During my study at Design Management department at the University of Industrial Arts Helsinki I worked at a product called "My First ABC" (MFABC). I'd left behind my daughter (Birte) in the Netherlands and missed her a lot, like I still do.
It is 1995 and I am fresh from the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. The world of Internet was familiar to me from a distance I now notice, in Helsinki people were so into this phenomenon. It is a phase in my life were it all dazzles me. New words, technologies, concepts, but I love it.
The assignment I can't recall but I combined the lack of being with Birte with the new world of Internet, at that time MultiMedia was the buzzword and push technology now I remember.
That same year I read in a MIT magazine called Technology Review about a project at Motorola on RFID. Then it hit me, this is what I need. MFABC is about communication, communication between the parent and the child, child and other child but above all the child and the environment around her or him. And when RFIDs or future generation technologies are indeed commonplace I could use that for something else than supply chain uses as explained.
The result was simple. A PDA kind of toy with a large screen and a pointer device the child could use to point at let say a washing machine and on screen the word "washing machine" would appear. The word could be spoken in several languages, a picture could be drawn and many other extras could be developed and added.
A major concern to me was and still is the isolation of children when they are playing a computer game. MFABC is a toy where 2 people could play or discover words. Now I can write down much more and much better but it is more than 12 years ago since I made the demos and prototype.
One small note still. At Motorola that time was working Noel Eberhardt, VP of Research and Development. He has been very kind and forthcoming in explaining and even validating the concept I had. Those were the days when people had time still to reply to emails. I call them "the good old days".