6th Apr, 2015

A children’s workshop using MESH was held in collaboration with Mr. Tago who is a designer and screening committee member for the Hokago NPO After School and Good Design Award (a prestigious design award in Japan).
By using MESH, the children experienced the world of product design enabled by technology.
Until now, it was difficult to turn your imagination into reality.
But now with MESH, anybody can make their ideas come true.
This workshop taught the importance of transferring ideas into actions and to have a broad vision of things.
It emphasized the use of one’s imagination and seeing the system’s overall picture.

MESH

Mr. Tago

How-to class by the MESH development team.

The kids quickly learned how to use the system.

Once you learn how to do it, we proceed to the next stage.
“Use MESH to improve your everyday things.”

At the workshop, we had everyday things and odds and ends for the kids to work with.

If a car rams the zoo, the lion will get angry! The kids took an idea and device and developed it into a story.

A boys team that dynamically jumped off a table!

Mom and dad could not watch in silence, so they also joined in the fray.
Each table created really unique works one after another!
In the end, we had everyone present their works and ideas.

The three hours were so fun it went by quickly.
Lastly, Mr. Tago gave his comments to everyone.

“Learning product design.”
“Designing something is not simply about making it easy to use or aesthetic. First, ask yourself how you can configure a fun concept into a real thing.”
“You have all experienced the first step of this process today.”
He made it easy for the kids to understand this.
It was fun for both the kids and adults working together.
Everyone had a great time working as one and as equals.

These happy people then took a group photo.

We thank everyone for their cooperation.

The original blog post by Hokago NPO After School is here (only in Japanese).