My project was a plush origami toy butterfly for my boyfriend. Since he likes folding origami and a butterfly was one of the things he used to make, I decided to create a re-foldable origami butterfly for him. There are two butterflies, with one being already folded when I showed it to him, and the other unfolded. It was for him to try and figure out the steps of how the butterfly should be folded, taking clues from the example, like a puzzle or a brain teaser. After figuring it out, the butterfly can be unfolded and re-folded again repeatedly, making it distinct from traditional origami done with paper. I wanted to emphasize the reuseability and the pleasant texture of a plush origami toy.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1STQsEeLhAtWW1ThhtSdoBJ0RYbUrnNov/view?usp=sharing
I was inspired by the Cas Holman (self-described as a designer of play) and her belief that toys and opportunities for play don’t have to infantilize children. Many toys go too far in treating children like children, in that the designers don’t trust children to be able to handle heavy objects or more complicated tools or overall anything too “challenging” or “dangerous.” To stimulate their thinking and problem-solving, the play experience should set higher expectations and believe in the players’ ability to meet them, thus making it more likely for the players to actually rise to meet those expectations. Although my toy was not designed for a child, along the same vein of thinking, I believed that my toy didn’t have to be simple or straightforward, even as a soft toy. The play value in my toy was also inspired by how you can continue playing with a toy repeatedly even after the first interaction. The toy can be folded and unfolded again, and there is the joy in the process of folding origami repeatedly within a single toy. The buttons and button holes are a different way of fastening the folds, and the combination of similarities and differences with traditional paper origami make the toy more intriguing. The clips I added to the butterflies were for another degree of interaction, making them attachable to a cloth flower, clothing, hair, or anything else. This made the toy double as a decoration or accessory.
I think the way I designed my toy for play was through referencing the open-endedness of origami. Origami can be considered a toy, with play value coming from possible difficulty in following the steps of folding the paper. Although my plush origami butterfly was simple in the number and type of folds, the material being cloth and having no explicit folding instructions made up for it. The way it provokes thinking during folding and has countless purposes and ways to be attached to other things after being folded also adds another dimension to its play value.
I like how Andy compared the experience of folding the plush butterfly like tying a tie for the first time. It’s a struggle to learn and you may need to receive instructions from someone else, but after you learn how to do it, you can repeat the process more quickly and without much trouble. The feedback and questions I received during my presentation of the toy allowed me to explain some aspects of it in more detail as well, for example the fact that I made the material patterned on one side and white on the other to imitate the pattern of origami paper. Another piece of feedback I received was that while the clips made the toy have more interactive possibilities, the use of a large metal clip could be changed for a clip of a different type or material. I agree, and I think if I had more time, I would have tried using a smaller, plastic claw-shaped clip or possibly a bobby pin. The metal clip didn’t really match the butterfly. I also received feedback that I could sew lines onto the flat cloth to give fold indications, which would make the folding easier to learn. This was one of the things I did with one of my prototypes, but I decided that since there were only four folds for the entire butterfly, I wanted to raise the difficulty level a bit by not giving indication lines. But I would consider doing so for more complicated versions, possibly in the future.
Throughout the making of this toy, I experienced the grueling process of trial and error and prototyping. I made some prototypes of the toy out of stiff felt and of different sizes before switching to a linen + plush cloth combination for the final version, and sewing these two materials together took much more time than the prototypes did. Additionally, I tried two different types of buttons: plastic snap buttons and regular buttons with button holes. I liked the idea of the clear plastic snap buttons more because they would be hidden and less intrusive, but the snap buttons I bought were really difficult to snap and unsnap, and I felt that it made the interaction more unpleasant and confusing than it had to be. But this caused me to be working with regular buttons and making button holes for the first time when I started on my final version, making the process very time-consuming and prone to messing up. I have a ruined version where various steps in the making went wrong. Another thing I believe I could have improved on was coming up with an idea for how to “use” the toy when it hasn’t been folded yet. The design of the toy makes it so that it only has a “use” when it has been folded. Maybe with more time, I could experiment with various sizes, materials, colors/patterns, and a version of the toy that can be folded into various different things, rather than only one single thing. This would require a lot of testing in the placement of buttons to secure the most basic and common folds in origami. Additionally, I thought of an idea where I could embroider a personalized message on the inside of the butterfly, which would make it more special and give meaning to the origami plush even when it is unfolded.
Final toy:
Poster:
Initial plan: