TETL F24 - Process Page

Makeup HW — December 19, 2024

Week 4

Race After Technology — Benjamin discusses how we are in need of new abolitionist and decarcerating design practices because “design thinking” is an ideology driven by capitalism and technocentrism. This reading made me reflect on my experience in my undergrad human-computer interaction department, which promotes design thinking quite heavily. My professors seemed unconcerned with justice, at least in most of the classes I took. Granted, my undergrad institution is known for its technical HCI influence, but I now find it unsettling that someone could experience the program without learning about design justice. I’m so grateful to be in a class, a lab, and a grad program which are so committed to using technology to better the lives of others.

Why Tangibility Matters — The authors designed a tangible block-based system called PhonoBlocks that targets auditory processing and simple reading in young children with dyslexia. In their evaluation of the system, they found that dynamic color cues, tangibility, and gamified elements were important design features that contributed to learning. The positive result of the dynamic color feature somewhat surprised me. When this design choice was presented before the study and evaluation, I was concerned that the kids would be too young to abstract the visual/temporal information communicated by color changes. This paper also provides a good template for the paper I’m writing at the moment on my own tangible interface for learning :-)

The Promise of Empathy — Bennett and Rosner discuss how understanding disabled users (or practicing empathy) in accessibility design has historically been ableist because designers simulate disability instead of seeking first-hand stories from real disabled people. Through a case study of two well-intentioned but lacking products (a voting machine for the blind and a design-for-accessibility game), they highlight how design practices which can seem to prioritize the user experience can actually do the opposite. In terms of participatory design-based research, challenging systemic inequity looks like involving disabled individuals (or whatever minoritized community of study) as designers in the research process. How does one who is not part of that minority group (e.g. the researcher) go about ethically recruiting participants for such studies?

Week 8

Youth Participatory Action Research — Bautista et al explain the benefits of youth participatory action research (YPAR): a research method in which youth design and conduct research about the educational community of study instead of the researchers. This positions youth as the experts of their own community. The authors describe a study involving the Council of Youth Researchers, a group of high school students across LA. These students gathered data about their community’s educational experience and presented their findings as PowerPoint presentations and documentaries. 

I am left with a few questions from this article. How did the youth become involved with the Council? Were they recruited and paid? Are the products of YPAR empirically valid? Were the students guided during their research process by the researchers? How do IRB submissions work for YPAR?

Week 9

Melange of Making — Bal et al situate the value of hacking in learning theories, such as social constructionism and self-determination theory. By engaging in exploratory problem-solving, children can build confidence, self-awareness, and critical thinking that extend beyond learning settings. In an era when digital media makes personalizable learning more accessible, it is important that formal learning environments take inspiration from DIY culture.

Moving forward I’m thinking about: What are the ways in which people who benefit from more structure in their learning environment (neurodivergent people specifically) can engage authentically with hacking/DIY culture? (The authenticity of both neurodivergent students’ learning needs and the free, fluid nature of hacking.)

Week 11

Evaluation Methods — This article summarizes different terms and methods related to evaluation of learning experiences. There are formative evaluations, which happen during the design process and serve to improve the design; summative evaluations, which happen after the product is finished and serve to measure if the product communicates what it was designed to communicate; and confirmative evaluations, which happen long after the summative evaluation to measure whether the product has long term impact. In the formative evaluation, it’s useful to cycle through feedback from experts, 1-on-1 user interviews, focus groups, and field trials. For summative evaluation, designers can use the CIPP Model, Stake’s Model, or Scriven’s Goal-Free Model.

Question: Do teachers make use of these models? If so, how are the applications of the models different between teachers and designers?

Allergic to Salad Lo-Fi Testing Reflections — November 4, 2024

Logistics Reflections

  • Did you have everything you needed? What was missing? 

I don’t think we really understood what we needed until we saw the kids interacting with (and failing to understand) our prototype. That’s the testing process, I guess! The most prominent thing we missed was a learning context to frame the presentation of the system. We just had them interact with our prototype without giving much context, and they were pretty confused about what they were supposed to do. Our prototype was also not totally functional, which inhibited learning.

  • How would you prepare differently next time? What would you prioritize? 

I would prioritize the learning goals instead of the hardware and visual design. We spent a lot of time trying to create a tangible/visual solution without much thought to the objectives. As a result the learning didn’t come through in this first iteration.

Activity Reflections 

  • How did your introductions go with the students and to the project?

Our students were pretty shy and apprehensive to engage. I appreciated what one TETL student said in class the other day, that it’s important to bond with the students and frame the system around something relevant to them before actually interacting with it, so they become invested and loose. I think they were distracted and also confused by the way we just put the mess of wires in front of them and asked for their thoughts. We asked a couple questions related to their emotions, but most of them didn’t really know how to answer those questions. I think we assumed they would be a little bit more emotionally developed than what was true — going forward, we have to simplify and make relatable the emotional and psychology concepts behind the device.

  • How was the flow of what you ran? 

There wasn’t a great flow. In the first pair of boys, one of them was really interested in the system, but for the mess of wires and programming concepts behind it, not the SEL themes we intended to communicate. We have to frame the system better next time.

  • What do you think was the most important takeaway from what happened within the activity you created? 

The framing of the device is equally as important, if not more important than the design of the device itself.

  • How do you think the students engaged with your activity? 

They liked testing the LEDs, but the prototype was so broken that these interactions were hard to carry out or contribute to much learning. I think if we had brought a stronger prototype, that would have made more sense. One of the boys also liked the electronics behind the device, so perhaps there is a place to communicate hardware and programming concepts here.

  • How did they respond to your explanations, questions, etc.? 

They were pretty quiet. I think we need to make our questions and explanations more simple and relatable.

Resource Reflections

  • How did the physical designs go? 

This was our other big problem — our prototype was not intuitive for this age group. The potentiometers were cheap and too small, the LEDs were placed too close to the potentiometers and flickered randomly at imperceptible brightnesses, the servo was not programmed to properly communicate the learning objectives, the words on the cardboard were hard to read, and the wires were very exposed and delicate. All of this prevented the students from focusing on the learning content. I think they would have found the prototype much more interesting and understandable if these design issues were not present. 

  • Were students able to interact in the way that you hoped? 

Going forward, we’re not sure which form factor our system will take. The current design was never meant to be final, and that was reinforced by the unsuccessful testing. Higher quality components would help, as well as hiding the electronics. I think using multiple LEDs per neurotransmitter to communicate the “amount” of neurotransmitter would be more intuitive than brightness, and using colors to represent emotions instead of a pointer, our current design choices.

  • What kinds of feedback helped the students? 

It helped them to explain how to twist the potentiometers, but this was hard anyway because the potentiometers were really small and hard to rotate. The concept of neurotransmitters didn’t really land when we tried to explain, so we have to come up with a new way to frame it.

  • How did the resources/design pair with what you did with them? How would you improve it? What would you retain? 

Again, we are not intending on retaining this form factor, so most of it will be changed/improved. The resources we provided them, such as the recipe book that Ana designed, was not a core part of the learning activity at first, and was not thematically related. We need to create a whole world that immerses the learner in the content, meaning that all of our design choices have to line up visually, interactively, and theoretically.

Reading Response W7 — October 21, 2024

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design - This article argues that screens are transitional technologies because they do not take advantage of the natural capabilities of our hands, and going forward the design of technologies should prioritize natural tactile experiences. It made me question the classification of “transitional” technologies — is it not true that every technology is transitional between a past and future iteration? Transitional assumes there is a past and a future, but there is a past and future iteration for every technology.

What do prototypes prototype? - This paper defines “prototype” and presents a that describes different purposes of prototyping interactive technologies. These purposes include the roles a technology plays in the real world, the sensory experience of the technology, and the technical design of the technology. It’s interesting that different teams, or even personal titles, across a company or companies can have different expectations about what makes a robust prototype. This highlights how communication and collaboration is essential to the interaction design process, especially the user testing process. If the research team conducts a test that is misaligned with the type of prototype, the data they collect may not be representative of the power of their ideas.

Project Milestone #2: Allergic to Salad Interview Analysis — October 21, 2024

Key points from the interview for our design process:

  • ATS’s goals are to build community and generate awareness of culture and self

  • ATS’s learners typically do not pay for materials and have limited experience with technology

  • we are designing 45 minute STEM “recipes” (which have nothing to do with food)

  • goofy or difficult hands-on activities, especially involving things learners can take home, are most engaging

  • important to consider cost and reusability of materials

Reading Response W6 — October 15, 2024

Seven Principles to Design for Embodied Sensemaking - This paper reports on the design process of a research tool that uses interaction with physical and digitally augmented objects to facilitate discussion about possible “futures” between design and other disciplines. Through their design process, the authors highlight important aspects of embodied cognition that designers should be aware of during the tangible interaction design process.

I have mixed feelings about this paper. I think the premise is really great — I agree that it is important to consider the design of tangible experiences from a situated sensemaking perspective. However, I don’t think this paper is well written, and their ideas are not communicated as clearly as they could be. Perhaps that’s a language barrier thing (the authors are from the Netherlands), but it was hard for me to understand what data the authors were presenting (a system, a framework, or a qualitative study?) until the end. First and foremost I think the goal of “identifying futures” was kind of ambiguous, so I didn’t have a good understanding of the purpose of the framework. I was also confused about what they meant by designing a “studio” (a classroom, a workshop, a curriculum?). I deduced from the photos and the story that unfolded through the framework that it was actually a tool to be used for future qualitative research. Further, before getting into the framework, they described the host’s goal to take a sabbatical year of conducting interviews in a project called “Engaging Encounters”. This seemed to me like they were setting up a debrief of the results from Engaging Encounters, from which the framework emerged as a result, but that is not what happened.

Question: Is this project (the “studio”) considered a learning experience? The designers did not follow a specific learning design process, so that fact suggests it’s not. Alternatively, it facilitates collaboration and learning about the users involved, which suggests it is. To me, this project blurs the line between social media and educational media.

Analog Manipulative (Assignment #2) — October 7, 2024

My group is Shem, Minh, Sara, and me (Cass). We made an automata construction kit that helps students generate mental models of mechanical motion. The kit includes modular bases, cams, gears, and arms, so the learner can assemble and disassemble automata with different motions.


Inspiration

Initial Sketches

Prototyping Party (September 25)

In-class Presentation

Reading Response W5 — October 7, 2024

Participatory Design of Technology for Inclusive Education — This study was conducted to identify the effect of including educators who specialize in diversity and inclusion in the design process on the inclusivity of classroom learning. The authors were interested in developing an inclusive TUI because TUIs have shown to be an engaging and inclusive representational form for many learning identities. Eight specialists were included in a participatory design process, who engaged in a series of workshops aimed at designing a TUI for a problem of their choosing. The educators collaboratively designed a table-top TUI with buttons for hand interaction and foot pedals for feet. The results indicate that the educators prioritized the autonomy of the student and the use of the environment in their design process, and they learned how to apply the inclusive affordances of TUIs. One teacher mentioned “it will make life easier in the classroom”. This study ultimately provides evidence for the culturally-responsive power of TUIs, so it is a good resource for my current project (touchBase)!

Nothing about us without us — This is the second chapter from Design Justice, a book I have been meaning to read for a while. It provides a lot of background on the systemic inequities that are reinforced by the matrix of domination, and the fact that designers have a responsibility to deconstruct these inequities. It gives an overview of design practices that can be harmful, and instead it gives participatory design practices that can uplift marginalized communities. Participatory design involves a diverse group of users throughout the entire design process. One question — how do you identify which users will be the most helpful in an inclusive design process? In other words, if you have a diverse group of users to potentially partner with, how do you choose between them?

Reading Response W3 — September 23, 2024

Getting Down to Details: Using Theories of Cognition and Learning to Inform Tangible User Interface Design — This is the most important paper I will read in my entire PhD (lol). There are so many references in it I need to read. The authors suggest there are five designable elements of tangible interfaces for learning (physical objects, digital objects, actions on objects, informational relations, and learning activities), and TUIs can be optimized by considering each element from five important learning lenses (information processing, constructivist, embodied, distributed, and collaborative). I was SOOO fascinated by the discussion of image schemas being used to understand abstract concepts in the embodiment section. It made me wonder — when did metaphors of image schemas become part of our everyday language, etymologically? There must have been a time before it, so it’s interesting to imagine a state of cognition where we couldn’t represent abstract concepts in space, which must have affected our actual sense of space and embodiment. It seems to implicate consciousness, if we are able to conceive our bodies and their motion as representative of something other than what they are in “reality”.

Cardboard Modeling — This paper describes techniques for using X-acto knives and building interactive prototypes with foamcore. I learned that I have been incorrectly using an X-acto knife my whole life. To avoid bending the knife from intense pressure, you are supposed to make a guidance cut with less pressure first, and then repeatedly go over that cut with strokes of less pressure until the cut is complete. Another good point I learned is that prototypes of interactive products should be made to scale to account for usability issues that are specific to the particular size of the product.

About Face: Chapter 2 — This chapter outlines design research techniques, most of which are qualitative. These include, to be executed in the following order: kickoff meeting, literature review, competitive analysis, stakeholder interviews, SME interviews, and user/customer interviews. One important point is that the user and the customer are not always the same person — this is especially important when dealing with products for kids, as their parents/guardians are usually the ones buying them. These two groups might have different needs that will affect the success of a product.

MagneTracks — This project is a TUI for learning Newtonian physics. Using flexible magnetic cardboard tracks that can be attached to a magnetic surface and a camera pointed at the surface, the learner can release a ball down a track of their creation and analyze its motion using a NetLogo software that tracks the location of the ball. Results of testing suggested 1) the system was engaging, and 2) the tangibility of the system helped students to concretize their understanding of physics concepts and evoked collaboration and social negotiation. This reminded me of the cute labs/projects I did in middle school physics. We had one assignment while studying inertia where everyone was in competition to construct an object that rolled the farthest. We had to suspend a heavy object inside an empty jug (I chose a stack of coins and a can of Swiss Miss, I believe), roll them down the hallway, and analyze their motion. In this case we did not have any software to aid our understanding, but it was similar in that it was a tangible experience that helped us concretize our concept of physics.

Reading Response W2 — September 16, 2024

What is design knowledge and how do we teach it? - This chapter describes the different types of knowledge and processes that are important for learning designers to consider while creating new learning materials, and how design instructors can best communicate this knowledge and these processes to design students. I’m glad it elaborated on patterns — in my research on visual perception and computing education, I’ve come across the term “pattern languages”, and I was not exactly sure what that meant until I read this section. Now I understand that a “pattern language” is a set of best design practices, and specifically in computing, a set of known practices for algorithmic problems. One piece of design knowledge I believe this taxonomy forgets about, however, is history and the act of reference. I think it’s super important in the beginning of the design process to understand how a given problem might have been approached before, and then use insights from those failures as jumping off points.

Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features from an Instructional Design Perspective - This paper describes the history of modern epistemology, drawing connections and boundaries between the learning “lenses” of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. I like how explicitly these authors describe when, why, and how these theories can be advantageous in learning settings. I plan to keep it as a resource for future learning designs.

Tangibles and Tangible Learning - This paper outlines a brief history and rationale of tangible learning experiences such as manipulatives and TUIs. At the end of the paper, Schneider started to get into how tangibles allow for embodied cognition — I really hope we talk more about that theory because I find it super fascinating! I would love to get into the psychology of how layering digital information on top of physical information affects a learner’s use of their body.

I think Kayla’s classes are a real-world example of constructivist learning spaces. I find that her classroom and the work in them is very socially negotiated — lots of personal reflection, discussion, and collaboration. It makes for a very meaningful and effective experience.

Question: Are jigsaw puzzles considered manipulatives?