
Hands onAn archive that reveals patterns, and a new start for Play.

The Toy Imagination Printer projected in the classroom, showing a pixel cat drawing

Play with imagination

Play becomes the entry point into this system. It is through play that rules are first encountered, tested, and understood. Play is not the opposite of structure, but a way of engaging with it. Within play, constraints are not limitations but possibilities.

InputA gesture, a touch, a mouse or a picture.
CanvasOne canvas, drawn in the brush you picked.
PrintComes out of the printer like a receipt.
OutcomeA loose ideaSomething to hold. Nothing is designed yet.

Play · Toy Imagination Printer

Play starts with a pinch.

HAND DRAW turns the laptop's built-in webcam into a pen. MediaPipe Hands runs in the browser and tracks one hand in selfie mode; the tool reads only two of its 21 landmarks, the thumb tip and the index tip. Pinch them together and the index tip draws on the 400 × 400 canvas with the current brush. Open them and the stroke ends, ready to undo. The camera picture itself is never shown, only a cursor.

Hand landmarks and pen state: open lifts the pen, pinch puts it down

What the user sees on the canvas: no hand, hand seen, pinch held, pause

Hardware

Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and R3 with an ELEGOO 2.8" TFT touch shield, a 58mm thermal printer (203 DPI · 384 dots) and a 7.4V Li-ion battery. Every input lands on one p5.js canvas and leaves as a receipt.

Circuit diagram: laptop, touch shield, Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and thermal printer

Flowchart from user input to printed receipt

A toy reference turned into line art on the drawing canvas, and the same drawing in the Mechanical print preview

Build with modules and rules

02.1 / Construction System

Build is making something, then making it again differently.

Construction, in this context, goes beyond simply assembling parts and instead focuses on organizing relationships. Each element is defined not only by its shape, but by how it connects to others. Through repetition and recombination, complexity emerges from simplicity.

From Play A loose starting point. In the Construction System it arrives as random, a letter, typed text or an import from the Library.

In this stage Construction System, an interactive web prototype in 2D / 3D. One input runs through four mediums; a brick only rests where a hole meets a stud.

To Build 02 One form in four mediums. Build 02 turns the same mediums into an alphabet using graphic design ideology.

Four mediums · one logic

A pinch makes a mark. A mark needs a medium.

The work is the logic, not the object. Lego, Tangram, Pentomino and Magna-Tiles are the four mediums both builds run on: the brick prototype lets you play with them, and Toy Grammar (Build 02) writes letters in them. Lego is the one you can hold, so it is held closer.

Support

Snapped

Dragged

Drag

Pick up a brick and move it over the stack.

Snap

It locks only where its holes fit over studs.

Stack

It sits one layer above the brick holding it.

Hide

Studs it covers are no longer drawn.

If it overlaps another brick, it goes back to where it started.

A pinch makes a mark.

A mark needs a medium.

01 Lego

Playable. Opened.

The other mediums

Tangram

Pentomino

Magna-Tiles

DragPick up a brick and move it over the stack.
SnapIt locks only where its holes fit over studs.
StackIt sits one layer above the brick holding it.
HideStuds it covers are no longer drawn. If it overlaps another brick, it goes back to where it started.

From object to system

The rules, not the object, make the forms.

This step treats toys as playful rather than finished objects. Instead of designing a form directly, it designs the rules, constraints and relationships that forms grow out of. The web prototype makes that loop playable: one input passes through the four mediums, gets reshaped by play, and is kept in an archive that can start the next round.

Input, system, operation, archive: one letter through the four mediums

02.2 / Toy Grammar

The same logic, made again differently: as letters.

Each system operates through its own logic: rules, constraints, and relationships that determine how elements can be combined. Instead of designing form directly, the project focuses on designing the conditions under which form can emerge.

From Build 01 The four mediums and their logic, now applied to type. Every letter starts as the same 5 × 4 block skeleton.

In this stage Toy Grammar. Limit columns and rows, pin what makes a letter itself, override by hand, then redraw it in the Playground.

To Operate A defined system: 26 letters, words, posters and motion. Operate sets it to work.

One rule set, twenty-six letters.

Build 02 is a type tool. Every letter starts as the same 5 × 4 block skeleton. You don't draw letters here; you set rules, and the tool carves all 26 at once, in any of the four mediums. What gets designed is the rule set.

Define rulesPick one of the four mediums, then limit where blocks may sit: letter area, max per column, max per row, symmetry.
Override lettersPaint over any letter the rules produced. The tool shows how far you moved from the rule.
PlaygroundSet words, or redraw each block as a point, line or plane for posters and motion.

G lifted out of the type case: column and row limits, give way, pin

Override · limits · Playground

Every rule set has an edge.

The rules make the alphabet, but they are not the last word. You can paint over any letter, and the tool measures how far you moved. Push the rules too far and letters start to merge; the tool flags it. Inside those edges, the Playground redraws every block.

Override: the rule cuts G open, you paint the bowl closed again

Rule limit: at max 2 per column and row, letters land on one shape

Under the hood

The edges are computed.

Toy Grammar uses no libraries: Canvas 2D draws every medium and MediaRecorder exports the motion posters. None of the 26 letters is drawn by hand. Each one comes out of the same short pipeline, so changing one rule changes the whole alphabet at once.

Playground

Same output, four ways to draw a block. The rule decides where; the Playground decides how.

Brick

As built

Point

Size 70

Line

Horizontal · weight 18

Plane

Gap 2

Operate with system

Operation introduces another layer. Once a system is defined, it can be activated. Actions such as rotation, repetition, mirroring, and sequencing transform existing forms into new ones. These operations are not arbitrary. They are structured, repeatable, and limited by the system itself.

From Build Forms that already obey a rule set: bricks, letters, words.

In this stage Joints become servos, each with an ID, an axis and a range. A pose is a command, repeated by rule.

To Collect Variations, never quite the same twice. Collect gathers them.

Joint → servo

At work, the system makes variations.

Build defines systems from parts and rules: the Construction System and Toy Grammar. Operate is a different dimension: from defining a system to running one. The robot arm is a system of its own: six servos, each with an ID, one axis and a fixed range. A figure is posed freely by hand; every pose of the arm is structured, repeatable and limited by that system.

Each point of articulation on a highly articulated action figure is a joint posed by hand. A servo turns the same joint into one that can be driven: one servo, one rotational degree of freedom. Read as a system, the robot arm is an action figure whose joints have been given rules: an ID, an axis and a range.

	Action figure	Servo arm
Joint	Passive	Actuated
Held by	Friction / ratchet	Motor torque
DOF per joint	Up to 3 (ball joint)	1 (one servo)
Changed by	Hand	Signal, repeatable

Six servos mapped to the joints of an action figure: base yaw, shoulder, elbow, wrist pitch, wrist roll, gripper

From the arm's manual

The system has two ways in. A small teaching arm is moved by hand and the servos copy it, the nearest thing to posing a figure. A gamepad addresses each servo by its ID, two buttons per servo. Left alone, it runs on rules: blocks sorted and stacked by colour. In every case, the pose stays inside the system's limits.

One written pose: #000P0880T1500! — servo ID, pulse, time

Gamepad, two buttons per servo, and stacking by rule

Servo arm details: gripper, wrist, elbow, shoulder

Presenting TOY R US to an audience: the printer on the projector, the robot arm on the table and on screen

Collect with variations

What accumulates becomes the next start.

As forms are generated, they accumulate. Each output is part of a larger collection. Over time, this collection begins to reveal patterns. Similarities and differences become visible. The archive is not simply a storage of results, but a structure in itself.

In this stage The Library, where every shared layout waits to be imported again, and the book that documents the system.

Back to Play An archive that is also a starting point. Every result is also a new start.

Toy reference: fifteen printed pixel toy drawings collected on one sheet

Collect · The book