Thinker-Tinker

According to research, 85% of kids 8 years and under in the US are using mobile devices on a daily basis, and the numbers are growing. Screen time is causing a lot of tension among families, but it’s not the screen it’s the sedentary interaction causing the developmental issues.  At Thinker-Tinker, we developed a technology platform that gives physical items the ability to interact with digital games and seamlessly bring the physical and digital world together. Our first product Octobo is stuffed with our unique soft sensors that connect to players’ mobile devices and allows them to experience Octobo’s different reactions, interact with accessories, and learn through innovative storytelling. As an app-enabled expandable and upgradeable system using mobile devices, Thinker-Tinker products can easily scale globally and translate into multiple languages providing a meaningful way to interact with technology in an active way as children grow and develop.

Technology is constantly growing and replacing active playtime. Though digital literacy is important, the growing presence of technology in children’s lives have led to a decrease in cognitive and social development. Diagnoses of ADHD, coordination disorder, developmental delays, learning difficulties, and sensory processing disorder are associated with technology overuse, and are increasing at an alarming rate. In the US,over 40% of kids under 8 having their own tablet – up from just 1% in 2011 – it is vital to manage screen time to enable adults to support their children’s overall positive development and promote early skills.  By incorporating our mobile device into our interactive plush, Octobo, we change the traditional idea of what we often call ’screen time.’ Spending time with Octobo is like playing with a physical friend who just happens to have a tablet inside, making playtime more than just staring at a screen for hours playing meaningless games.

Thinker-Tinker products are designed for children 0-10 years old and support their parents and caregivers as an interactive way to facilitate a wide range of activities that can support children’s development. 

Our interactive character provides genuine emotional feedback and comes with different storykits and interactive physical accessories to help teach fundamental skills. Our new way of play promotes executive functioning, self-regulation, early literacy, joint attention, and social-emotional learning through various types of activities such as shape identification, counting activities, and spelling challenges.  Throughout the development, we have performed multiple user studies (observation study, diary, in-depth interview) to observe kids’ behavior to iterate on the type of experience we provide. We also have an education specialist on our team to review and design the activities to make sure we create meaningful activities that can support children’s development.

We are creating a product with our proprietary software-hardware system to change how children interact with screens to promote active, educational playtime. Our first product Octobo is a smart, cuddly plush stuffed with our unique soft sensors (that can sense different triggers from players) and connects to players mobile devices to play with our games. Simply download our app on your tablet, insert the tablet and start your adventures! By embedding the phone or tablet directly into the toy, the controller, sensors, and toy are one and the same allowing players to interact with Octobo as they go through the physical storybooks. Interactive accessories allow players to experience Octobo’s different reactions and solve puzzle games. Additional storybooks come with different learning themes to lead the gameplay including mini-games that encourage physical activity, promote fine motor skills, and teach memory skills, spelling, and counting. With this new type of controller, the game provides players immediate emotional feedback that teaches empathy and emotional intelligence. This structure enables the plush to become a gaming platform, and the traditional mobile games become part of the physical experience that you can touch and hug. Octobo integrates physical books, digital apps, play, cognitive puzzles, character relationships and family time into one activity. Parents can additionally unlock new features and personally meaningful content with our expanding app library as their children grow or their interests change.

Octobo and our play platform breaks barriers by challenging the idea of traditional gaming. Our work breaks the definition of a “game controller” and provides more ways to play. As a new, innovative interface, we provide more ways to interact and more ways to immerse yourself in a game, a story, and learning adventures. The game itself can be your play companion, with the controller being a lovable and huggable multidimensional experience. We have created a new genre of game that gives warmth, feeling, and emotion into an educational and meaningful play tool.

The power of our platform lies in that we create learning experiences that take full advantage of both the physical (interactive plush, storybooks and gadgets) and digital elements (apps) of the gameplay in a way that seems natural yet clearly superior to previous education. Our versatile technology can be implemented into any character or form, allowing our products to be made and suitable for kids of all ages, encouraging multiple angles of early childhood development.

The technology was developed from the beginning to be a platform that can be generalized to an entire family of smart toys. Our software is built on the Unity platform that is compatible with iOS and Android. Communication between the phone/tablet and plush toy is conducted through standard Bluetooth. Hardware is a variation of  commonplace sensors, such as tactile and RFID to fit our needs for the platform and plush form factor.

This platform consists of (1) mobile app installed on a phone or tablet, (2) plush toy frame to hold the device, and (3) sensors embedded within the plush toy to give the plush not only facial features but whole-body interactivity.

This platform enables learning and development, but more importantly parents are increasingly looking for education tools that are more than just digital screens. This platform takes all the complexity (digital/physical elements and game content/game controller components) and produces a simple and intuitive experience for the child.

The problem with screen time isn’t the time itself, but how children are utilizing that time and interacting with devices. At Thinker-Tinker, we have created a solution that addresses the problem of sedentary screen time by integrating multiple mediums into a new way of play. We have created a product that transforms unstimulated time in front of a device, into active, meaningful learning time. Because we have created a seamless blend between exploratory play and storybook adventures, the style of play can change from minute to minute, and every child can find their unique way to make meaningful play experiences that go beyond the device. As children interact with Octobo, they build a relationship with a character rather than just a tablet. They interact with a personality rather than a static object, which promotes exploration of emotions and early literacy skills. Together, these skills provide a foundation for all human behavior and learning experiences.

“It’s educational, an app but not a tablet or phone (which we don’t allow), but a huggable stuffed animal!” –Allsun, mother of a 2-year old

“The customization and expansion features of Octobo make it unique and accessible for children of varying developmental stages.” –Jessica Livornese, Ed.M., Harvard Graduate School of Education

Our crowdfunding pilot run garnered 600 orders. In the next year, we are planning to reach over 20,000 families with two product lines. In the next five years, we are planning to expand globally. We are primarily targeting families in North America. 30 million households in the United States have children under the age of 10, about 80% of households reported to have a compatible device, and we believe we can penetrate 75% of those households, which give us 22 million as our initial target audience.

In our first stage, our goal is to expand our B2C market. As we launch through e-commerce platforms, we want to reach more households across North America. Our goal is to build a product that can support multiple developmental stages by releasing new content (new stories, expansion kits, digital games); and produce new materials in a timely and efficient manner.

In our second stage, we plan to create smarter, personalized products with the addition of AI technology. With our multiple inputs and triggers, the addition of AI will allow more personalized play that promotes development skills tailored to each child.

Our third stage includes our goal to establish our B2B market. Our goal is to release our SDK for research and educational centers in order for them to utilize our proprietary platform and technology.

Manufacturing: Developing a flexible system that allows us to implement materials in new ways. We need to make sure our technology’s goal of being update-able and transformative can be accomplished in its physical connections.

Software development: The advantage of our technology is the ease of integration of the physical and digital elements and their ability to change. We need to find a way to efficiently produce new content that will allow users to expand their play, but in a way that requires no substantial changes on their part.

Production and inventory: Our products are at the intersection of physical and digital, so aside from the digital development, we will have to secure enough capital to scale on the physical side. We can grow slowly by selling our product and reinvest the revenue to scale up, but additional funding will allow us to achieve our goals a lot faster.

Manufacturing: We have de-risked the manufacturing production line and construction of the software/hardware platform, so to bring the interactive experience to another character we only need to decide the number of sensors and then can re-layout the sensors quickly using our existing solution.

Software development: On the software side, we’re developing a software platform and creative strategy that enables content expansions without the need for a new app release each time. This saves time and centralizes our users into one app for easier reach to our entire audience (new and old). Eventually, this gives us the option to experiment with different monetization solutions, including subscription (a proven solution in the kids’ app market).

Production and inventory: We will start raising another round later this year, to scale up production and put in more marketing budget for user acquisition.

• 3 full-time
• 2 part-time
• 3 contractors

Yuting Su, Founder and CEO, has a dual Masters in Medical Informatics and Game Design from USC’s Cinema school. She had created multiple award-winning products in the hybrid game space before she started the company. As a Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Games, she is an experienced product designer, producer and UX researcher and well suited to lead and drive the creative force for Thinker-Tinker.

Ray Chen, co-founder, is a Stanford grad that has experience in both hardware and software engineering. He is also a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded an online subscription business that achieved $70 million in revenue. Ray has great experience in not just development but also business, operation, and marketing that can bring Thinker-Tinker to scale.

We also have a team of education specialists and creative professionals from Harvard and Disney to develop quality content for our target audience.

We have an LOI with Dreamworks and are currently in the product development phase of our next product line where we are integrating our proprietary technology in their characters; expected to launch next year.

We are actively seeking organization partners to expand the product offerings. Once the product deploys, we are planning to work with childcare centers, research organizations and health clinics to scale up the business.

Our primary revenue will come from physical product sales. As an app-based platform, we are able to make money from digital add-ons, in-app purchases, and premium sales of our subscription content. On the physical side, we are able to make money by selling expansion kits that include interactive accessories such as additional RFID tokens and kits to extend the physical play of each companion toy, as well as collectible physical items.

We will bring in money by selling our products or services, as well as raising investment capital. Our revenue can be self sustainable after the initial push of manufacturing and product R&D, so the capital we are seeking now is going to help us overcome the initial hurdles.

We are applying to Solve because we believe that we have created an innovative technology that is positively impacting the behavior of kids with technology. Solve can provide Thinker-Tinker with greater resources and connections that can help us grow and expand our business worldwide.

With our diverse team of creators, we have brought new voices to create our play platform. As a woman-founded, parents-founded company, we have a unique perspective and continue to break barriers by developing interactive game play for early ages and young girls; groups that frequently are ignored in traditional gaming and tech development. We have integrated play technology in “controllers” that transition digital play into the physical world. Solve will allow us to expand our reach.

We would like to partner with a variety of organizations. With our first product line, Octobo, we would like to focus on organizations in the early childhood development field such as HeadStart, Children’s Hospital LA, Harvard Center on the Developing Child, and homeschooling groups.

We believe HeadStart and homeschooling groups will be great distribution partners, in addition to Children’s Hospital LA for B2B distribution and new product line designs. As we are iterating and improving, the Harvard Center on the Developing Child will be a great partner for research and evaluation.

Our play platform utilizes the power of characters to encourage learning with a companion that kids can trust and relate to. One of the very unique offerings our product has is the genuine emotional feedback. The contents are presented in a way of a lively character instead of mundane screen instructions. 

AI will be our next big focus to make our learning companions even smarter. Utilizing the multiple inputs and triggers from the smart plush, the characters we built will be able to respond in a more personalized way to promote early childhood development skills such as early literacy and joint attention. Joint attention is fostered by serve and return interactions. A child “serves” by showing an interest in something, and another party then “returns” that serve by responding in a supportive way. Serve and return interactions shape the architecture of the brain and are the most important influences on early brain development. Kids will be able to have real conversations with the plush, and AI can help the learning be personalized to every family's need based on their use pattern and performance in our games. The experience can also be further upgraded making the plush a toy/companion that “grows up” with the kid.