Design & Play Photobooth

Designing something of your own is far too good a feeling to reserve for one age group. Parents love it every bit as much as their children do, and they tell us so out loud. So we set out to build a way in that anyone could walk straight into — open to every age, quick enough to fit into an afternoon, and best of all when a family makes something side by side.

So we built one everybody could play

Make Your Own Character, our hour-and-a-half character-design workshop, is a whole immersive world to walk through — a proper morning out. Design & Play is the same idea, sized to fit a walk past the shops. Pull back a mint curtain, put a hand on a yellow joystick, and in under five minutes there is a creature on the screen that did not exist when you arrived.

The whole thing: a curtain, two screens, and a slot that hands you a card.

It was built for two from the start. There are controls for a pair of players, so the designing happens shoulder to shoulder — a parent and a child, two friends, two teenagers cheerfully disagreeing about horns. Ideas get better when they are handed back and forth, and half the pleasure is seeing somebody else pick the part you would never have picked.

Two children, one grown-up's hand, one creature taking shape.

Five minutes to invent something that never existed

Body first. Then ears, eyes, a nose, arms, legs, a tail. Then colour, then pattern, then a shelf of accessories that changes with whatever theme the booth is dressed in. These are the same parts our workshop characters are made from, arriving now at arcade speed, one button press at a time.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, a little wooden sign swings up on the screen and asks what to call you, and everything turns a shade more personal. What is standing there stops being a set of parts somebody chose and starts being somebody's.

Two players, two creatures, one screen — every part chosen by hand.

Get in the picture, then play with it

Pick a frame from the layouts, and the lower screen turns into a camera. SAY CHEEEEEEEESE. A green countdown, a scramble to get everyone in, and there is your creature standing in the photograph beside you, on the same day you invented it. That is the memory the booth is quietly making: you and the thing you just made, in the same picture.

Then the character goes to work. Balloons rise over a green field with a picnic basket swinging underneath and your creatures riding along in it, two pairs of hands back on the buttons. This is where it stops being a drawing: the thing you designed a moment ago is a game piece now, and you are playing as it.

It follows you home

A card slides out under the yellow PICK UP HERE sign — four photos in cloud-shaped frames, your character printed in among them, and along the bottom edge the names of whoever made it. A little newspaper comes with it too: THE LITTLELOT NEWS, reporting that a new species has been created, your creature's parts labelled like a field guide. Outside, a corkboard carries the cards other people pinned up before they walked off.

The board fills up as the day goes on.

And it carries on past the booth. Every character is kept, so you can go and find yours online afterwards and put it onto things — stickers, posters, postcards, business cards, Post-its — and have them arrive at your door. A face you invented in five minutes, printed on the notes you leave on the fridge.

What you carry out: a newspaper about your new species, and a photo card with it in the picture.

It has travelled since — Mega Bangna, The Commons Thonglor, Museum Siam, MAPPA, a science fair — and wherever it goes it does the one thing we built it to do: it hands the joystick to whoever wants a turn. Five minutes, two people, one character nobody else could have made, and a card in your pocket to prove it. If you are dreaming up a kids event, an interactive installation, or a corner where families could design something together, we would love to hear where you would put it.