Background

MIT required a more intuitive method for high school students to program ‘SPHERES’ robots on the International Space Station. The existing tools were too complex for new users, particularly young students.

Customer Pain

Students faced steep learning curves and long feedback loops with current programming tools, making it difficult to quickly grasp and apply robotics concepts.

Proposal

The solution involved simplifying the commercial-grade tool ‘StateFlow’ to create an accessible interface for students. This new design used state diagrams, providing instant feedback and enabling rapid iteration. Interns were recruited to develop and test incremental design complexities, ensuring minimal disruption to the existing codebase.

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Project Planning

As this was a research project outside of the product roadmap at MathWorks I was given ownership to drive all aspects of the experiment. My research into new user on-ramp revealed that State Diagrams are an intuitive programming paradigm that enables new users to generate meaningful designs, quickly.  The key to engaging young minds is to give them instant gratification.  By making the learning curve low and the feedback loop short, students can learn to program through rapid iteration.

Manage & Validate

I recruited & managed interns to iterate against a plan that was staged to deliver incremental complexity.  We tested and adjusted the designs with minimal disruption to their codebase.