SolidWorks · Mechanism Design · Design for 3D Printing · Product Ideation
SPILLED (Spin Pull Interactive Language Learning Edu-tainment Device) is a Bop It-style handheld that drills Spanish vocabulary through timed physical actions instead of screen taps — I modeled two of its three interactive triggers and its original 3D-printed enclosure as part of the design team on FLiNT’s Omega Build Team.
Role: Design team — CAD and concept | Team: Three sub-teams (design, hardware, software) | Timeframe: FLiNT membership, October 2023 – April 2024
The problem#
Vocabulary drilling for kids is dominated by screen-based apps that compete for attention with everything else on the same device. The team set out to build a physical, single-purpose toy that teaches Spanish words through reflex and motion — a format young children already understand from Bop It — so that practice feels like a game rather than another app session.
What I built#
I was on the design team, which owned the device’s overall form and its CAD models; a separate hardware team handled wiring and Raspberry Pi integration, and a software team wrote the Python word database and response timers. I contributed to the early ideation that set the interaction model — multiple physical triggers around a central display — then modeled two of the three triggers in SolidWorks: a mushroom-shaped “Mush It” button and a carrot-shaped “Pull It” handle. A teammate modeled the third. I also modeled an original body concept designed to be 3D printed and to read as a finished consumer product rather than a prototyping rig.
Results#
- Modeled 2 of the device’s 3 interactive trigger mechanisms in SolidWorks, both designed for 3D printing in plastic filament.
- Designed an original enclosure concept aimed at a finished, injection-molded-looking product instead of an exposed-hardware prototype.
- Worked directly against the hardware team’s breadboard and Raspberry Pi layout, revising trigger and panel geometry to fit the wiring it had to contain.
- The team completed a working prototype after I stepped back from the project to focus on Lemon the Train.
What I’d flag about it#
My enclosure isn’t what shipped. After I left, the team replaced it with a two-panel wood housing that was faster to cut and easier to iterate on between prototype rounds. That was the right call for their timeline, and it’s a clean illustration of a tradeoff I’d weigh differently now: I had designed for what the finished product should look like, on a team that still needed to change the design every week. Designing for manufacturability means designing for the stage the project is actually in.