The Fidgeter

The Fidgeter is an interactive toy designed to punish the user for fiddling. By realizing that when fiddled with the toy hurts them, the user will then be caught in limbo between the lust to fiddle and the pain caused by the action. This is a play on the traditional etiquette of Britain, where it has been said that mothers would put spikes on the table to stop their children resting their elbows while eating.

Instruction

1. Pick up the Fidgeter
2. Place it in between the thumb and first finger of your preffered hand.
3. Turn the top button.
4. Feel the burn.

Final toys

Mechanism

The mechanism for the thumb drive is a very simple friction based drive. The power that one puts through the top piece of the drive is translated directly to the hand on the bottom side, via an axle made of galvanised steel.
this is the draft version:

The idea of the discs is pleasure vs pain, with two opposite circles of velcro providing the different feelings. The pleasure is for the fiddling thumb on top, and the pain is on the bottom for the index finger.

A post about why clay isnt my friend.

Clay is not my friend for numerous reasons, mainly because it makes my hands look brown, and smell like the earth.

While i was working on this wonderous object,  surely the most spectacular object to have come out of the DSDN 112 interactive design course in years, my old arch enemy clay struck!

This terracotta does not have the structural rigidity i require in my object, and cracked around the spinning disk. bollocks.

Thus, i am returning to my old friend wood, who has never failed me, except in being easy to work.

Here is a rough draft model made of wood:

My saviour.

refined clay shape!

i took my clay shape to my tutorial, and my together with my tutor, refined the shape down to this almost mouse-like gadget. the shape is symmetrical, so both left and right handed users will be able to punish themselves for fidgeting and interacting with this object. HOORAY!

Testing

Clay models!

I have been exploring different shapes in clay. The beautiful thing about clay is the ease with which one can sketch a relatively complex shape, allowing ideas to flow from your mind in a second.

here are some of the ones i came up with. Because of the ease of my medium, i was trying to be as free as possible, and break away from the boxy handle grip design i previously had.

These are my two favourite designs, because they grip the hand of the user. They remind me somewhat of a roller style twink pen.

First draft model

This was my first attempt at the shape of the toy. i used a belt sander on a small block of wood to roughly approximate a grip.

The toy is two hand operated, one to hold and the other to turn the crank and cause pain. I have decided that this is too much involvement for a toy that is expressly for fidgeting. The toy will now be thumb driven. This first object also highlighted the need for a more rounded shape, it feels square and clunky in your hands. I decided to go to clay to explore shapes and the way one can interact with them.