Understanding young Children’s physical activity levels with digital toys: lessons for the design and evaluation of tangible interactions

• Digital toys support physical activity and movement skills in young children. • Physical affordances drive embodied engagement in interactive toy play. • Multi-sensory feedback sustains physical activity through playful interaction. • Design insights for tangible interactions promoting active play in early childhood. • Combined ActiGraph and OSRAC-H coding enables comprehensive activity intensity assessment. Digital toys have the potential to address insufficient physical activity in young children, particularly when designed with tangible interactions that leverage the physicality of objects to encourage embodied movement. However, their effectiveness remains underexplored. This exploratory study observed 20 children aged 3–5 interacting with three digital toys incorporating tangible interactions, to examine how such toys may support physical activity and how specific design features relate to the enactment of movement skills. We used the Activity Classification Model (ACM) and the Observational System for Recording Physical Activity in Children-Home (OSRAC-H) to classify activity types and intensity during play. Findings from this small-scale sample indicate that a toy’s physical design features are a primary driver of observed physical activity; while digital features, particularly auditory prompts and feedback, provide continuous digital input that may support ongoing physically active interaction. We also reflect on the relative suitability of ACM and OSRAC-H for evaluating physical activity intensity in young children’s play with digital toys.