I don't understand all the hate in this thread. This is a clever and creative use of technology that combines a favorite toy (iPad) with the one thing it lacks: physical interaction with real world objects. From what I understand (I'm a new dad so I'm still reading and learning), this sort of thing is very important for a developing mind.
The educational world is besieged by companies convinced that their technology is not only the solution to our educational woes, but a fat business opportunity waiting to be exploited. Teachers in classrooms have been burned so many times by technology that fails to deliver and uneven implementation across the district, that they instinctively cover their wallets every time a new company shows up promising to "revolutionize" education.
Remember "Baby Einstein"? The company (owned by Disney) makes promises about how using their products will help develop young minds and was contradicted by researchers at the University of Washington. Lawsuits between Disney and UW followed, but Disney did ultimately offer refunds to parents that bought the DVD's. This is a classic example of a for-profit company making dubious claims about the educational value of their product.
And Educators get these proposals all - the - time. I've been in the educational/web space for 20 years, and frankly, nothing turns me off faster then saying your new start-up is going to solve education problems. Maybe it will, but you'd better be different then the long line of failed products before you...
I wish Osmo all the best, and hope it breaks the mold.
But I have to agree about schools and tech, and generally about tech and education. Spend more time with your kids, and don't expect an iPad to teach your kids anything, and you'll be in a better place. I say this being a huge lover of technology, having developed ipad apps and video games professionally.
The school my kids are in is continually blowing large sums of money buying technology that they don't leverage in the classroom. They can't leverage tech in the classroom, the teachers aren't developers, and they're not even trained in basic tech, and they don't have the money for the training because they're spending the money on e-whiteboards. The money would go so much further paying for art teachers, or supplies, or school activities, or almost anything.
Our art classes are no longer funded by the state or school district, the school hires a part time art teacher to teach a class once a week, or maybe every other week. And yet they're buying ipads and interactive white boards. Its insane, and really, really sad. The interactive whiteboards are a complete joke and costs thousands a pop.
Our entire state (UT) is using automated essay scoring, which does not, and will never, work. Not even a little. I know the school district, and the state, has been having discussions with the essay scoring software company, and they're being told it will improve. The school system has no idea that this fundamentally will not work, and the software company is fully incapable of improving automated essay scoring. One night I came home from work to find my child in tears and my wife on the verge of tears trying to help, because my kid couldn't figure out how to get the goal score on his automated essay the teacher had set. A couple of quick tests, and I discovered the software largely grades on length alone. We pasted the text of a proposal to ban automated essay scoring from all US schools, and his essay suddenly had a perfect score. What a joke, and the state is spending tax money on a statewide contract for this ridiculous and worthless software.
Often school districts have rules on how money can be spent, e.g.: they wont use donations to pay for salaried employees as it creates a liability if they have a shortfall one year and have to pay to lay people off.
So that's why a lot of the donation money goes on interactive whiteboards and iPads, as well as hourly aides/TAs/etc (who might be subject to a limit on their hours...).
Instead of feeding it through immediately to salaries, couldn't they create an endowment for themselves, and use it like a conservative retiree would use their retirement savings? (4%/year withdrawal rate). That way, they could use the money for what people really want it to be used for (more, and better teachers), and there wouldn't be very much risk of a shortfall.
I wouldn't support that myself. Where teachers get pensions they already make over $100K/yr all things considered. It's an important service but that's plenty for what they do.
'cause it looks like total B.S. from people who don't know what they're talking about or what kids will really play with in the long term.
For the same money you can get a something much healthier and long lasting in the form of a bike or, hell, a bunch of cardboard boxes and some art supplies and then let them go wild. Build themselves a transmogrifier or something. Make their own freakin' puzzles.
My most beloved set of toys as a child was a bunch of plastic dinosaurs, a tiny pair of pliers, a trashed bike I was free to do whatever I liked to (bottle rocket launchers on the handlebars - oh yeah), and a really nice set of crayons and a giant roll of butcher paper. I'm not quite at the "get off my lawn" stage, but that isn't a toy, it's a product. Hence, the hate.
Haven't read the thread here, but the idea of an iPad mediating such simple play between kids makes me depressed, and I can't imagine it's not simply diminishing what the equivalent experience without the screen would have been. Also that's not how the Tangrams puzzle is supposed to work.
I'm with you. People citing their absence of research and their certainty that this will be discarded in a day is amusing. What those academic papers lack is an actual product and customers deciding to buy and use that product of their own free will. When someone releases an app to "connect people" or make some day-to-day taks easier, nobody seems to want academic papers to back their claims. I also feel like it goes without saying that this will most likely be discarded in a day but so will 99% of the products we build as startups. That's the great thing about today's environment. We get to experiment in the real world with real people and real products! Enjoy it while it lasts is my suggestion.
> When someone releases an app to "connect people" or make some day-to-day taks easier, nobody seems to want academic papers to back their claims.
Most people are qualified to evaluate whether an app is allowing them to connect with others. On the other hand, they are not qualified to evaluate whether a product is educating their child. Education claims are widespread and difficult to disprove, but rarely come with any proof. It is completely rational to expect some.
As a new fellow new dad, I saw this and thought "that is very impressive technology", but as a learning instrument and toy, why is the iPad required?
The iPad seems like a replacement for the parent. Instead of an iPad I can sit sown with a kid and say, what letters do we need to spell fruit, and I can sit and help her find them. Or what shapes can we make with these blocks, or can you help dad make a cat?
The technology in here seems to be an attempt at automating the parenting, so instead of me sitting down with my daughter I leave her in a room alone with the iPad (as seen in the video) and go do something else.
>Top educators from over 150 elementary schools nationwide, including the Bay Area’s best preparatory institutions, are raving about Osmo’s natural ability to foster creative, social, and emotional learning ‑ and how much their students love it.
If there's one thing I, as a teacher, do not trust, it's when teachers (sorry, I mean "educators") get excited about technology.
Although "educators" being excited about technology certainly doesn't guarantee that it will be great, it's not a negative signal either. Singling this out for such cynical focus when there's so much other content here to comment on seems unwarranted.
> There are so many beautiful product pages out there which completely fail at the basic task of telling people what they're selling. It's baffling.
Its not at all baffling. Selling product is about creating feelings of need for the product, not creating an accurate rational understanding of what the product does. There's a few markets (like marketing development tools to developers -- but, notably, not marketing developing tools to non-developer executives) where those two distinct issues happen to be somewhat (though not perfectly) aligned, but quite often they are unrelated or even opposed.
Video, as a medium, is very good at conveying desired emotional messages, and poor for conveying rational understanding (this is why, for decades, it has been observed that, that is, all other things being equal, watching more TV news makes you understand current events less, unlike consuming news in print media; it is also why video is a prime medium for advertisement.)
Do companies really try to create a feeling of need in people who don't even know what it is?
Certainly there's a ton of advertising out there that rests on "feeling of need", but it's always for stuff that everybody knows about. That subtle Rolex ad doesn't need to tell you "this device tells you what time it is wherever you go" because everybody already knows what a wristwatch is. Coca-Cola ads can focus on cute animated polar bears instead of "this is a carbonated sweet drink" because everybody knows their product. (Even then, they almost always show people actually drinking the stuff.)
If you have a new product, one that you're saying is different from anything else out there, surely you need to tell people what it is if you want them to think they need it.
"Fun with no limits" is a stick and a paper hat. Sometimes I wonder what other people's childhoods were like.
After reading their site and watching their video my chief question was whether this thing exists, or if you can preorder it and they'll start thinking about whether it's feasible or not, like many kickstarter-type things.
> "Fun with no limits" is a stick and a paper hat.
This is what I came to say. This thing has a limit, and that is that you are tethered to the thing. And as an electronic thing, it is relatively fragile. You can't take it into the sandbox or a snow fort, and you can't get it wet or muddy. It looks a sit-at-a-desk toy, and that's just not a natural state for kids.
When I was a kid (and now that I watch my kids play), we were all over the place (backyard, woods, indoors, basement) and playing with all kinds of non-toys (sticks, rocks, couch-cushion-forts, and on rare & precious occasions a huge cardboard box or section of discarded pegboard) and putting toys together in unexpected ways (matchbox + lego; scraps of lumber + any toy => catapult; does every kid use their bike training wheels to prop up the bike in order to make rooster tails in puddles?).
For $60, I can buy a giant pile of stuff from the hardware store that we can use to make all kinds of "burglar alarms" (rube goldberg machines to ring a bell -- a favorite rainy day activity) that will involve a whole bunch more learning than anything like osmo can provide.
I'm somewhat biased towards being anti-technology, but it's really a bias against technology for technology's sake. This thing may be fun, and if that's what you want, go for it, but I can't really see that it's solving any particular problem per se.
I have no interest in watching to video either, but I can clue you in on the mirror's purpose at least. Normally the camera looks straight out at the user. They need the camera to look down at the table/floor/play surface. The on screen games depend on the app being able to see where you place each piece. Without the mirror the camera wouldn't be pointing at the pieces.
I don't watch videos unless I'm first convinced by the text that they're worth watching. I doubt I'm alone in this. Why is it so hard to put one or two sentences that just tell me what you're talking about?
It's a safe bet that this product is not for you. Constructive comments are one thing, but anger over the fact that the value prop of a kid's game doesn't resonate with you is...awkward.
I"m not angry, although I am confused and mildly irritated that stuff keeps making it to the front page of HN where the page just doesn't tell you what it is.
As for the product not being for me, kids don't buy this stuff themselves. Their parents buy it. As the electronics-happy parent of a small child, I'm pretty sure I'd be right smack in the middle of the target demographic for this product if I had some clue of what it actually did.
That "confusion and mild irritation" is what I'm talking about. If you don't think their marketing page is up to your standards maybe constructive commentary based on your apparent demographic suitability would be a bit more helpful?
That puts you in the vast minority of web users (I'm with you, fwiw). Given that, I wouldn't have any expectations that sites are going to tailor their experience to people like us. Video is used for these things because video works, and repeating in text what you showed in the video is repetitive for people who do watch the video.
mikeash, you are not alone. If text alone doesn't quickly and adequately convey what the product is or at least seriously pique my interest then I'm not going to spend time watching any videos.
Are you guys serious? The giant picture of the child's hand on the puzzle and a picture of that same puzzle on the ipad didn't give you a clue??? I'm sure other people have trouble drawing meaning from images but I believe it is a small percentage.
It tells me that it has something to do with puzzles and augmented reality. But that's a pretty broad category, and the page doesn't narrow it down for me at all. It certainly doesn't tell me how it manages to make it so that "fun knows no limits."
If it's so clear to you, perhaps you could explain it instead of just making implicit insults?
There's probably also many people that won't bother reading much about the product, and are reached much easier through a video. In truth, their blurb There's digital gaming. There's real world fun. And then there's Osmo, a magical experience that merges the real and virtual worlds to defy the boundaries of play. is the few sentences you were looking for. It just appears to be useless marketing speech because their product isn't really a single thing, but a way to augment traditionally purely physical children's games with instant digital feedback. Than can be hard to explain in a useful way with just text.
Edit: s/new interaction mode for children/better description/
I'm skeptical that any product can be hard to explain in a useful way with just text. What exactly do you do with it? What's an example use case? What's the mirror for? All of these things can be answered in text.
However, given that I don't understand what it does, perhaps I'm not qualified to say that here.
You didn't ask for just text, you asked for one or two sentences. I don't think this product can't be explained through text, just that it's a case where a very small amount of text will not do it justice, and may do more to confuse people than help.
It's one of those trick sites, where you never realize you can scroll down (thank you fullscreen image trend). Go back to the site, scroll. First thing you'll see...
Setup is a snap. Simply mount Osmo over your iPad's front‑facing camera. Reflective Artificial Intelligence and a built‑in mirror recognize and respond to your every real‑world move.
Then it goes on to describe the available games, and has other key information that's well summarized. I watched the video, and didn't realize you could scroll until I read your comment, and went back to the site a second time.
I scrolled all the way down, but nothing tells me what it is. I didn't watch the video, though.
The bit you quoted raises more questions than it answers. Why is there a mirror? What the hell is "reflective artificial intelligence"? What does it do with the recognition of your real-world moves?
I thought that was self-explanatory. Your iPad camera faces forward, the mirror redirects it down to the playing surface. The AI tries to track the location of the letters and colored blocks in the mirrored image.
What does it do? The examples are pretty obvious, what more are you looking for?
Arrange tangible puzzle pieces into matching on‑screen shapes.
Be the first to guess and spell out the on‑screen hidden word by tossing down real‑life letters faster than your friends. A related picture gives the clue.
Maybe the problem is just that what it does is so far removed from the superlative language used to describe the product as a whole? The introduction leaves me with the impression that it must be more than a silly augmented reality puzzle game.
I still don't understand the mirror. iPads have a camera in the back already....
The blue line is an iPad, the red region is the camera line of sight. On the left, you have no mirror, the camera is looking straight ahead at you. On the right, a mirror is attached, it redirects the camera view down to the playing surface.
Got it, thanks. Nice diagram. I can't help but think that if the connection between the iPad and the stuff in front of it was made a bit more clear on the site, as you have done, that it would be much easier to understand. Or maybe it's just me.
People are saying that, but I'm skeptical. Language is pretty versatile. If Wikipedia can explain the concept of an ergosphere to me without video, surely it can be done for somebody's iPad game.
That's kind of funny. "It's not understandable without the video" can be complete agreement or complete disagreement with what I'm saying depending on what "it" is. Stupid language.
I don't know I just get the overwhelming feeling that a lot of people aren't parents in this thread. My daughter loves these types of puzzle games on our touch devices. As soon as I saw the video, I have a good feeling she will like it. Really it looks fun , and the word game looks like something we can do together. I'm excited about this product. I really could care less about the actual learning aspects and more interested in the technology + fun aspect.
I imagine that given the array of Android tablets it's much harder to design such a thing for them, not just because of the differing physical form factors but because of the varying capabilities of the cameras themselves.
Had you read the next sentence, you may not be confused.
"Osmo is crafted for kid‑durability and always ready to go: no batteries, electronics, or Wi‑Fi required. Works with the latest iPads including the iPad 2 and iPad Mini."
The company introduces Osmo, an iPad suite of games for children which uses the iPad's camera to use physical tiles on a traditional tabletop as input. The demonstrated games include tangram, a tile based word guessing game, and a physics-engine based game in which players must draw a path for falling objects to hit targets.
While the product describes itself as using "reflective artificial intelligence, a groundbreaking technology that bridges the real and digital realms for unlimited possibilities of play", it falls under what we in academic HCI call "tangible interaction", following Shaer & Hornecker's definition:
"Interfaces that are concerned with providing tangible representations to digital information and controls, allowing users to quite literally grasp data with their
hand and effect functionality by physical manipulations of these representations." [0]
The four claims typically made when introducing tangible interfaces in products for children are usability benefits, learning benefits, collaboration benefits, and fun benefits [1]. Osmo does not escape to the rule, claiming all 4 in its marketing copy.
While Osmo does not include any information about research conducted with it that would demonstrate those claims, similar systems have been proposed in the past.
The word game is mirrored in Dekel & al's Spelling Bee [2], a game which uses wooden letter blocks instead of Osmo's Scrabble tiles, and LEDs embedded in the cubes to provide player feedback. The authors report high engagement from the test audience (children 7-12), but no learning assessment or long term engagement study was performed (arguably 2 of the most important metrics).
The tangram game is mirrored in past research projects, including Scarlatos & al's [3] tangram game. Xie & al's [4] paper performs a user study on 3 implementations of a puzzle game: physical, GUI based, tangible. The authors report finding same self-reported level of enjoyments from the test users on all 3. However, they report that repeat play was more significant in the physical & tangible version of the game, which does not create an argument in the favor of Osmo. They do report significant gender effects in the way of collaboration, which could be relevant for Osmo:
"While all gender pairings’ mean scores on the Interest and
Enjoyment subscale were nearly the same for the TUI
condition, the boy-boy pairs had significantly higher scores
than the girl-girl and girl-boy pairs for the GUI condition.
In addition, the girl-girl pair scores were significantly
higher for the traditional PUI condition than for either of
the computational conditions (GUI, TUI). For girl-girl pairs
mean scores for Perceived Competence subscale were also
higher for the PUI condition than for either of the GUI or
TUI conditions. Mean scores for boy-boy pairs were highest
for the GUI condition."
The last game implemented by Osmo, the physics game, is the least interesting of the 3 as it has less claims to educational value than the other 2. However, it is reminiscent of several similar tabletop based tangible systems and augmented reality systems. [5]
Unfortunately I have to go work now, and the edit window will be over when I'm back online :( But for readers who found the above interesting, I will leave a few more relevant papers [6][7][8][9]
[0] Shaer & Hornecker, "Tangible user interfaces: past, present, and future directions", 2010
[1] Zaman & al., "Editorial: the evolving field of tangible interaction for children: the challenge of empirical validation", Personal Ubiquitous Computing, 2012
[2] Dekel & al, "The Spelling Bee: An Augmented Physical Block System that Knows how to Spell", ACE, 2007
[3] Scarlatos & al, "TICLE: using multimedia multimodal guidance to enhance learning"
[4] Xie & al, " Are Tangibles More Fun? Comparing Children's Enjoyment and Engagement Using Physical, Graphical and Tangible User Interfaces ", TEI 2008
[5] Krzywinski & al, "RoboTable: A Tabletop Framework for Tangible Interaction
with Robots in a Mixed Reality"
[6] Antle & al, "Hands on What? Comparing Children’s Mouse-based and Tangible-based Interaction", IDC 2009
[7] Resnick & al, " Programmable Bricks: Toys to Think With", IBM Systems Journal, 1996
[8] Price & al, "Let's get physical: Learning Benefits of interacting in digitally augmented physical spaces" , 2004
[9] Resnick, "Edutainment? No thanks I prefer Playful Learning", 2004
It's a neat concept - a nice, polished AR kit. The actual tangram concept is a bit disappointing though - dragging simple objects around on a flat surface is already something the iPad excels at. In this case it feels like it's somewhat obsoleted by modern touch-screens.
Obviously there are cases where touch-screens fail, but simple tangram puzzles work just fine with them.
I'd be interested in seeing this expanded to things that require too large a play-area to do conveniently with a tablet, or that involve manipulation that doesn't correspond to simple dragging (which you can already do well on the iPad).
Either that or focus on vision-impaired students. Maybe a set of braille algebra-tiles[1]?
I disagree, on the tangram aspect. Most games have an almost auto snap feature that if you drag the piece close enough it just snaps into place. I like the fact that it takes more of hand eye coordination and understanding of physical space for the physical objects to create the shapes on screen.
Auto-snap, and most importantly inability to rotate, allowed my 1.5yo kid to solve puzzles when he wasn't yet able to solve wooden puzzles well.
After an intense period of solving those non-stop (I believe it's first time he strongly experienced the positive reinforcement of winning a game), he also easily does the wooden puzzles.
I don't have any data on whether that's indeed a win developement-wise, but I'm excited that easy software tweaks (which would be impractical in physical product — how do you stop one from rotating pieces?) can dramatically affect kid's ability to engage them.
My daughter fell in love with a similar non-rotating tangram game at that age, and that's why it came to mind... tangrams are something that tablets do really well.
That said, I do see what they mean about rotation. My son took some time to learn to play Amazing Alex (Rovio's Incredible Machine remake) because of the clumsy rotation UI in that one.
How do these games benefit from including a tablet?
From what I can learn from the video the tablet assists you with counting points and lets you know when you've arrived at the right answer. Sure, it makes things more convenient. But what is wrong (from an educational point of view) with letting children add their points/checking their solutions themselves?
Great product (at least from an ingenuity point of view; would be interesting to see how kids react to it)
Side question: What is this style of info presentation called? Basically, a full-page-width webpage, with very sparse information that slowly shows up as you scroll down. I'm not too fond of it, but I see it a lot lately, so I assume it has been shown to lead to higher conversion rates. Does this presentation style have a name?
Looks interesting. I want that technology but just to transfer paper notes/sketches to digital. I've tried using stylus on iPad for wireframes etc. but I can't quite get it to work same as sharpie & paper.
I played with this at the NY toy fair in February. The words game is really cool, you find yourself digging through letters as quickly as possible while trying to form the word but you also have to watch to make sure you are actually on the right track before you shove too many out there, and watch the other player too. The game is scored by giving you points for getting the word but you also lose points for every letter you shove in that isn't right. If you want you can just shove the whole stack in front, you'll instantly solve the puzzle but with an enormous negative score.
Something about that particular game is an experience I haven't had with either physical or digital games before, whereas most physical/digital hybrids I've seem could just as easily be done purely in one or both realms.
The tangram seemed like a bit of a dud for that reason, for example. It is nice to be able to get hints while playing physical tangrams (it can show you just the outline but tell you if you have a piece in the right spot), but that isn't really that much of an improvement over just having the pieces or just an iPad game.
The physics game where you draw on the pad is a strange demo to me. You can just do it as a drawing game without the paper, which is a bit less social, but again, this isn't much of an improvement. What is really cool, though, is the interactive outline of your hand or any object you put in front of it. But it doesn't really encourage that in any way, it just feels like a tech demo.
All that said, this product does excite me just because the word game gave me a feeling I haven't gotten in either a purely physical or purely digital space.
At first I thought this was a stupid, idea. In the, I became excited and envisioned a lot of opportunities for cool games.
I don't know why there are people in this thread talking about school and education. This is a toy. A toy should not be designed to educate. Kids play videogames the whole day these days. Osmo could bring them out of the videogame, make them interact with objects, not to learn, but to play, only. This should not be confined to small kids games, but also to all kinds of games, and other uses as well.
Thanks -- here's a video demonstrating the new networked multi player version of Pantomime that we're showing at Augmented World Expo! Pantomiming with your friends in AR is a whole new ball game!
We'll appreciate your vote for "Best Augmented World Video" in the Augmented World Expo competition, please -- your vote will really help, because we're currently in second place!
Click on the "Pantomime Corporation" entry to see our video of the new multi player version, which just won the Launch: Silicon Valley World Cup Tech Challenge in the Digital Media Mobile group.
This is a great product. To me, the video (while marketing) showed exactly how kids would react to something like this. Nowadays, all kids know how to use an iPad so throwing in the physical pieces as well brings back the "legacy" way of playing. Plus, it has a nice teaching aspect and i could imagine a dual iPad "versus" mode to encourage a little competition.
I love this so much. But, when I step back and look at what you're getting for $58, I'm wondering why I can't build one myself. It looks like I'll need an iPad stand, a small mirror, and a fisheye lens.
Then, I'll just use the same apps as the other Osmo users.
Really? How much are a mirror that you have to fashion yourself, a fisheye lens, and an iPad stand going to cost you? And after you've found all that you still don't have the games. $58 shipped to you seems pretty reasonable to me.
My thoughts exactly $58 is a decent price, there are a lot of scrooges in here. The argument of "geez i can build this in a day and the materials will cost me less than 10 bucks" are tiresome and stupid. If you value your time at more than $2 an hour its a good price.
I have siblings with kids (and iPads) so this looks like a perfect timeline for a Christmas present...but it's never a good sign when you try to give someone money and they won't take your CC because they're doing validation wrong.
Okay, I don't get the product, but I'm impressed that as you scroll down the screen, the Osmo drops onto the iPad, and then the iPad drops into its holder.
Needing to give kids an iPad raises all sorts of issues: Cost, breakage, internet exposure...
I would be very likely to buy a self-contained colored digital etch-a-sketch that logs everything ever drawn on it, which I can later put on my computer.
I know that would be very big brother of me, but it's for cute's sake!
it's really simple to turn kiosk mode on in your iPad. It makes the app full screen and you can only exit out with a pin you set up when you launch kiosk.
I would love to see this with a giant screen. The iPad is great but kids needs space and room to play. Great start and I really feel that things like this will have a great impact in the future.
I'm sure this would be fun on a giant screen, but it's not necessary. Kids play with tablets and phones all the time. Large screens are not a prerequisite for enjoyable playtime.
What's with the weird space between "Pre" and "Order Osmo" in the header? Also, the percentage doesn't add up. Or is it supposed to be with shipping?
By the way, the price is ridiculous. Even the discounted one. That puzzle sells for about 4$ (that's with profit), let's be generous and say that the app itself is worth $10 (which it isn't) and we are left with $85 for a mirror embedded in plastic? Shipping not included?!
That being said, nice idea, I haven't seen it done before. Possibilities to extend this are great.
