Sniff is first and foremost a high-quality physical toy dog, that can withstand the rough and tumble of everyday play and activities. But Sniff’s interactive elements add an extra dimension of experience and engagement. Through the use of Radio Frequency IDentification technology Sniff can identify objects that he comes close to, which trigger behaviours that are expressed through sound and vibration. In the Sniff video above you can see three of Sniff’s ‘activities’ in action, in real settings.

Sniff is designed as a companion in daily situations as well as in play and games, alone or together with other children, and including one or more Sniffs. Special attention has been devoted to the design of interaction between sound and vibration. Auditory feedback is important for the sociality of the toy, and makes it possible for a larger number of people to participate in play. Haptic feedback deepens the experience, support hands-on operation and creates a special bond between user and toy.

Sniff is a robust and fully working prototype that has been through several iterations it its physical design, interaction design and technology. This has happened as part of a long evaluation process where it has been tested with many kids and adults.

Book, website and paper

The Sniff website goes further into some of the design and conceptual issues, as well as background material and references.

Sara Johansson presented some of the background and research behind Sniff at The Interaction design and children conference in June 2009. Here is the paper that goes deeper into the design issues particularly issues of abstraction in character and interaction design.

Finally there is also a lovely book available to buy. The book is presented as a ‘day in the life of Sniff’ and details many of the interactive, playful concepts that have been designed.

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Silje writes:

“Pling Plong is a media player for stories and sounds, placed inside a pillow. It is designed for the home environment and is meant to stimulate children’s imagination and interest for books. Its low-tech appearance in form, material and its simple functions makes the pillow seem magical. The fact that you can lay your head on it makes the toy very calming and it is meant for relaxing play alone.”

Pling Plong is a simple but carefully crafted product, where everything from the textures of the fabric, to the graspability of the audiobook tokens to the sound design and audio levels have been explored and refined.

A video shows Silje’s experiments with characterful faces for the pillow, showing some of the exploration of different metaphors for RFID that are important aspects of making contactless interaction understandable and playful.

Pling Plong has been receiving a lot of attention online recently, being picked up by Trendhunter, Coolgadgetconcept, Yankodesign, Crecebebe, Talk2myshirt, Techviva, Ubergizmo, Weirdgizmos and more.

Some comments:

“The “low-tech appearance” should be given some stormy applause, because toys nowadays have nothing to do with the idea of play and having a good time.”

“We had our share on interactive pillow coverage like illuminated pillows or sound pillows but the Pling Plong pillow created by Silje Softing sticks out by it’s playful use of ’soft’ low tech to give an twist to the story telling for small children.”

“I hope that this will soon make its way to market and finally to our homes. I don’t have any kids but I’ll surely love a pillow that can sing to me!”

“Hurry up Silje Softing and find someone to manufacture this already! It could be the next big thing this holiday season.”

Silje’s weblog documents some of the making process, there are more photos of Pling Plong and a gallery making pictures here.

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Previously Sniff won AHO’s prize for Design for all, and has been included as one of Dagbladet’s trends for 2008.

Here is the feedback from the jury, in Norwegian:

“Sniff er et veldig morsomt spill som inkluderer alle. Det er lett å forstå, og stiller krav til barna uten å kreve forkunnskaper eller stigmatisere. Bruk av RFID-teknologi, som sender ut et signal og skaper kommunikasjon mellom kosedyret og figurene, gjør spillet til en innovasjon på sitt område.

“Tilgang til forskjellige brikker med ulike lyder og funksjoner, gir spillet imponerende mange variasjonsmuligheter. Det fins også RFID-klistremerker, som man kan gjemme rundt i huset og lage enda en ny lek med. Sniff er rett og slett en kjempegod idé, som på en nyskapende måte tar i bruk ny og spennende teknologi.”

“Utformingen er tydelig rettet mot barn, men spillet kan utmerket godt brukes av alle mennesker i alle aldersgrupper. Det egner seg svært godt som en døråpner mellom mennesker når språkbarrierer eller fysiske begrensninger hindrer dem i å kommunisere.”

If you want to try out Sniff for yourself, the exhibition will be open from 27 March until 27 April at DogA in Oslo. The Bowl project will also be exhibited.

If you like Sniff you will be happy to hear that Sara Johansson and the Touch project are developing Sniff 2.0 that includes a revised physical design, new feedback and interactional possibilities.

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One of the key aspects of the project for me is the translation of the unique identity of RFID into a unique physical form. Each object in the project has a visual appearance and shape that is generated uniquely for each user. This reflects the unique identity contained in the RFID chip. This is an interesting approach to the visual and physical affordances of RFID technology.

The object above (photo by Lisa Smith) is a rapid prototyped object that has a unique shape:

They’re designed to be artifacts for schoolkids (K-12) that slowly gather informational histories as the kids interact with each other and grow. It’s part of a larger project about turning a school and its artifacts into its own yearbook while also encouraging the development of criticality through annotation.

The unique form emerged from what looks like a parametric model that generates unique shapes:

The cuteness generator is a visual language for RFID. The project uses identity, legibility, and desirability in order to help us sort through the large amounts of information that can be represented by RFID and spatial annotation.

The forms are generated with a small piece of front end software, with partial control from the user (for example, there is a cuteness<->grossness slider, and they can specify the number of eyes, but the form is also linked to their age and other friends/family in the system, etc). It pulls from sticker/graffiti culture, urban toy culture, and also heraldry (allows for the visual expression of human relationships and room for a visual subculture to emerge in the system).

This project shows one way in which fundamentals of RFID technology such as uniqueness, identifiability, recognition and personalisation can be explored through visual and physical affordances.

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