Augmented Knights' Castle (AKC): an RFID-augmented Playmobil playset producing context-relevant sounds¶
Design · All designs
Evidence · 4 claims (4 for) · 1 study (1 causal),q3· 1 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study
Description¶
The Augmented Knights' Castle is "an audio-enhanced Playmobil® medieval castle playset designed to let play figures 'come alive.'" Play figures carry RFID tags identifying their location, so placing a figure in a specific location produces a previously-programmed context-relevant sound, such as a knight saying "Shall we watch the jousting?" in the courtyard or "Defend the castle!" on the drawbridge. The Study 2 version had around 20 characters with 9 speaking roles at 12 positions, making 55 location-character combinations of sounds, including factual information, sound effects, conversational turns and suggestions. The article uses the AKC both as a play environment and as an experimental instrument for manipulating attention capture.
Design Implications¶
Context¶
Requirements¶
- Play figures fitted with RFID tags and RFID readers at set locations to detect figure placement and trigger the programmed sounds
Constraints¶
- Not every location or figure was tagged for sound, so sound production was only a potential rather than deterministic effect
Target Learners¶
- children aged 6 to 11 years in elementary school
Learning Goals¶
- cooperative social play
- joint attention
- collaborative narrative construction
Claims¶
- Audio Augmented Toy Doubles Cooperative Play Study1 [+M]
- Attention Bids More Successful Augmented Toy [+M]
- The augmentation effect on cooperative play replicated in Study 2, with a large playset-by-behavior interaction and no overlap in confidence intervals [+W]
- Groups with the augmented toy used more balanced narrative roles, with more narrator and fewer metanarrator utterances [+W]
Related Designs¶
Examples¶
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Key Sources¶
- Yuill N, Hinske S, Williams SE and Leith G (2014) How getting noticed helps getting on: successful attention capture doubles children's cooperative play. Front. Psychol. 5:418. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00418
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
design |
id |
augmented-knights-castle-akc |
title |
Augmented Knights' Castle (AKC): an RFID-augmented Playmobil playset producing context-relevant sounds |
description |
The Augmented Knights' Castle is "an audio-enhanced Playmobil® medieval castle playset designed to let play figures 'come alive.'" Play figures carry RFID tags identifying their location, so placing a figure in a speci... |
status |
review |
generated |
by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-16 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — yuill-n-2014 |
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