A riff on creativity, design, and toysA riff on creativity, design, and toys
All In The Mind
Design and creativity really can work together. We talk with a design critic and a product design educator who both have an interest in toys - their history, and how they’re created and assessed in the real world. Get your blocks ready to play along.
29:07•5 Apr 2020
Blocks, Bunnies and Dinosaurs: How Toy Design Shapes Growing Minds
Episode Overview
- Toys are designed with multiple aims in mind, including solving problems, being educational, appealing to the market, and remaining fun.
- Froebel’s blocks and Reggio Emilia classrooms show how carefully prepared environments can teach children before they can read.
- Different construction toys, from wooden unit blocks to Zoob, support different kinds of imagination, such as building structures versus creatures.
- Effective toy design relies on playtesting with children and iterating prototypes rather than jumping straight to polished digital models.
- Screen-based games can help children learn, but limiting time and encouraging physical play supports social and hands-on skills.
“We learn from people, we learn from things, but we also learn from the environment that we’re in.”
Ever wondered what it takes to turn a simple block or plastic dinosaur into a powerful learning tool? This episode of All In The Mind plays with that idea by looking at how toy design, childhood development and creativity all meet in everyday objects kids love. Design critic Alexandra Lange shares how becoming a parent switched on her "design critic's mind" at home, as baby gear and toys flooded in.
She wanted to know, as she puts it, "why these things" – from animal-covered clothes to different sets of blocks – end up shaping children’s lives. Her fascination leads into the story of Friedrich Froebel’s famous kindergarten blocks and the Reggio Emilia idea that "the environment is the third teacher", showing how spaces and toys quietly teach kids long before they can read.
On the practical side, toy designer and product design educator Barry Kudrowitz talks about teaching toy design and assessing creativity. For him, creativity isn’t just weird ideas; a toy has to "meet a need or have a market or be functional" to truly count. He explains why playtesting matters so much: "You’re not going to get real data on kids if you just show them a picture.
It’s not until you put something in their hands and you see how they actually play with it." The conversation ranges from wooden blocks versus snap-together toys, to screen-based play, gendered marketing, and whether kids are losing hands-on fixing skills in a digital age. There’s light humour too, with stories about comfort bunnies and bins full of plastic dinosaurs, showing how strong children’s attachments and imaginations can be.
If you’ve ever questioned what makes a toy truly good for a child – fun, educational, meaningful – this episode gives plenty to think about. Which toys from your own past might have quietly taught you more than you realised?
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