– A 200-300 word non-technical summary of your research project.
– Questions to answer:
• 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 critical thiking and new 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 little and inexpensive kits, and make sure the kits are targeted and usable for those in primary school?
• What did you do and why?
I 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.
