Baukunst x level - The Future of Kids Tech
Nichole Rouillac, founder and creative director of level, sits down with Baukunst to explore how thoughtful industrial design can create better technology for kids and families.
As technology becomes an increasingly integral part of family life, designers face an important question: How can we create technology for kids without letting technology take over childhood?
That question is at the heart of a new Baukunst feature, The Art of Building Family-Focused Technology, highlighting level founder Nichole Rouillac and her approach to designing a new generation of thoughtful, family-focused products.
The feature explores how Nichole’s perspective as an industrial designer, technologist, founder, and mother has shaped level’s growing body of work in kids tech and products for the home.
Designing Better Technology for Kids
At level, we believe great technology for kids should do more than put another screen in front of them. It should encourage movement, creativity, independence, connection, and play.
Baukunst looks at this philosophy through several recent level projects, including Nex Playground, the camera-based active gaming system; Skylight Buddy, a companion designed to help children build routines and independence; and Starhaven, a portable inflatable adventure bed for families.
Each is different, but they share a fundamental design challenge: creating products that work for children while also earning the trust of parents and feeling at home in thoughtfully designed spaces.
The Role of Industrial Design in Kids Tech
Designing kids tech requires understanding that children interact with physical products differently from adults.
Scale, tactility, color, materials, durability, and opportunities for personalization can all influence whether a child intuitively understands and connects with a product.
The Baukunst feature highlights how these considerations informed level’s industrial design approach to products such as Nex Playground and Skylight Buddy.
For Nex Playground, level created a compact, approachable form that feels more like a familiar object in the home than a conventional gaming console. The design also addresses parental trust through a simple physical camera cover that makes privacy visible and understandable.
With Skylight Buddy, physical interaction became equally important. Its oversized button creates an intuitive tactile experience for younger children, while opportunities for personalization recognize that products increasingly become expressions of identity as kids grow.
These details reflect a larger idea behind our work: technology for kids should be designed around how children actually experience the world, not simply adapted from technology designed for adults.
Bringing Physicality Back to Technology
The Baukunst conversation also explores a shift toward more tactile and intentionally simple technology.
As digital experiences have become increasingly screen-based, there is renewed value in buttons, physical controls, materials, and objects that children can touch, understand, and interact with directly.
For level, that physicality isn't nostalgia. It's an opportunity for industrial design to make technology more intuitive, expressive, and human.
This approach is especially meaningful when designing for children. Thoughtful physical interactions can encourage curiosity and play while giving kids a clearer understanding of what a product does and how they control it.
A More Thoughtful Future for Kids Tech
The next generation of kids tech doesn't have to be defined by more screens, more notifications, or more time spent online.
Technology can help children move, create, learn, develop independence, and connect with their families. The opportunity for designers and technology companies is to create products with those outcomes intentionally built into the experience.
As Baukunst's profile of Nichole illustrates, industrial design has an important role to play in shaping that future, creating technology that children want to engage with, parents feel good about bringing home, and families can integrate into everyday life on their own terms.
Read Baukunst's full feature, The Art of Building Family-Focused Technology, to learn more about Nichole Rouillac, level, and our approach to designing technology for children and families.
