A Playground for My Kids' Web Toys
Every 'can I try something like this?' turned into a little web toy — until they scattered everywhere, and I gathered them into one playground, one folder per toy.
Sometimes a kid says, 'I want to try something like this.' A chemistry experiment. A card battle game. Each time, I'd build a little web toy that evening or over the weekend — chemistry play, a card battle, a sliding puzzle, quizzes. Each one was fun to make. The problem came after: they were scattered all over, so the kids kept asking 'where's that one?' and I kept hunting for URLs.
One folder, one toy
So I built a playground. The structure is as simple as it gets: one folder is one toy. Adding a new toy means adding a folder, nothing more — so however many more 'I want to try's are coming, there's no dread. Everything opens straight in the browser with no install, and progress saves to the cloud, so a game started on the living-room tablet picks up on a phone in the car.
The kid's request is the spec
This playground has no roadmap. What the next toy will be is decided by the kids. Looking back, this might be a miniature of the whole lab: the need and the curiosity come first, and the tool follows. It may be the only way to end up with things that get used without ever writing a plan.
Where it stands
It's finished and my kids use it happily. For now, though, it's open only behind the family login. It's a space where children play, so I'm even more careful about opening it up than with the other apps.