MKM Benchmark #3- 3D MODELING

MoodRooms is a light-up dollhouse designed to explore how children ages 3–9 use color and light to shape emotion, storytelling, and imaginative play. Each room features a color-changing light that allows children to adjust the mood of the space. By changing colors, children can signal calm, excitement, safety, or fantasy, using light as a nonverbal way to express feelings and build narratives.

This project began with questions about how color and light influence emotional experience, often without conscious awareness. While lighting is carefully designed in adult spaces to shape mood and atmosphere, children are rarely given control over these elements despite being highly sensitive to sensory environments. The project asks why lighting in children’s spaces is treated as functional rather than expressive, and what might change if children were allowed to use light as a tool for storytelling and emotional expression during play.

What Research Questions Did It Answer? 

• How does color influence how we feel, even when we’re not consciously thinking about it?
  
  

• How does light change the emotional tone of a space without changing anything else?
  
  

• Why is light so powerful in film and art environments, but treated as purely functional in other spaces?
  
  

• What audiences are overlooked when it comes to expressive or mood-based lighting?
  (→ children)
  
  

• How could light itself become part of play rather than just background infrastructure?
  
  

• What would it look like to design a toy around atmosphere?

If light shapes how we feel, why don’t children get to play with it?

View the short research paper here.

The prototyping process for the light-up dollhouse focused on quickly testing the core idea rather than creating a polished final object. I began by making 2D visual models in Canva to explore how different colored rooms might function together and how lighting could visually divide emotional spaces. Working in 2D allowed me to iterate quickly and clarify the concept before committing to physical materials. 

Alongside this, Isabella created three small humanoid figures in different colors to interact with the lighting environments. These figures were 3D modeled, printed, and hand-painted, allowing her to develop her skills in 3D modeling and printing while also considering how characters might visually respond to different colored lights. She also printed and painted a cat figure as part of this exploration. The figures helped ground the lighting concept in play, showing how characters might exist within and react to different emotional spaces.

I 3D printed a single room for the physical prototype. The print itself is visibly messy, largely because I did not add enough supports during the printing process. While this resulted in structural imperfections, it became an important learning experience for me in understanding the limitations of 3D printing and the importance of preparation. Despite these flaws, the room still successfully communicates the core idea of the project: that lighting alone can dramatically change how a space feels and how play unfolds within it.

To test lighting, I attached a battery-powered, remote-controlled puck light to the ceiling of the room. This proved to be one of the most effective and convenient solutions for prototyping. The puck light allowed for easy color changes without complicated wiring, making it especially suitable for a child-focused design. This test led to the idea of using slide-in puck lights for a future version of the dollhouse. These lights could be tightened or loosened for replacement, have swappable batteries, and be controlled both by pressing the puck directly and by a remote. Including both interaction methods accounts for the reality that children may lose remotes while still keeping the system intuitive and accessible.

Overall, the prototyping process emphasized experimentation, learning through mistakes, and prioritizing clarity of concept over refinement. The physical model, though imperfect, effectively demonstrates how simple lighting solutions can support emotional and imaginative play, and it provides a strong foundation for future iterations of the project.