Subject:
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Re: LEGO, kids, and how it has come to this
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Mon, 10 May 2004 23:12:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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842 times
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In lugnet.general, Ted Michon wrote:
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In lugnet.general, Brian Davis wrote:
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.. I’ve always found the Lego instructions to in
some regards be the most amazing portions of the models - that you can come
up with a clear, language-independent way of directing the assembling of
several hundred individual pieces, *and* have it instantly understandable by
a 5 year old, just floors me. But I do sometimes wonder if some of my
college students could do it (frankly, I suspect some of them couldn’t).
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We’ve always been happy with the LEGO directions and admire that they work
across all languages, but there is a certain amount of assumed knowledge that
the directions don’t spell out. The directions don’t explicitly tell you to
find a part based on it its type, color, and stud dimensions. That’s
something most of us learn by experience or that we brilliant LUGNET types
were born knowing. The directions make it difficult to tell lt gr from dk gr
from bk. My visitors stumbled when they had to insert a 2 x 2 under a larger
brick -- it was not obvious that the studs (usually) don’t go in the holes,
but rather between them. The biggest stumbling block is that the directions
don’t tell say to carefully compare the current step with the previous step
to find what is different. (Some directions show all the parts that will be
used in a given step, which helps. This set was not documented that way. I
think some way to highlight the parts that get added in a step would be a
plus for LEGO to consider adding.) These are examples of things that could
have been explained if the directions were in English or Danish or Swahili.
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I personally doubt my experience would have been as good had I not had the
“trial and error” phases early. I think this engenders persistance, which is IMO
a Good Thing. Sure, they may get frustrated today, but more than likely they’ll
go back to it tomorrow and try again. A little help is good, too, but I think
that is better handled by family/friends than instructions - it then becomes a
lesson in teamwork too.
With regard to instruction colours, I think this is a direct result of the the
abundance of new colours. While most people here would, I think, welcome many of
the new colours in the last few years, it does present a problem for LEGO when
producing instructions. I too still have problems distinguishing some colours
like black/dk grey, and it can be frustrating searching the parts to find which
colour the part is in. I can’t think of an easy way around this problem, besides
reducing the colour palette, which I think would be a backwards step.
ROSCO
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: LEGO, kids, and how it has come to this
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| (...) Oh, they understood that the directions held the key, but using the directions was outside their experience. (...) We've always been happy with the LEGO directions and admire that they work across all languages, but there is a certain amount (...) (20 years ago, 10-May-04, to lugnet.general, FTX)
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