Air Play

Air Play is a graduate project from Georgia Tech’s Design for Curiosity course, where individuals designed a children’s museum exhibit under the theme “Playing with Intangibles.” Choosing air as the intangible element, the concept was simple: channel air through tubes to activate different outputs.

Agency

Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design (Student Project)

Practice Area

Client

Georgia Institute of Technology, Children’s Museum of Atlanta

Industry

Inspired by electrical circuits, they replaced electricity with air pressure, allowing children to experiment with airflow in an engaging, hands-on way. They tested their prototype three times at the Children’s Museum of Atlanta before displaying the final exhibit at a semester-end showcase event.

The Challenge

The challenge was to design an interactive exhibit that made an invisible force—air—tangible and engaging for children, while meeting the strict requirements of a high-traffic museum environment. The system needed to be durable, safe, intuitive, and require no instructions, all while remaining fully mechanical and electricity-free. Balancing simplicity with meaningful interaction, and ensuring the exhibit worked for a wide range of ages, required multiple iterations and careful refinement through testing.

Project Vision

Air is powerful yet invisible, and the team wanted to design an interactive exhibit that would let kids see and manipulate pressurized air, discovering how it moves and can be directed to create different effects. Rather than dictating the experience, they focused on guiding the children’s discovery, allowing them to explore, fail, and try again. The goal was to create a system that encouraged open-ended experimentation, collaboration, and multiple levels of cognitive engagement through a simple, intuitive interface.

Air pumps channel air through tubes to animate the end pieces. But which end piece are you connected to?

Joanna Brauer

Connect to one output, or connect to many–what will happen if you do?

Joanna Brauer

Design + Execution

With the class design prompt “playing with intangibles,” we wanted to design an interactive exhibit that would let kids see and manipulate pressurized air, discovering how it moves and can be directed to create different effects. Our project took inspiration from LittleBits and Snap Circuits, both of which encourage open-ended experimentation without the need for instructions. We also drew from modular building kits like LEGO and Building Straws, aiming for a configurable and intuitive system that allows children to explore different pathways and outcomes. The museum’s requirements, combined with our concept, shaped the key criteria for our design: it had to be durable, accessible, safe, modular, configurable, functional, and both enjoyable and cognitively engaging for children. For the build, we combined purchased components (pumps, end pieces) with 3D-printed parts (tubes, brackets). The system functioned by letting kids pump air through tubes to different “expression pieces,” such as a fan, balloon, water jug, or an inflatable tube figure. We conducted multiple rounds of user testing with our class and at the Children’s Museum of Atlanta to refine the design based on observations and feedback. The hands-on testing and feedback was very valuable and fun! We were able to make quick improvements, scale up our project, try out new parts, and test interaction prompting methods.

Two pumps allow children to play together!

Joanna Brauer

Pumping the air is perfect for toddlers.

Joanna Brauer

Correctly connecting the tubes to the desired output engages the older children.

Joanna Brauer

Children can work together on the table.

Joanna Brauer

The end pieces are playful and enjoyed by everyone–including adults.

Joanna Brauer

  1. Air Play, the hands on air pump exhibit at Atlanta Children’s Museum

    Joanna Brauer

  2. Air Play, the hands on air pump exhibit at Atlanta Children’s Museum

    Joanna Brauer

  3. Connect to one output, or connect to many–what will happen if you do?

    Joanna Brauer

  4. Two pumps allow children to play together!

    Joanna Brauer

  5. Pumping the air is perfect for toddlers.

    Joanna Brauer

  6. Correctly connecting the tubes to the desired output engages the older children.

    Joanna Brauer

Project Details
A truly unique and super creative idea to connect children—through a bicycle pump—to the power of air to move, inflate animate physical objects. No child or adult participating in this exhibit will forget it!
Juror 1
There is such an infectious joy one gets when seeing how children interact with this project—and each other. It’s about curiosity. It’s about learning. It’s about teamwork. And it’s wonderfully simple.
Juror 2
Design Team

Jojo Brauer (concept ideation, concept development and testing, fabrication, project management)
Peter Xuanyu Guo (concept development and testing, 3d printing)

Collaborators

Hyun Joo Oh (instructor)

Photo Credits

Jojo Brauer (photography, videography)
Video Music by E’s Jammy Jams from Youtube Audio Library

Open Date

May 2024

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