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# Translating kindergarteners’ creative expressions into engineering specifications to design paper boats. (*change title)
3. Literature Review
4. Equipment and Methodology
5. Results and Discussion
6. Conclusions
7. References and Citations
There are a vast amount of educational engineering kits for students in high school and college, these kits expose students to basic design, engineering, and programming concepts. But when it comes to students in primary school, the options become limited and expensive. We are working to create a system that is suitable for 5 year olds to design robotic paper boats. From beginmning to end the system will include a graphical user interface, a robot compiler and a printer. Components needed for this system to be complete include: a collection of designs, a set of parameters that designs can change, and the collection of interactions with the student. My main goal is to create a graphical user interface suitable for 5 year olds to change parameters of the boat. This involves creating a widget that is "best" to change parameters based on the student's efficieny and creativity. We are conducting qualitative research by which we collect data during meetings with the student based on the questions we are attempting to answer. After the intial participant observational meetings, one widget will allow for effieincy and creativity. That widget will be implemented into the graphical user interface that is created in the future, along with other expansions.
– Address the topic in the first sentence
– Introduce the topic by means of an example to illustrate theoretical
points
– Outline your general argument and your paper
Project Goal: Create a Graphical User Interface suitable for 5 year olds that lets them change the *parameters* (ie. length) of a paper boat they they desire.
Software System (Final System)
- Components
- collection of designs
- set of parameters that designs can change
- collection of interactions w/ student (enables above)
Specific Questions:
If a student wants to change the parameters of the boat, do they want a slider or a dial? What will make it easier for them?
If a students wants to change the linear dimension of the boat, is a slider or dial better? (In terms of efficiency, creativity)
Goal: We need to implement/utilize a widget that changes the geometry of the boat. If there is no widget, then we will resort to creating a widget that changes the geometry of the boat.
## 3. Literature Review
– A discussion of findings from other researchers
– Critical apparaisal of other’s theories
• You should compare and assess other’s results.
– Provides external context for your project
– Justifies your project
(*put this literature review) spent the past nine weeks doing research on children's technology design principles. When a software or tech designer wants to make an application or tool for children, they change arbitary things that we believe will make the application/tool more usable to children. But in reality there are actual design principles software and tech designers should be aware of that will allow children to express their creativity and explore their imagination (change). I went throught literature review on children's technology, their input, and specific design principles. After I created an experimental procedure to best observe and interview children when drawing a boat, using computer and table apps and games, and drawing a boat on a computer and tablet application. This was done to best understand and move on to designing a GUI for children to use when designing a foldable paper boat.
– Discusses the reasons for choosing your methods and procedures
Contents
– Rationale for methodological apprach
– Hypotheses
– Description of study area
– Demographic details of study population
– How the population was selected
– Description of types of data and sources
– Descrption of methods and procedures for obtaining data
– Description of methods and procedures of data analysis
Children and Adults have different uses and expectations of computers (desktop and/or laptop) and tablets. Adults generally user tablets for content-consumption and computers for content creation. But tablets are easier to use among children for content-consumption and content-creation because mice and keyboards are not as intuitive. (https://www.diffen.com/difference/Laptop_vs_Tablet_computer, deisgn principles)
Paper, A computer running Roco/ interface, a slider widget, a dial widget
Collected Data: Participant observation, Interviews, Surveys (one or the other, interview might be better, survey if used for a larger group and small amount of time)
Analyzing Data: Descriptive Stats, Narrative Analysis, Hermeneutic Analysis
Scale ——— Efficiency vs. Creativity
Creativity will be based on uniqueness to other users designs, could take longer time.
Efficiency, usability will be based on getting the task done in the quickest manner.
If a student was asked to build a paper boat and modify it after, would they be able to do it? And if they were, what changes did they make? What did that interaction look like?
Set the task to build a paper boat
After ask what do you want to change about it?
parameters would include: mid height, boat length
##### Meeting 2: Modifying a robot boat using widgets (slider and dial)
Goal: We need to implement/utilize a widget that changes the geometry of the boat. If there is no widget, then we will resort to creating a widget that changes the geometry of the boat.
Question: If a student wants to change the parameters of the boat, do they want a slider or a dial? What will make it easier for them?
We will provide the student with an interface that contains a widget (ie. slider) . They will be given the following tasks: Double the *parameter* (ie. length) of the boat, Make the boat twice as *parameter* (ie. long). The user will do something, while we observe them on a screen that shows the boat along with a *widget* (ie. slider).
Question: If a students wants to change the linear dimension of the boat, is a slider or dial better? (In terms of efficiency, creativity)
We will provide the student with an interface that contains a *widget* (ie. slider). The will be given the following task: ________________________. The user will do something with the parameters of the boat using the *widget*. (Here we will be grading the widget based on efficiency and creativity, depending on time and design (changes).)
## 5. Results and Discussion
R
– Details the main findings
– Provides a summary explaination of results
– Accept or reject hypotheses if you have any
D
– Develop a logical argument about what your results mean.
– Your results provide evidence to illustrate and support your
argument.
– Identify potential errors--What might invalidate your results? How
might you improve research design?
## 6. Conclusions
– A restatement of the research problem
– A summary statement of main findings and their significance.
– Shortcomings of the research
– Agenda for future research
In the future we intend to expand the range of customization of the paper boat.
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Laptop_vs_Tablet_computer
https://www.wikihow.com/Do-Qualitative-Research
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• What is the research problem and why is it important?
There are a vast amount of educational engineering kits for students in high school and college, these kits expose students to basic design, engineering, and programming concepts. But when the age group is students in primary school, the options are limited and expensive. How can we expose young children to engineering skills with an inexpensive kits, while making sure they are suitable for those in primary school? (***change kits, because they are not really packages kits sold to users)
A majority of students are initially exposed to STEM during their time in high school, and college. There are large amount of kits, ranging in price and complexity. These kits introduce students to basic design, engineering, and programming concepts. But we would like to pose the question, what if we could expose students to these concepts earlier?
Our goal to introduce STEM to children at an earlier age brought us to a robotic foldable boat. At its core, only a sheet of paper, a widely available resources, is required to create a functional paper boat. With added electrical, mechanical, and software components, it is transformed into a robotic foldable boat.
Our work consists of creating systems and tools for children, as young as five years old, to begin dabbling with engineering. Requirements for this project to be a success are: low cost, accessible supplies, usable for all ages, and limitless design ideas.
• What did you do and why?
• What did you find?
We found that one widget was better than the other.
• What do your findings mean?
(Refined abstract)
We are working to create a graphical user interface (gui) suitable for 5 year olds that will allow them to modify robotic boats as they desire.
To enable this, we must first create a widget that is better to use when changing parameters of the boat, as well as the linear dimensions of the boat, by finding a suitable widget that will allow them to change parameters of the boat as to our specification. After we can determine the widget that is better for 5 year olds to use, or create it if it doesn not yet exist. Second we must observe how they use the widgets to to change the parameters of the boat to their desire. The widgets will be graded on efficiecy and creativity. And lastly we will need to implement the widget into a giu that will result in the final system for 5 year old s to design their own robot boat.
Finally to create an optimized boat with a minimum speed that move the boat through the water.
(*** dont think I need this, or if I do rephrase it, figure out where it belongs (below)) OR MORE!
We use a Robot Compiler with an available interface, but the interface requires some familiarity of computer aided design. For this study, we will collect qualitative data from a 5 year old through: participant observation, interviews, and surveys. With sessions, we will try to carefully extract information from the user to detemine the "best" widget. The "best" widget will be determined by the widget that would allow for the largest amount of creative expression during the design and modification of a paper boat. Future work will include the design, creation, and testing of a graphical user interface for 5 year olds to design their own foldable robotic boat.
GUI -> RoCo -> Paper Boat
5 -> Creative Expressions = Engineering Specifications -> GUI