Toy-inspired human machine interface design

Designers can get inspiration from classic toys for developing new products with nontrivial human machine interfaces. The toys have been accepted by people for a long time to be usable, comfortable, and entertaining, which are the expected characteristics of human machine interfaces. Proposed to reduce risk and time of new designs, the toy-inspired method is illustrated by the making of two media devices, a cubic display and a robotic puppet. They inherit both engineering and artistic components from Rubik's Cube and traditional puppets respectively.