Roominate toy is brainchild of Stanford engineers Bettina Chen and Alice Brooks

by Susan Rebecca Fisk, Clayman Institute

Sabine sat cross-legged on the floor fiddling with a miniature fan to find the "optimal" position so the blade would blow the right amount of air into the dollhouse she was building. She also wanted to add a disco ball. After a few unsuccessful attempts Sabine realized she needed to brace it in the back because the ball was too heavy.

Nope, this is not your average dollhouse. Sabine was building a room with Roominate, the DIY, wired dollhouse kit that encourages girls to build, create, solve problems, and develop confidence in their abilities. The creators of Roominate, both recent MS graduates from Stanford's engineering department, recently held a playdate at the Clayman Institute to introduce the toy to a group of fourth-grade girls.

Girls gathered at the Clayman Institute for a Roominate playdate. (Source: Clayman Institute)

“Roominate allowed Sabine to combine her mutual love of engineering and creativity, which are linked, but often disconnected in the classroom,” said Sabine’s mother Sigrid Close, assistant professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford.

Childhood play experiences are essential for children to develop spatial skills, problem-solving abilities, and confidence to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, known as "STEM" fields. However, girls’ toys are less likely than boys’ toys to cultivate STEM interest and skills. Studies find that girls’ toys are more likely to focus on enhancing physical attractiveness, domestic skills, and care-taking work than boys’ toys, which generally build spatial awareness and problem solving. As a result, girls are disadvantaged relative to boys when it comes to STEM fields, even before they have thought about their careers.

The creators of Roominate, Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen, didn’t grow up playing with traditional girl toys. When Brooks asked for a Barbie her father gave her a mini-saw. Chen adored Legos and built hundreds of extravagant creations with her brothers. These experiences, they agree, led them into engineering: Brooks majored in mechanical engineering at MIT, while Bettina studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. When they met as graduate students at Stanford, said Chen, “We thought that there’d be a lot more women in grad school, but there weren’t.” 

“We both had that baseline of confidence because of the things we played with,” said Brooks. “You are going to have to keep adding to that confidence as you get older to deal with things like guys at MIT saying that you got in because you’re a girl.” 

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