The Story Mat prototype is a quilt Ryokai's mother made when Ryokai was a child. The quilt depicts a townscape including houses, trees, lakes, and a meandering railroad track, and Ryokai spent hours as a child telling stories on the mat by moving stuffed animals or other toys across it. For reasons long forgotten, many of Ryokai's stories took place on a patch of quilt bearing a parking lot with seven numbered spaces. With Story Mat, Ryokai hopes to provide a link to stories previously told. A basic voice recorder picks up the verbal story and a mat-sized sensor under the quilt captures the travels of the toys.
Children can retrace their routes on the quilt, guided by an overhead projector casting a beam.
Originally, the toy used a wireless mouse, but that could only register relative position and would be interrupted if the mouse broke contact with the quilt. Touching a toy to a particular location on the Story Mat may activate the audio and visual record of an earlier story. Ryokai said her mother was surprised, but pleased, that Ryokai is basing her graduate work at MIT on the quilt. The Media Lab is chock-full of stuffed animals. The Story Mat toys are down the hall from chickens in varying states of assembly.