My Aha moment

I love playing puzzles and board games, so I bought my son a simple matching game for his second birthday.  To my amazement, he memorized all the names of the pieces in less than 2 days.  Aha! It struck me like lightning when I saw what happened.  So I thought if he could memorize all these different drawings with names (they looked challenging enough for me) he would be able to memorize the symbol-like Chinese characters.  Of course, I will have to make them interesting enough so he will want to do it.  So, a great toy idea was born. 

Necessity is the mother of invention

I was already very frustrated with my search for high quality and age appropriate toys to teach my then 2-year-old son Chinese when the idea sparked.  I searched high and low across the continents, from online stores to retail stores and nothing I bought passed my son’s approval, meaning nothing could make him pay attention for more than 10 seconds.   Why?  Because all the available Chinese materials out there were either books, audio CDs, or DVDs.   There are not play materials for a 2 year-old.    

While surfing online for information, I came across research indicating pictographic Chinese characters can stimulate visual discrimination and increase IQ.  So when I saw what happened to my son with the matching game, this “toy” idea for KINGKA popped, and everything started to make sense — why not use these abstract pictographic characters to further develop children’s visual discrimination and spatial perception after learning shapes like circle, square, triangle, etc.  Treat these characters just like more complex structure of lines, space and positions which make wonderful brain teasers for untrained eyes, whether you are 3 or 93.  Everybody can play this toy for fun and for brain stimulation and no learning is necessary.  Those pictographic Chinese characters are a great game design by itself.  “You really don’t have to learn Chinese” to enjoy this toy.  

Perfecting the design

I thought of my Chinese students after I handmade the first set for my son, my guinea pig.  I was teaching a family who adopted a Chinese girl from China and they always told me I should make something to help them practice Chinese at home.  Both parents have no knowledge in Chinese language nor have time to learn the language themselves to help their daughter.  But they wish there is a way that they can do it without too much effort.  So, I thought “why not combine these two needs together and create a fun game that everybody, especially those people who have non-Chinese background, can play and learn Chinese themselves at ease. 

So I started squeezing my brain by asking myself “how do I create a board game that can be a self-learning material for the Chinese language and fun for people who don’t want to learn?”  It took me a while to figure it out the perfect way.  It was easy to make a matching game, a memory game and a Bingo game individually, but it was a challenge to make KINGKA, a multi-level constructive learning system™ disguised as a toy.  Because of the ingenious design, Kingka received US and international patents. 

Adding value

I am a person who is big on “high play value” and “added value.” So when I was perfecting Kingka design I envisioned Kingka growing as the child grows.   That’s why the game can be expanded vertically and horizontally.  Vertically you can expand Kingka by adding additional new phrase cards and make it a puzzle game or a word game.  Horizontally you can expand Kingka by adding different volume (e.g. Kingka 1, Kingka 2, and Kingka 3) to increase difficulty or accommodate more players.  The ability for expansion gives Kingka more play value.   As a mother/housekeeper/entrepreneur/recycling fanatic I thought a compact design to save storage space and environmentally friendly materials are a must for added value.  So my Kingka design reflects a lot of my personal value and preferences.   

HangadooPets actually started as a product for organizing baby items.  After having a baby shower for the upcoming birth of my son, Luke,  I needed a place to store all of the little things for a baby (i.e. shoes, socks, bibs, etc) The challenge was that our family was renting a furnished home and as such, I could not redecorate a room for the baby. Not an easy situation to accept in the mist of “nesting” and having those urges to get everything ready before our new addition.  Upon looking at the closet and noticing all of the space not being used, I created the Hangadoo system which allows you to store items in mesh pockets making them easy to see when you need access to them.  After a great reception of the idea from other moms, I identified other uses for the Hangadoo throughout the home.  The first product launch was this past January for the pet owner:  Hangadoo Pets.  This organizer was created for our other family member:  our pet.  

Coming soon:  HangadooKids (Fall, 2010), HangadooHome (January, 2011).