Sharing the story of our journey
With the Kickstarter launch only 2 days away, we're starting to invite people to our launch build party at Stanford on May 19th! We hope some of the kids we've had the privilege to play with will come!
Boxly Builder #2: Milly
Age: 3 ("but almost 4!")
We played with Milly on Mother's Day. When her Mom came home, a "Happy Mother's Day" sign was waiting for her on the chalkboard panel. Happy Belated Mother's Day to Milly's Mom!
Given that our next builders are brothers, we thought it would be fitting to feature them together!
Boxly Builders: Paolo and Stone
Age: 5 and 8
Superpowers: Super Speed and Invisibility
Life Goal: to become internet famous
These brothers experimented with building a house for their dogs, and they even added the doggie beds into the middle of the structure. While the dogs enjoyed their new house, Paolo and Stone also wanted time to enjoy their handiwork, so they hung out in the dog house (maybe more than the dogs)!
We’re starting to really feel the proximity of our May 19th Kickstarter launch! To keep the momentum going, Laurel is here as our newest Boxly Builder.
Boxly Builder #5: Laurel
Age: 9
Superpower: Concentration
When Laurel is in the zone, she can tune out everything to really focus on the things that get her excited! We brought Boxly to her for her birthday party. Happy 9th Birthday, Laurel!
Our next Boxly Builder helping us count down the days to our fast-approaching May 19th Kickstarter launch is the youngest person we’ve built with yet!
Boxly Builder #6: Nyana
Age: 3
Superpower: Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon
We originally thought our panels would be too big for preschoolers to use, but after user testing with Nyana, we reaffirmed what our professors once told us: never assume you know what the user can and cannot do. "Nyny" rocked her building session, and we're excited to see her continue to develop her amazing building skills as she grows up!
We’re so excited/nervous/pumped for our Kickstarter to launch next Tuesday, May 19th. To help us countdown, every day until our launch we will be featuring a Boxly Builder!
Boxly Builder #7: Sam
Age: 5
Superpower: “Super-tall” so he can build skyscrapers out of Boxly!
(We promise we didn’t pay him to say that.)
Sam built one of the tallest structures Boxly Builders have ever constructed, an impressive feat for a solo Builder. Thanks for building with us, Sam!
As we finalize our vendor decisions, we want to let you in on the making of our kit! Since the connector is such a crucial and heavily designed piece, we’ll start the maker series with this component of Boxly.
After iterating upon several designs and prototyping several shapes, we came to the hard part: gripping the cardboard. We wanted to create a gap small enough to grip tightly but wide enough so it wouldn’t severely deform the cardboard after every use. It was a surprising challenge to achieve this balance, but after altering the gap thickness several times, we went back to our original design and made some modifications.
To get consistently strong grips every time, we added a tiny bump towards the end of each slot. This prevented the cardboard from slipping out, and made a satisfying clicking feeling when you slid in the cardboard all the way.
From a mechanical perspective, there were a lot of stress points along the inner ring of the connectors. To counteract these forces, we added “stress risers” (a.k.a. “ribs”) to both faces of the piece. It made the connector a lot stronger and we haven’t had issues with connectors breaking since the change.
After these design modifications, it was just a matter of 3D printing the connectors to test out our changes. We found the new connectors to be extremely effective, and we’re excited to move forward from the expensive process of 3D printing into the realm of injection molding!
We had an exciting user test and big film session this weekend! We went to play with our professor’s kids. She has two little girls, and told us the ways she focuses on teaching and fostering independence and creative problem-solving. We set up shop in the front yard; it turns out all the neighborhood kids were also playing outside, so when we brought Boxly out other kids from the neighborhood came over to play. 15 minutes later, we had 7 awesome kids building absolutely incredible structures!
One of our favorite parts was seeing their creative solutions to some unexpected challenges. For example, the lawn was slanted and it was a windy day, so their walls kept falling over. But they thought of engineering solutions, like using leftover appliance boxes to create triangular supports! They also added their own boxes to the structure, because Boxly connectors work with all one-ply cardboard!
Most of all, we are so excited that the kids played for over 1.5 HOURS! We tried to think of other ways that 7 kids might entertain themselves for that long without a huge mess and without requiring parental supervision...but the best thing we thought of was an iPad. Building? iPad? We think building.
We are thrilled about this play session (and filmed most of it...cuteness coming soon)! Look out for them in our Kickstarter video because we have a group that is looking to be “internet famous!”
Hello! We just got back from an amazing meeting with the VP of Sales and Engineering at Control Plastics and the President/CEO of Stack Plastics and are excited to share with you. They have known each other for over 40 years and continue to do business together!
We connected with them after a generous introduction by our advisor and Product Design Industry extraordinaire. After class, we drove to the facility in Menlo Park (we are trying to keep manufacturing local!) and were excited to be meeting with such injection molding industry experience--one is the inventor of the plastic balloon weight (check it out!) so we were in amazing hands! And even got to take souvenirs home with us…
Not only did they help us modify our design to make a more manufacturable part, but they shared their knowledge of the industry, the processes involved, and the plastics we might consider using. We learned that all thermoplastics are 100% recyclable which means that along with the cardboard panels, Boxly will be a 100% recyclable product!
At the end, we were lucky enough to get a tour of the shop! Hair nets on, it was our first time seeing the injection molding process and machinery involved outside of a classroom setting. We learned the terminology and functions of different machines, the processes required to operate and maintain them, and the costs associated with different types of parts. We were amazed by the diversity of parts the injection molding process can create.
We’re unbelievably excited to continue working with these vendors, and will keep you updated on our progress!
Over the weekend we had an incredibly invigorating user test that inspired us to finally publish our webpage. One of our 7-year old builders said that when we brought Boxly to market, he wanted to be Internet famous. So we figured today would be a great day to start — this is for him!
Recently, we've spent a lot of time focusing on the engineering side of things. But we wanted to return to our users, to learn and gain insights from their build sessions. So this most recent build session we decided to introduce one of our "extras" for the first time. We added a chalkboard panel to the kit and watched as it turned into a message for the Easter Bunny, a penguin, and the sign for "Lu & Puck's Doghouse." We also discovered some new users when the dogs tried get into the Boxly doghouse where dad hid some treats.
A surprise to us all, dad also finished two loads of laundry during the build session!
On our way back to Stanford campus, we were so excited we couldn't stop talking about next steps. We are looking forward to sharing this amazing journey with you! Thanks for reading!
The builders' Internet debut as they embark on becoming "Internet famous"
