The brief for create-a-make was to create an online creative toy for children based upon the “Here’s one we prepared earlier” part of the show. The toy needed to be simple to use but provide a wide range of tools for children to create a variety of objects, from space rockets to castles, out of a variety of discarded household objects such as toilet rolls and matchboxes. After a lot of thinking about what was so much fun about making such things as a child (apart from the joy of creation itself ), two aspects really stood out: the pleasure of building things with your hands and the fun of playing with what you had made.

Rather than create a static canvas for people to lay out their creations, the design aimed to include these two key aspects. As a result the user interface was designed to feel more like a game than a 3D modelling package. Havok was used to simulate the physics and give it a real-world feel so the objects could collide and be stuck to each other as well as reacting to gravity and springs. This design managed to simplify the interface while also feeling more true to the original concept: rather than clicking on arrows to move the objects, you literally had to pick them up and pull them about putting the tactileness of creation to the fore.