Background

Educators and students in high-school robotics environments needed intuitive and effective tools for programming and designing robotic systems, which were often complex and difficult for young learners to grasp.

Customer Pain

Students and teachers faced challenges with existing tools that were not user-friendly or visually intuitive, leading to difficulties in learning and teaching robotics concepts effectively.

Proposal

In collaboration with BOSE and other STEM kit providers, the project created an IDE featuring simplified state diagrams and a left-to-right workflow of Inputs > Design > Output. Initial prototypes were tested through contextual inquiries, and the IDE facilitated a common language for students to express and critique design ideas, greatly enhancing the learning experience.

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We worked directly with BOSE to design an IDE specific to their ‘BOSEBuilds’ STEM kit and then looked at other targets such as Littlebits, Arduino & LEGO.

There’s two key pieces of innovation in these designs

  1. Simplified State Diagrams are an intuitive programming paradigm for young minds
  2. The left to right flow of Inputs > Design > Output.
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Validate

We first evaluated the paper prototypes through Contextual Enquiry with teachers, created an implementation plan and then tested with real users.

A key observation noted during testing was that when the users hit a design challenge they used the diagram as a common language to propose solutions.  That is, they were able to express & critique their ideas – a key measure of success for the design!