Design

We knew some of the needs of the kiosk—that it must be easy to clean, durable, and "friendly" looking. We also knew there could be no doubt in a six-year-old's mind that this is a toy. And since we didn't have much experience with different types of touchscreen or wheelchair accessibility, we began looking for a designer with some more experience in the field. Adam Aronson of Arc Design proved to be just the man for the job.

After asking several fabricators to bid on the actual construction, we decided to work with some classmates of ours we knew we could trust—Interbots.

The Positive

Interbots used a C&C router to make the original foam shape onto which a resin would be laid. By doing so, they were able to make an extremely faithful recreation of the digital model. It took five days for the machine to finish; after that, the sanding began.

The layers of foam were glued together, smoothed out, and then a resin shell was added. The team spent many, many hours waxing and smoothing the positive, preparing it for casting into a (negative) mold.

The Mold

We could have made the resin into the actual kiosk, but Children's Hospital encouraged us to take the time and build a negative mold so that we could make more kiosks easily in the future.

Assembly

Once the fiberglass was cast in the mold, it was assembled, sanded, and polished. Then it was painted. Finally, the touchscreen and computer were added.

Installation

On June 22, 2006 we bolted our first kiosk to the waiting room floor and turned it on for the first time.