Instructions Plus app upgraded to allow collaborative building
Posted by Huw,
The first project to come to fruition from LEGO's Lead User Lab has launched. Called Build Together, it provides a way to build sets in a collaborative way using the Instructions Plus app which is available in the Play Store and App store. Here's the press release:
The LEGO Group has unveiled a new beta building experience that will soon be available on the LEGO Building Instructions app, called Build Together. The innovative feature opens a new dimension of interactive building, designed to multiply play value while turning LEGO building into a social, cooperative activity, that both families and friends can enjoy together.
LEGO Fan Dominik Brachmanski from Germany is the mastermind behind the idea, which is now being rolled out globally as a beta version with the aim of testing and gathering valuable insights on how to optimise this interactive experience before potentially scaling and adding more products. The beta experience currently supports six LEGO sets (with more to come) and will be available in all languages supported in the LEGO Building Instructions app. The experience is going to be promoted to English-speaking markets only.
“I originally started playing with the idea of a new co-building experience back in 2017, and since pitching it to the LEGO Group in early 2020 it’s been an honour to oversee the many iterations that have helped shape the feature to where it is at now. It’s been a long time coming, and I’ve been fully determined to see this project through, but it’s only been possible thanks to support from members of the AFOL community, close friends and people within the LEGO Group who believed in the idea and contributed to it,” says Dominik Brachmanski, LEGO Fan and Inventor of Build Together.
“There’s a saying: If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. I am excited to discover, where the journey will go from here and I hope “Build Together” will entertain and inspire many people out there,” Brachmanski continues.
How it works
The experience can cater for a group of players of up to five people. Each builder needs their own smart device, either a phone or tablet with an active data connection to download the Building Instructions app, if they don’t already have this installed. The team will need one of the Build Together Enabled SKU’s to connect to a session. Players will then have to scan the QR code on the physical building instructions booklet to join together as a team. Once everyone has joined the session they can start building together!
The Build Together experience personalises the steps to each connected builder and will continue to give new tasks as soon as they have finished one. During the build, each person will be told to pass a mini build on to one of the other builders for them to then progress the build. In the end, the final model will be exactly the same as if had it been built the traditional way.
“When Dominik shared the idea of enabling LEGO sets to be built together with more people in a new social and engaging way, we immediately thought this was a great invention that we wanted to make available to many more fans. It’s been a pleasure maturing the experience in close collaboration with Dominik who during the development phase provided his technical skills and understanding of the algorithm behind the experience to evolve the concept further with our consumer insights and design support,” says Sisse, Open Innovation Insights Manager, the LEGO Group.
Sisse adds: “Thanks to a strong collaboration with Dominik it’s been a really smooth and fun ride getting to this point, and we can’t wait to see how fans take to this new experience. We hope that the learnings and insights from this beta will show that there is a real appetite from our fans to scale “Build Together”.
The forthcoming holiday season makes for the perfect occasion for friends and families to try the experience out having fun whilst unlocking essential skills such as collaboration and communication along the way. The beta will be live from December 13th, and you can find out more at LEGO.com.
The sets supported during beta are:
- 60307 Wildlife Rescue Camp
- 60292 Town Centre
- 60291 Family House
- 60302 Wildlife Rescue Operation
- 10270 Bookshop
- 31097 Townhouse Pet Shop & Café
At the time of writing, the iOS app has been updated with the new feature but the Android one has not.
I've been sent two of the sets to test the experience with, and I'm hosting a building session with my neighbours on Monday. I will let you know how we get on next week.
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26 comments on this article
I'm interested to see how this works, particularly for the single model builds, and what new experience an app can bring to this idea.
Some of these sets are split into multiple models, so concurrent building is already achievable. And if it's about taking turns to do a number of steps each, that could be done with paper instructions.
@DoonsterBuildsLego said:
"I'm interested to see how this works, particularly for the single model builds, and what new experience an app can bring to this idea.
Some of these sets are split into multiple models, so concurrent building is already achievable. And if it's about taking turns to do a number of steps each, that could be done with paper instructions. "
From what I understand it's far more than that. It almost turns building into a multi-player game. I will let you know exactly how it works next week once I've tried it.
This is actually really exciting. I have a large family that all loves LEGO, including a number of smaller nieces and nephews. One of the hard things for us at holidays, when we all get together, is that we always have a number of larger sets that we could build, but it's almost always impossible for more than 1 or maybe 2 people to work on them, just because of the basic limitations of the booklets and all if nothing else. So it turns what could be a fun experience into 1 person building, while 3-4 children sit around watching and getting bored and making everyone miserable. But this could absolutely change that in an amazing way. I don't think that we would use it a huge amount of the time, to be fair (most building would still be solo building), but there's definitely a chunk of time that this would be absolutely amazing for us to have for it.
City sets have multiple booklets, which allows building together.
Recently those booklets aren't numbered anymore, which makes sense for a set like
60295: Stunt Show Arena with multiple seperate builds
The different paper sizes of multiple booklets is more annoying for storage however.
Kinda totally off-topic: I really like the build for the table!
Is that 6x6 tile really available in that colour?
Also: pity they didn't switch to paper bags in their promotional image.
Since this article is regarding instructions, this seems like an appropriate place to ask if anyone else has seen the online instructions for the new bricklink sets that have just been put in the app? They use flash new (at least it looks new to me as I haven’t seen them in any sets I’ve looked at before) 3D build instructions.
Can anyone confirm that this 3D option is new? Hopefully they release these for all new sets going forward.
@YanVanLan said:
"Kinda totally off-topic: I really like the build for the table!
Is that 6x6 tile really available in that colour?"
Yes, 6x6 tile is available in Reddish Brown - comes in 76192 & 71374.
@DoonsterBuildsLego : thanks!
@DavoDestroyer said:
"Can anyone confirm that this 3D option is new? Hopefully they release these for all new sets going forward."
I think they started using the 3D building instructions in 2018. Most City sets will have the option as of 2019, but it's rarely available in other themes.
Wow, I'm curious to see it in action, but if this really works, it's such a game changer and one of the most exciting Lego news I've heard in years. Lego being a solo activity has always been the biggest issue I have with it and it's been a shame when there are lots of cool sets (especially the more expensive ones) that only one of us can build in our household.
Yeah, sure, there are workarounds and often you can build bags seperately or even instructions are split in seperate sections, but, that is just like taking turns, but if this really does make it a cooperative activty... Fingers crossed this works out.
Yes yes yes this would be an awesome feature! We already have been doing it for the larger sets - those with multiple booklets (or one of us would use tablet for e-booklet) with independent parts builds - up to about 3 of us working on the same set (like the Modular Assembly Square).
Indeed ya Lego should proceed with this kind of intuitives - is great for the buyers and good for business also (other smaller uprising brands cant afford this easily).
31097 Townhouse is set to be discontinued by the end of this year. Hopefully, inclusion in this project means they will produce more of this set, as it is hard to find at the moment and I would still like to get one.
I was concept tester for this. System is very clever and splits build into many small sub builds. You select number of participants and system gives each one something to build (each needs to have its smart device with loaded app). After you finish it, it will give you next assembly etc... Clever part is thy system tracks speed of building of each builder and dynamically distributes parts, so you finish your part just when it's needed. For that it uses a kind of building plan "tree". If no required assembly is left on your branch, you get to build something else and use it later. I built with my kids and it was a lot of fun.
This is great. My brother and I would build Star Wars UCS/MBS sets together but usually just the ones that were landscape based. He would use the provided instruction book and I would use my phone or computer with downloaded instructions. 75098 Assault on Hoth was the perfect set to do this with a partner because there were several separate smaller builds that combined together in the end. The 75290 Cantina had some of this with the 2 smaller buildings and the speeders separate from the main build.
@Cwetqo that is a much better description than the Lego marketing material. Their description makes it seem like just sharing by taking turns, your description makes it seem much more fun and involving.
Sounds fun! Having just built Pirates of Barracuda Bay with my nephews over Thanksgiving, it sounds like I really could have used this instead of randomly assigning tasks for each of them.
Also glad to see that they included some "meaty" builds in this first-run, including 10270 Bookshop and 31097 Townhouse Pet Shop & Café, which should be good for larger families and/or those with older kids.
"...unlocking essential skills such as collaboration and communication along the way"
Ah, so you unlock these awesome social skills by staring at a smart phone and follow some simple instructions?
The truth is, it's quite the opposite.
Android update is now live. It also has 3D instructions for the Bricklink designer program, which is neat.
From the description above it sounds like a fun and well designed system.
Not sure if we'll find it useful. One of the most important aspects of our Lego building time is getting AWAY from screens.
As exciting as some of these innovations sound, I worry that each one is a step towards no more paper instructions.
@MLF said:
"Android update is now live. It also has 3D instructions for the Bricklink designer program, which is neat.
From the description above it sounds like a fun and well designed system.
Not sure if we'll find it useful. One of the most important aspects of our Lego building time is getting AWAY from screens.
As exciting as some of these innovations sound, I worry that each one is a step towards no more paper instructions."
Still 2.3.5 here in the UK store, I think it needs to be 2.4.0, the same as iOS.
Oh cool, we have 60291 Family House (it was £20, thanks Tesco).
We might only have two compatible devices between the three of us, but I'd still like to try it.
@Huw said:
" @MLF said:
Still 2.3.5 here in the UK store, I think it needs to be 2.4.0, the same as iOS."
I got 2.4.1 today.
@Cwetqo said:
"I was concept tester for this. System is very clever and splits build into many small sub builds. You select number of participants and system gives each one something to build (each needs to have its smart device with loaded app). After you finish it, it will give you next assembly etc... Clever part is thy system tracks speed of building of each builder and dynamically distributes parts, so you finish your part just when it's needed. For that it uses a kind of building plan "tree". If no required assembly is left on your branch, you get to build something else and use it later. I built with my kids and it was a lot of fun."
I also just tested it very quickly with the bookshop. Building starts by example with the shop counter base for the red player, while the yellow player is building the counter top. Red then builds the cash desk and is asked to part it over to yellow. So it bounces over and over with very small mini builds. Also switches to bag 2 very quickly. Total different building experience! Not sure yet how the building itself will take shape, bit seems fun!
Don't have enough friends to do this, but this seems like a great idea. A lot of the time my brother and I will build LEGO at the same time, and finding a second set of instructions online isn't hard but getting it to load can get time consuming. I can only imagine the chaos of dividing up sub models and dividing instructions of six or seven people the traditional way.
So everyone participating needs their own smart device that can support this and has the correct version of the app loaded... good luck with that. How many here with young kids have given them their own smart devices new enough that are going to support this, or can afford to even do that?
This will be another option for building but I can't see it widely adopted by most middle-income families.
Ah yes, following the instructions together, can't conceive of a more boring "social activity." I thought LEGO cared about inspiring kids' creativity, not training them to be some cog in a machine, following orders blindly.
I love the idea, but not so much the digital aspect of it. I build sets with my son all the time. Oftentimes it involves taking turns, sometimes I find the parts and he builds, or with repetitive builds we each build together.
The problem however is we only have one iPad and I’m not gonna buy a second one for building Lego (especially since I see no Star Wars sets on the list).
Of course there is also the issue of turning a non-digital experience into a digital one. I think Lego really needs to think about screen time and how parents don’t want it. I think Lego would be better off reimagining instruction books. Instead of one book, put it into three or more books. One of the books will focus on combining components while the others focus on building components. It would actually be cool as it would make Lego building a non-linear process, even if you are building on your own. I know that there is discussion of making instructions smaller for environmental reasons, but this would not add any paper, just a few more staples. You would still have the same number of pages, they would just be arranged and combined differently.
I don't know. Lots of older children certainly have smartphones, and most of those phones can surely have the operating system updated to the necessary level. After that, in what way is looking down at the smartphone as you build that different from looking at a booklet? Plus, the booklet can't change format depending on the number of people using it; presumably, the app can.
Sounds like an approach worth investigating for TLG. I'll be interested in how Huw and his friends make out!