Michael has a two-year-old son. Like most toddlers, he loves banging on keyboards and is magnetically drawn to screens – kind of like how grown-up children get hooked on computers and iPhones.
Kids today are digital natives, born into a world of laptops and mobile devices. The problem is, their punchy fists and sticky fingers don’t get along with touch-screens or machines full of (precious) data. So some of my digital-minded friends and colleagues came up with Little Keys, an art project-meets-computer game designed to delight tots and satisfy parents without risking the demise of their computers.
With Little Keys, a random, multi-colored display of shapes, letters and numbers fills the screen when keys are pressed. The program isn’t mapped to specific keys. Instead, it introduces kids to fun visual explorations. The game requires a unique key combination to exit, preventing any inadvertent harm to your machine (we’re working on a mouse-only exit too).
And because kids prefer banging keys to tapping them, they created kid-friendly, colorful keyboards to be used with the program. Along with the Barbarian Group and Neighborhoodies, Big Spaceship donated and collected used keyboards, which the folks developing the project took apart and washed before spray-painting individual keys with non-toxic paint. Then they reassembled them into a bright display that encouraged key mashing.
They sold Little Keys at Brooklyn Flea in DUMBO last month (as part of a Cool Hunting booth) and at a flea market in Astoria a few weeks ago. Shoppers of all ages were attracted to the colorful display and left us out of stock. They had fun making the keyboards but are now turning their attention to tweaking the game. Their plan is to soon offer it for free at littlekeys.com. For those with toddlers (or a propensity to make writer’s block pretty), get excited.
