Babysitting babies on the weekends during high school, I saw that many were fascinated by bubbles. They would reach to touch them and their eyes would enlarge as the bubbles popped in their hands. Bubblo Picasso allowed me to share my love for painting with babies as they learn how to walk. This project was presented at the Maker Faire Bay Area in 2019 and published in the Made at Berkeley Showcase Book Issue 04.
Economic, social, and political changes in society have affected social conventions pertaining to work, parenting, and familial arrangement. With nearly half of parents in two-parent households working full-time, childcare and child development have emerged as central issues for parents in novel ways. According to a Pew Research study, both mothers (39%) and fathers (50%) expressed that they spend too little time with their children. Working parents I spoke to shared that they often think about and miss their babies while at work. They also long for more interactive ways to engage with their child's development throughout the day.
Bubblo Picasso aims to explore the gap between the digital and physical world by augmenting a standard baby walker with a Leap Motion Controller and Arduino Feather M0. The Arduino is used to trigger the song “Baby Shark” and release bubbles beneath the walker into the baby's field of vision. This encourages the baby to move their hands to try and pop the bubbles and to dance along to the music. The Leap Motion Controller takes in the babies’ hand movements and creates art by drawing out the tracked hand movements. The colors of the art change with time and the stroke thickness gets larger and smaller as the hand moves closer or farther away from the leap, respectively.
As the baby walks around the house using the walker (freeing their parents of precious time), our interface converts the baby's hand movements into art that their parents and family members can view from a website. The art can then be saved and shared on social media. This innovative adaptation tells family members that their infant is learning how to walk by observing the infant's real-time movements as artistic visualizations.
While this iteration of Bubblo Picasso entailed modification of a baby walker, I anticipate future designs to be modular and adaptable to a variety of objects and surfaces. This can include strollers, highchairs, and other devices for babies. I believe that this would be a fun technology for babies if technologies and electronics are integrated safely.