Cruise (Out of) Control

Then Rachel enters Invent-a-tron, a toy-building activity inside Spruce, and all hell breaks loose on the screen. In theory, Rachel is supposed to enter a toy shop, see a variety of parts, and use a gripper to assemble tops, middles, and bottoms of toys. In reality, once Rachel puts her gripper to a wheel or a propeller or a spring, that piece begins to cruise. First she selects a pogo stick. It starts hopping. Next she grips a rocket booster. It goes flaming into the sky. Soon a sea horse tail is reeling and a wagon wheel is rolling. Rachel is looking like she wants to cry and Jenkins is too.

"You don't realize how much of a fixed mindset you have when you're used to a mouse and a keyboard," Jenkins says a few minutes later, once Rachel managed to extricate herself from Invent -a -tron's toy-making purgatory and entered Rocket Scrapyard, a spatial-relations game inside Spruce. "You have to think completely differently about designing software where, instead of clicking on a mouse, you drive through the environment and have a throttle and windshield wipers and three radio stations to choose from. Often times, you're first instincts are off. Originally, in Spruce, to get into a new activity, a child had to take the throttle, stop, and put it in reverse. It just didn't work for them. We alerted the programmers. They came down to see the kids play and changed it immediately."

Jenkins's mission is to turn these insights into actual product specifications. "Once you engage a child in a product they'll give you lots of information," she explains. "You just need to listen." Every Friday the lab holds a roundtable session in which her researchers meet with game producers and designers, not just to discuss the problems they discovered but to identify solutions to those problems - by the end of the day. It doesn't always happen. "The most difficult thing has been to reconcile what we think would be great with what is technically possible," she says. "There are these things called time, technology constraints, and budgets. Working with developers, it's easy to get reactions like, 'That's a wonderful idea, and if we had time and money we'd do it, but..."

Come noontime, Rachel's father arrives. Bridget, her four-year-old sister, has accompanied Dad. Rachel hams it up as Jose takes her Polaroid and laminates it onto her Wonder Tools license. Bridget immediately charms herself into a license as well.

"So when can we come back?" Rachel's mom asks.

"Yeah, when can I come back?" Rachel echoes.

Jenkins pauses a minute to considers the lab's upcoming products and schedules. Bridget, however, quickly fills the silence: "Please can I come too?