Building for fun

Building a gadget or a toy can feel a bit like coming up with a joke. They both usually set the stage with something familiar—a common experience or a recognizeable form factor, before pulling the rug into unexpected territory. The good ones express a novel idea or twist in perspective, even a small one, and deliver a surprising moment of joy.

Now, when I say "joke", I'm using the word pretty loosely. I consider the kind of flap book that lets you assemble a pocupine-iguana with duck legs a "joke":

When I was in college I built a MIDI music controller into a toaster for a final project, and it's STILL the main thing many people remember about me from back then. It wasn't groundbreaking or complex, but it was functional and whimsical, didn't take itself seriously, and had some fun visual gags. The levers that usually pull down the bread were replaced with audio faders, and the knobs that control toastiness were replaced with volume pots, all mapped to various musical parameters in a very "weird and out there" FM synthesis program I wrote.

I also added a hidden switch inside that transitioned the music into a climactic, cacophonous loop. In the middle of the performance I jammed a metal fork into the toaster to flip it, to audible gasps of horror from the audience.

It's no wonder that's what people remember, it was one of the most memorable things I've done. Everyone had their own idea about why it was funny or interesting, or what it was supposed to mean, and I let them (read: I don't know either).

Looking back, I think it planted a seed (that has taken a very long time to germinate) that making gadgets that are fun and silly or absurd can deliver outsized experiences. I feel a little buzz of excitement when I start to uncover another one of these ideas, and that's what I'm chasing with the toys and gadgets here.

I built Shortwave with a single, simple, interaction in mind: I wanted my 3 year old to be able to send me voice messages by pressing a shiny red arcade button. It evolved into something much larger, which I'll get to in a future post, but the first prototype was FUN.

I started receiving messages like this:

Getting a transcribed voice message from my daughter about mac and cheese was a totally new, goofy-as-hell experience, wrapped in the familiar form factor of the million messaging apps we use daily. It was exciting, and I thought, "maybe there's a pattern I can follow here".

So I decided to build a series of 'toys', or 'gadgets', or whatever these things are, in order to find the most fun, satisfying, and memorable interactions given the following constraints:

• One single user input control that a 3-year-old can figure out
• No screens

I didn't explicitly set out to build toys that connect people, but that's what happened. Turns out it's really hard to think of something fun to do all by yourself with only a single toggle switch. Jokes are funnier with others.

More on that topic later.

Glad you're here,

-Dan