
Osmo - choult
https://www.playosmo.com/
======
Greenisus
I don't understand all the hate in this thread. This is a clever and creative
use of technology that combines a favorite toy (iPad) with the one thing it
lacks: physical interaction with real world objects. From what I understand
(I'm a new dad so I'm still reading and learning), this sort of thing is very
important for a developing mind.

~~~
wuliwong
I'm with you. People citing their absence of research and their certainty that
this will be discarded in a day is amusing. What those academic papers lack is
an actual product and customers deciding to buy and use that product of their
own free will. When someone releases an app to "connect people" or make some
day-to-day taks easier, nobody seems to want academic papers to back their
claims. I also feel like it goes without saying that this will most likely be
discarded in a day but so will 99% of the products we build as startups.
That's the great thing about today's environment. We get to experiment in the
real world with real people and real products! Enjoy it while it lasts is my
suggestion.

~~~
thedufer
> When someone releases an app to "connect people" or make some day-to-day
> taks easier, nobody seems to want academic papers to back their claims.

Most people are qualified to evaluate whether an app is allowing them to
connect with others. On the other hand, they are not qualified to evaluate
whether a product is educating their child. Education claims are widespread
and difficult to disprove, but rarely come with any proof. It is completely
rational to expect some.

~~~
bruceboughton
No it's not. No one is saying buy this and don't play with your kids as well.
This is one tool among many.

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timdiggerm
>Top educators from over 150 elementary schools nationwide, including the Bay
Area’s best preparatory institutions, are raving about Osmo’s natural ability
to foster creative, social, and emotional learning ‑ and how much their
students love it.

If there's one thing I, as a teacher, do not trust, it's when teachers (sorry,
I mean "educators") get excited about technology.

(Doubly so if educators = administration)

~~~
StefanKarpinski
Although "educators" being excited about technology certainly doesn't
guarantee that it will be great, it's not a negative signal either. Singling
this out for such cynical focus when there's so much other content here to
comment on seems unwarranted.

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mikeash
OK, seriously, why is it so hard for companies to just tell me _what their
product is?_

I guess it's some sort of augmented reality thing? With a clip-on mirror?
(???) And a standard Tangram game?

"For the first time, fun knows no limits." Did somebody redesign zombo.com for
the 21st century and try to attach a product to it?

There are so many beautiful product pages out there which completely fail at
the basic task of telling people what they're selling. It's baffling.

~~~
lnanek2
I have no interest in watching to video either, but I can clue you in on the
mirror's purpose at least. Normally the camera looks straight out at the user.
They need the camera to look down at the table/floor/play surface. The on
screen games depend on the app being able to see where you place each piece.
Without the mirror the camera wouldn't be pointing at the pieces.

~~~
mikeash
Thanks. I kept insisting on thinking that the mirror let it look _back_ ,
which made no sense as there's already a camera back there.

------
minalecs
I don't know I just get the overwhelming feeling that a lot of people aren't
parents in this thread. My daughter loves these types of puzzle games on our
touch devices. As soon as I saw the video, I have a good feeling she will like
it. Really it looks fun , and the word game looks like something we can do
together. I'm excited about this product. I really could care less about the
actual learning aspects and more interested in the technology + fun aspect.

------
vinkelhake
That looks awesome. I'm considering ordering one for the kids.

This paragraph is pretty hilarious though:

"Osmo is crafted for kid‑durability and always ready to go: no batteries, or
Wi-Fi required."

Well, yeah.. Except for the actual iPad.

~~~
Osiris
That's a pretty big deal considering that I only have one Android tablet and
no iPads.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
I imagine that given the array of Android tablets it's much harder to design
such a thing for them, not just because of the differing physical form factors
but because of the varying capabilities of the cameras themselves.

------
GuiA
The company introduces Osmo, an iPad suite of games for children which uses
the iPad's camera to use physical tiles on a traditional tabletop as input.
The demonstrated games include tangram, a tile based word guessing game, and a
physics-engine based game in which players must draw a path for falling
objects to hit targets.

While the product describes itself as using "reflective artificial
intelligence, a groundbreaking technology that bridges the real and digital
realms for unlimited possibilities of play", it falls under what we in
academic HCI call "tangible interaction", following Shaer & Hornecker's
definition:

 _" Interfaces that are concerned with providing tangible representations to
digital information and controls, allowing users to quite literally grasp data
with their hand and effect functionality by physical manipulations of these
representations."_ [0]

The four claims typically made when introducing tangible interfaces in
products for children are usability benefits, learning benefits, collaboration
benefits, and fun benefits [1]. Osmo does not escape to the rule, claiming all
4 in its marketing copy.

While Osmo does not include any information about research conducted with it
that would demonstrate those claims, similar systems have been proposed in the
past.

The word game is mirrored in Dekel & al's Spelling Bee [2], a game which uses
wooden letter blocks instead of Osmo's Scrabble tiles, and LEDs embedded in
the cubes to provide player feedback. The authors report high engagement from
the test audience (children 7-12), but no learning assessment or long term
engagement study was performed (arguably 2 of the most important metrics).

The tangram game is mirrored in past research projects, including Scarlatos &
al's [3] tangram game. Xie & al's [4] paper performs a user study on 3
implementations of a puzzle game: physical, GUI based, tangible. The authors
report finding same self-reported level of enjoyments from the test users on
all 3. However, they report that repeat play was more significant in the
physical & tangible version of the game, which does not create an argument in
the favor of Osmo. They do report significant gender effects in the way of
collaboration, which could be relevant for Osmo:

 _" While all gender pairings’ mean scores on the Interest and Enjoyment
subscale were nearly the same for the TUI condition, the boy-boy pairs had
significantly higher scores than the girl-girl and girl-boy pairs for the GUI
condition. In addition, the girl-girl pair scores were significantly higher
for the traditional PUI condition than for either of the computational
conditions (GUI, TUI). For girl-girl pairs mean scores for Perceived
Competence subscale were also higher for the PUI condition than for either of
the GUI or TUI conditions. Mean scores for boy-boy pairs were highest for the
GUI condition."_

The last game implemented by Osmo, the physics game, is the least interesting
of the 3 as it has less claims to educational value than the other 2. However,
it is reminiscent of several similar tabletop based tangible systems and
augmented reality systems. [5]

Unfortunately I have to go work now, and the edit window will be over when I'm
back online :( But for readers who found the above interesting, I will leave a
few more relevant papers [6][7][8][9]

[0] Shaer & Hornecker, "Tangible user interfaces: past, present, and future
directions", 2010

[1] Zaman & al., "Editorial: the evolving field of tangible interaction for
children: the challenge of empirical validation", Personal Ubiquitous
Computing, 2012

[2] Dekel & al, "The Spelling Bee: An Augmented Physical Block System that
Knows how to Spell", ACE, 2007

[3] Scarlatos & al, "TICLE: using multimedia multimodal guidance to enhance
learning"

[4] Xie & al, " Are Tangibles More Fun? Comparing Children's Enjoyment and
Engagement Using Physical, Graphical and Tangible User Interfaces ", TEI 2008

[5] Krzywinski & al, "RoboTable: A Tabletop Framework for Tangible Interaction
with Robots in a Mixed Reality"

[6] Antle & al, "Hands on What? Comparing Children’s Mouse-based and Tangible-
based Interaction", IDC 2009

[7] Resnick & al, " Programmable Bricks: Toys to Think With", IBM Systems
Journal, 1996

[8] Price & al, "Let's get physical: Learning Benefits of interacting in
digitally augmented physical spaces" , 2004

[9] Resnick, "Edutainment? No thanks I prefer Playful Learning", 2004

~~~
aresant
Thank you for the well researched and thoughtful post on the potential
"educational" benefit of Osmo.

As a parent I like to think that the top of my list of buying qualifications
be that something is educational and enriching.

But from a product perspective this thing just looks like FUN.

And my reality is that spending $50 for "fun" potential for my little kids is
a no brainer.

That it's interactive and even POTENTIALLY educational is the icing on the
cake, not my primary.

------
Pxtl
It's a neat concept - a nice, polished AR kit. The actual tangram concept is a
bit disappointing though - dragging simple objects around on a flat surface is
already something the iPad excels at. In this case it feels like it's somewhat
obsoleted by modern touch-screens.

Obviously there are cases where touch-screens fail, but simple tangram puzzles
work just fine with them.

I'd be interested in seeing this expanded to things that require too large a
play-area to do conveniently with a tablet, or that involve manipulation that
doesn't correspond to simple dragging (which you can already do well on the
iPad).

Either that or focus on vision-impaired students. Maybe a set of braille
algebra-tiles[1]?

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebra_tile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebra_tile)

~~~
minalecs
I disagree, on the tangram aspect. Most games have an almost auto snap feature
that if you drag the piece close enough it just snaps into place. I like the
fact that it takes more of hand eye coordination and understanding of physical
space for the physical objects to create the shapes on screen.

~~~
ja27
And rotating a tangram on the iPad takes two touchpoints, where the physical
one can be rotated with a single finger.

~~~
cben
Auto-snap, and most importantly _inability_ to rotate, allowed my 1.5yo kid to
solve puzzles when he wasn't yet able to solve wooden puzzles well. After an
intense period of solving those non-stop (I believe it's first time he
strongly experienced the positive reinforcement of winning a game), he also
easily does the wooden puzzles. I don't have any data on whether that's indeed
a win developement-wise, but I'm excited that easy software tweaks (which
would be impractical in physical product — how do you stop one from rotating
pieces?) can dramatically affect kid's ability to engage them.

~~~
Pxtl
My daughter fell in love with a similar non-rotating tangram game at that age,
and that's why it came to mind... tangrams are something that tablets do
_really_ well.

That said, I do see what they mean about rotation. My son took some time to
learn to play Amazing Alex (Rovio's Incredible Machine remake) because of the
clumsy rotation UI in that one.

------
cJ0th
How do these games benefit from including a tablet? From what I can learn from
the video the tablet assists you with counting points and lets you know when
you've arrived at the right answer. Sure, it makes things more convenient. But
what is wrong (from an educational point of view) with letting children add
their points/checking their solutions themselves?

~~~
Shihan
It benefits the companies which sell tables and such games.

If the game benefits from it, I have my doubts.

------
sendos
Great product (at least from an ingenuity point of view; would be interesting
to see how kids react to it)

Side question: What is this style of info presentation called? Basically, a
full-page-width webpage, with very sparse information that slowly shows up as
you scroll down. I'm not too fond of it, but I see it a lot lately, so I
assume it has been shown to lead to higher conversion rates. Does this
presentation style have a name?

------
eykanal
Am I the only one who saw this and was hoping it was an online remake of
Cyan's Cosmic Osmo [1]?

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Osmo_and_the_Worlds_Beyo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Osmo_and_the_Worlds_Beyond_the_Mackerel)

~~~
at-fates-hands
Apparently I'm the only one. I used to play this over at a neighbors house all
the time when I was a little ankle biter.

------
sutterbomb
Looks interesting. I want that technology but just to transfer paper
notes/sketches to digital. I've tried using stylus on iPad for wireframes etc.
but I can't quite get it to work same as sharpie & paper.

~~~
netrus
You might want to try the Google Drive document scanner function!

------
furyofantares
I played with this at the NY toy fair in February. The words game is really
cool, you find yourself digging through letters as quickly as possible while
trying to form the word but you also have to watch to make sure you are
actually on the right track before you shove too many out there, and watch the
other player too. The game is scored by giving you points for getting the word
but you also lose points for every letter you shove in that isn't right. If
you want you can just shove the whole stack in front, you'll instantly solve
the puzzle but with an enormous negative score.

Something about that particular game is an experience I haven't had with
either physical or digital games before, whereas most physical/digital hybrids
I've seem could just as easily be done purely in one or both realms.

The tangram seemed like a bit of a dud for that reason, for example. It is
nice to be able to get hints while playing physical tangrams (it can show you
just the outline but tell you if you have a piece in the right spot), but that
isn't really that much of an improvement over just having the pieces or just
an iPad game.

The physics game where you draw on the pad is a strange demo to me. You can
just do it as a drawing game without the paper, which is a bit less social,
but again, this isn't much of an improvement. What is really cool, though, is
the interactive outline of your hand or any object you put in front of it. But
it doesn't really encourage that in any way, it just feels like a tech demo.

All that said, this product does excite me just because the word game gave me
a feeling I haven't gotten in either a purely physical or purely digital
space.

------
tbolse
There is a similar "augmented reality puzzle game" for adults called Reflow.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reflow/id444083164?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reflow/id444083164?mt=8)

It was released Jun 01, 2012.

------
cmiller1
Did anyone else get excited expecting something related to this?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Osmo_and_the_Worlds_Beyo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Osmo_and_the_Worlds_Beyond_the_Mackerel)

~~~
DonHopkins
Me too! I remember watching some little kids (who are now in their 30's)
delightfully playing Cosmic Osmo, and explaining it to the adults.

------
fiatjaf
At first I thought this was a stupid, idea. In the, I became excited and
envisioned a lot of opportunities for cool games.

I don't know why there are people in this thread talking about school and
education. This is a toy. A toy should not be designed to educate. Kids play
videogames the whole day these days. Osmo could bring them out of the
videogame, make them interact with objects, not to learn, but to play, only.
This should not be confined to small kids games, but also to all kinds of
games, and other uses as well.

------
bullfight
I really like this. It seems to me to be an early approximation of Neal
Stephenson's _A Young Lady 's Illustrated Primer_ from _The Diamond Age_.

A commensurate companion, guide, and teacher. Sure this may only be a few
activities but the responsiveness and seeming magic to it is fantastic.

I particularly like that you can set down a toy in front of the camera and it
renders out a flat illustrated version of that toy.

~~~
DonHopkins
Here's a free "magic" iPad app that I'm developing, which doesn't require any
gadgets!

[http://pantomimecorp.com/](http://pantomimecorp.com/)

[https://search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZContentLink.woa...](https://search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZContentLink.woa/wa/link?mt=8&path=apps%2fpantomime3d)

~~~
dlinder
Hey Don!

I was about to post a link to your new gig when I spotted that you had beaten
me to it!

~~~
DonHopkins
Thanks -- here's a video demonstrating the new networked multi player version
of Pantomime that we're showing at Augmented World Expo! Pantomiming with your
friends in AR is a whole new ball game!

We'll appreciate your vote for "Best Augmented World Video" in the Augmented
World Expo competition, please -- your vote will really help, because we're
currently in second place!

[http://augmentedworldexpo.com/auggie-category/auggies-
best-a...](http://augmentedworldexpo.com/auggie-category/auggies-best-
augmented-world-video/)

Click on the "Pantomime Corporation" entry to see our video of the new multi
player version, which just won the Launch: Silicon Valley World Cup Tech
Challenge in the Digital Media Mobile group.

[http://www.heraldonline.com/2014/05/21/5986165/svforum-
annou...](http://www.heraldonline.com/2014/05/21/5986165/svforum-
announces-2014-winners.html)

------
coreymgilmore
This is a great product. To me, the video (while marketing) showed exactly how
kids would react to something like this. Nowadays, all kids know how to use an
iPad so throwing in the physical pieces as well brings back the "legacy" way
of playing. Plus, it has a nice teaching aspect and i could imagine a dual
iPad "versus" mode to encourage a little competition.

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GhotiFish
To be fair, tangrams are pretty fun. Young me would rather it just show me the
silhouette than showing me where to put the tans though.

------
TruthSHIFT
I love this so much. But, when I step back and look at what you're getting for
$58, I'm wondering why I can't build one myself. It looks like I'll need an
iPad stand, a small mirror, and a fisheye lens.

Then, I'll just use the same apps as the other Osmo users.

~~~
dkrich
Really? How much are a mirror that you have to fashion yourself, a fisheye
lens, and an iPad stand going to cost you? And after you've found all that you
still don't have the games. $58 shipped to you seems pretty reasonable to me.

~~~
joshcrowder
My thoughts exactly $58 is a decent price, there are a lot of scrooges in
here. The argument of "geez i can build this in a day and the materials will
cost me less than 10 bucks" are tiresome and stupid. If you value your time at
more than $2 an hour its a good price.

------
mmcclure
I have siblings with kids (and iPads) so this looks like a perfect timeline
for a Christmas present...but it's never a good sign when you try to give
someone money and they won't take your CC because they're doing validation
wrong.

-_-

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danielweber
Okay, I don't get the product, but I'm impressed that as you scroll down the
screen, the Osmo drops onto the iPad, and then the iPad drops into its holder.

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mcosta
The hate here, I believe, is because the ad is very artificial and the the
children are clearly acting. Too obvious.

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rwhitman
I wonder if there are other use cases for a little iPad augmented reality app
on a stand beyond kids stuff

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rainmaking
Needing to give kids an iPad raises all sorts of issues: Cost, breakage,
internet exposure...

I would be very likely to buy a self-contained colored digital etch-a-sketch
that logs everything ever drawn on it, which I can later put on my computer.

I know that would be very big brother of me, but it's for cute's sake!

~~~
thoughtpalette
it's really simple to turn kiosk mode on in your iPad. It makes the app full
screen and you can only exit out with a pin you set up when you launch kiosk.

------
druidsbane
I would love to see this with a giant screen. The iPad is great but kids needs
space and room to play. Great start and I really feel that things like this
will have a great impact in the future.

~~~
dpark
I'm sure this would be fun on a giant screen, but it's not necessary. Kids
play with tablets and phones all the time. Large screens are not a
prerequisite for enjoyable playtime.

------
rainmaking
Not a bad idea in the last, but I strongly suspect my kids would be more
interested in creatively disassembling the iPad than playing with Osmo.

------
sergiotapia
If I lived in the states I would buy one for my kids in a heartbeat. The
newton game looks like something even I would enjoy! Great job guys!

~~~
fasteo
Just ordered one for Spain. They do ship internationally.

------
joshcrowder
I don't have any kids but I'm buying one this is awesome - Looking forward to
getting one of these to play with.

------
camus2
Looks SO awesome! that's the kind of article i like to see on HN!.Looks
great,cant wait my kids to try that.

------
huhtenberg
Looks great, but it really needs an independent review.

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artellectual
I am definitely getting this for my daughter.

------
pastaking
This is brilliant! Amazing job guys!

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cristyansv
looks like a google product

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digitalpacman
This blew me away.

------
radmuzom
Poor website. Till I read the comments here, I could not figure out in 30
seconds what the product does except that it uses artificial intelligence.

------
rplnt
What's with the weird space between "Pre" and "Order Osmo" in the header?
Also, the percentage doesn't add up. Or is it supposed to be with shipping?

By the way, the price is ridiculous. Even the discounted one. That puzzle
sells for about 4$ (that's with profit), let's be generous and say that the
app itself is worth $10 (which it isn't) and we are left with $85 for a mirror
embedded in plastic? Shipping not included?!

That being said, nice idea, I haven't seen it done before. Possibilities to
extend this are great.

~~~
rplnt
Constructive criticism (first two questions) and explanation why the price is
insane downvoted without single response. Awesome job.

