Remember your favorite stuffed toy, when you were a kid?

What if that teddy bear, dog, cat or otherwise had really been able to interact with you?

Meet Octobo, a blue plush octopus.  He’s equipped with sensors and designed to work through your tablet.

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And his goal, says creator Yuting Su, is to get families playing together and sharing stories.

Yuting is the founder and CEO of Thinker-Tinker creative lab, in Los Angeles.  On her website, she describes herself as a “thinker, tinker and dreamer”.

For Yuting, Octobo represents the latest in a series of interactive projects.   With professional degrees in both the medical field and interactive media design, her past work has included “Curiouser and Curiouser”, an interactive pop-up book based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; and the augmented-reality urban puzzle game “pocketOULO”.

Currently, Yuting is planning a Kickstarter campaign for Octobo, which has already garnered award nominations and been selected for the Electronic Entertainment Expo‘s 2016 IndieCade.

Yuting, who recently exhibited Octobo at TechDay L.A. 2017, shared the story of creating her interactive octopus, some of the resources that worked well for her, during the creative process and her thoughts on the ways she’d like her stuffed toy to improve her young customers’ lives.

On this edition of Over Coffee®, you’ll hear:

• How Yuting first became interested in creating interactive experiences;

• How she and her team came to create Octobo;

• Why Yuting decided on an octopus for her interactive plush toy;

• The steps she and her team took, from coming up with a concept to making Octobo a reality;

• An important point of focus for Yuting and her team–and for any startup–in developing a new product;

• How Octobo works;

• One of the best reactions Yuting and her team saw, when exhibiting Octobo to young prospective clients;

• Resources Yuting found helpful (including an innovative “new-ways-to-play” website that may inspire your next fantastic idea!).