Passive Play is the brainchild of university student . As part of a final-year project at the University of Dundee in the UK, Tom developed the toy to help establish better connections between parents and autistic children, and raise awareness of the condition.

Tom, who has a daughter himself, was also hoping to learn more about the condition while working in the project. He explained his personal reasons for creating the project:

"I'm a father myself, so autism is something that I worry about... I couldn't imagine what it would be like to go through finding out your child had been diagnosed. You [miss] that bond you have with your child, as autism affects the way a person communicates and relates to other people."

The Passive Play project consists of an interactive toy cube and an iOS app. The child uses the wooden cube, which is designed to stimulate their senses (many with autism are sensitive to light, sound, and touch). The different sides of the cube all have a button that will start an exercise when pressed; these exercises range from playing music to learning letters and numbers. Parents can also record their own voice for the cube to play back to help the child feel more secure as they use the toy.

In the meantime, the parents can use the app to monitor the child's interaction with the cube--it stores a various types of data, so parents can see which activities their kid likes the most, how many times the child uses it, and so on. Most significantly, the data can give parents an indication of which methods of learning will work best for the child.