BRAIN KINGDOM

AHA! Brain

Brain science, made tangible through play.

A story-led mystery box with four DIY STEM challenges, turning invisible brain functions into things children can build, touch, and explore.

Become the world’s greatest magician—and discover the magic inside your own mind.

A girl playing with the AHA! Brain Memory Camera inside a teal paper-cut frame

RECOGNIZEDFEATUREDLOVED

Amazon’s Choice badge — **Amazon’s Choice**

Amazon — Small Business Gift Guide

Featured in Kiddos MagazineOctober–November 2022 · p. 24

Sold at eslite bookstores in Taiwan

01 / DESIGN OPPORTUNITY

What if children could discover how their brains work through play?

Brain science can feel abstract to young children. Concepts such as memory, planning, and perception are difficult to understand through explanation alone.

A child laughing while looking up through the green Memory Camera

Play before education.

Guided by this MEandMine principle, I explored how invisible brain functions could become hands-on challenges children could build, experiment with, and discover for themselves.

The experience was developed with reference to K–3 STEM standards, aiming to encourage problem-solving and confidence through play.

The complete AHA! Brain kit: game box, storybook, maze board, Memory Camera, magic trick prop, and yellow cup

AHA! Brain box, storybook, instruction booklet, and DIY toy parts laid out on a yellow background

02 / READ · BUILD · PLAY

From a magician’s story to magic in their hands.

01 READ
Enter the Brain Kingdom
Follow the magician through four Brain Kingdoms, each inspired by a different lobe of the human brain, in an illustrated story with an accompanying online audiobook.
02 BUILD
Bring the Magic to Life
Assemble four DIY projects using the included instruction booklet, turning ideas from the story into physical objects.
03 PLAY
Discover Through Play
Experiment with the toys, try different possibilities, and discover the brain functions behind each interaction.

03 / MAKING MEMORY VISIBLE

TEMPORAL LOBE · MEMORY CAMERA

One moment. Different emotional perspectives.

The temporal lobe contributes to memory and emotional processing. The Memory Camera translates the relationship between emotion and memory into a tangible metaphor: viewing the same event through different emotional lenses.

A child in a yellow striped top inserts a red lens into the green Memory Camera, with a blue lens on the table

The Memory Camera with illustrated memory cards, red and blue lenses, and the instruction booklet

A hand lowers a red lens into the Memory Camera beside a memory card

A child in a green floral outfit looks through the Memory Camera with an illustrated memory card in place

The changing image becomes the moment of discovery—an abstract idea children can explore through their own actions.

The same bicycle scene seen through the blue lens, showing a sad expression — BLUE LENS

The same bicycle scene seen through the red lens, showing a happy expression — RED LENS

Each memory card combines two illustrations in red and blue. Looking through different colored lenses makes different parts of the image stand out, revealing contrasting interpretations of the same occasion.

MEMORY + EMOTION → DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES → A PHYSICAL LENS

04 / PLANNING THROUGH PLAY

Every roll begins with a plan.

3D Maze · A ball follows the route down the slope

FRONTAL LOBE · 3D MAZE

The frontal lobe supports planning, problem-solving, and decision-making. The 3D Maze turns these processes into a challenge children build before they play.

01 / SHAPE THE ROUTE

Children choose modular pieces, plan a route down the slope, and release the ball toward a goal. When the route fails, they observe what happened and adjust their design.

A child's hands arrange route pieces on the 3D Maze on a light wooden floor — CONFIGURE

A hand holds the ball at the top of the sloped 3D Maze with route pieces and green goal guards in place — TEST

02 / KEEP EXPLORING

Different modules and difficulty levels create new possibilities, encouraging children to keep experimenting.

Two siblings sit on the floor building the 3D Maze together

A father and daughter assemble the 3D Maze at a wooden table

Two children at a kitchen table with the 3D Maze, one smiling with raised fists

PLAN → BUILD → TEST → ADJUST

05 / COMPLETE SYSTEM

Four hands-on challenges. One magician's quest.

The Memory Camera and 3D Maze belong to a complete system of four DIY activities, each connecting a Brain Kingdom with a different function.

The complete AHA! Brain kit: open maze box, game packaging, storybook, instruction booklet, Memory Camera, and DIY toy parts on a rug with sunflowers

Four-part collage of the toys around a colored brain: 3D Maze for problem solving, sensory cups for temperature, Memory Camera for memory and emotion, and the visual processing toy

FRONTAL LOBE · 3D Maze: Plan a route. Test an idea. Solve a problem.
PARIETAL LOBE · Sensory Exploration: Explore touch and sensory experiences.
TEMPORAL LOBE · Memory Camera: Discover how emotion can shape perspective.
OCCIPITAL LOBE · Visual Perception: Explore vision and visual perception.

Detail of the Four Brain Kingdoms illustration on the AHA! Brain box lid

A hand lifts the Memory Camera materials out of the box beside the open instruction booklet

Together, the story, instruction booklet, and four toys create a continuous adventure: children follow the magician, build their own tools, and return to them through play.

The brain becomes a world they can actively explore.

06Behind the Design

Simplifying the experience while preserving the learning goal.

06-01 / MEMORY CAMERA

From Color Experiments to Camera

Pink and white handmade camera prototype with its sliding card tray open, three illustrated emotion cards, and six colored lenses laid out beside it

I tested colored cellophane over layered illustrations to explore how different lenses could reveal different emotional perspectives. I then developed a camera-shaped prototype with interchangeable lenses and built-in card storage.

Sheets of colored cellophane laid over printed color charts to test how each color changes what is visible

Six Lenses → Two

The first prototype used six colors based on MEandMine's emotion categories (Happiness · Sadness · Fear · Disgust · Anger · Surprise). Testing showed that red and blue produced the clearest results.

Six-lens prototype

Two-lens prototype

Reducing the design to two lenses simplified production and lowered costs while preserving the idea of viewing the same event through different emotional perspectives.

A zoo illustration with a lion, a child and a girl, seen through the red lens so the word DISGUST stands out and FEAR fades — RED LENS

The same zoo illustration seen through the blue lens — BLUE LENS

06-02 / 3D MAZE

Simplifying the Build

Maze parts laid flat: a white cardboard stand, a perforated wooden panel marked START, a wooden frame, a wooden ball, a row of wooden pegs, four yellow hooked path pieces, and a small pink piece

The first push-pin maze was too difficult for children aged four to eight to assemble and costly to produce.

A hand holds the upright push-pin maze prototype, a white perforated panel behind a clear acrylic front, on a green cutting mat while fingers press round pins into the holes and a metal ball rests in the bottom slot

I developed a foldable stand with modular path pieces, prototyping with cardboard and reusing foam and wooden balls already used in other MEandMine's products to reduce material cost and management effort.

Top view of the first structure being assembled: hands set the perforated wooden maze panel into its frame, then hold a flat white cardboard stand behind it, with a wooden ball, pegs and path pieces laid out below — Form 01

Top view of the second structure being assembled: a flat white cardboard cut-out and a perforated sheet are folded into a box-shaped tray, then hands hold it upright and place pegs into its holes beside a wooden ball and a blue part — Form 02

Testing structures children could assemble themselves.

Testing the Paths

Top view of the maze board: hands place yellow-green hooked path pieces and wooden pegs, a wooden ball is released, and it ends in the goal hole at the lower right — Track 01

Top view of the maze board: hands place blue rectangular path pieces and wooden pegs, a wooden ball is released, and it ends in the goal hole at the lower right — Track 02

Close top view of the maze board: hands place slanted green path pieces and a flat green piece, a wooden ball is released, and it ends in the goal hole at the lower right — Track 03

Build. Test. Adjust.

Keeping Planning at the Center

I also explored a tilting maze, but guiding the ball through movement shifted the focus away from planning.

Tilting maze

Slope-based maze

I chose the slope-based design so children could plan their route before testing it, then learn by adjusting their decisions.

07 / IMPACT & REFLECTION

07-01 / MARKET RECOGNITION

From Imagination to Market.

Amazon’s Choice · Amazon Small Business Gift Guide · Featured in Kiddos Magazine · Sold at eslite bookstores in Taiwan.

MEandMine display with AHA! Brain boxes and a Memory Camera demo on a wooden shelf inside an eslite bookstore — Sold at eslite bookstores in Taiwan.

Entrance of the eslite children’s bookstore with a MEandMine display in the window — Sold at eslite bookstores in Taiwan.

Amazon’s Choice badge above the AHA! Brain box, storybook, and DIY toy parts — Amazon’s Choice

Amazon Small Business Gift Guide promotional graphic featuring AHA! Brain — Amazon Small Business Gift Guide

Kiddos Magazine cover, October–November 2022 — Kiddos Magazine
October–November 2022 · p. 24

Kiddos Magazine page 24 with the AHA! Brain feature — Kiddos Magazine
October–November 2022 · p. 24

What Families Say

Selected Amazon customer reviews

1 / 3

Sources: MEandMine · Amazon · Kiddos Magazine

07-02 / MY ROLE & REFLECTION

Designing Within Constraints.

My Role

I worked on the redesign of the existing AHA! Brain kit, focusing on the Frontal and Temporal Lobe activities. I developed and tested the Memory Camera and 3D Maze prototypes, refining their interactions, structures, and assembly.

I then handed the prototypes and design direction to the team for final form development and manufacturing.

Reflection

Redesigning an existing product meant working within an established kit structure and overall cost target. Each improvement had to balance play value with material costs and assembly complexity.

Reducing the number of lenses, simplifying the maze structure, and reusing materials from other MEandMine products taught me to make deliberate trade-offs. I learned to simplify what children needed to build while preserving what the activities invited them to think about.