Week 11 – Apr 8, 2022

Blogs / April 9, 2022

Introduction

This Monday, we play tested again at West Liberty University, where our client, Lou Karas, is based at. After we came back, we debriefed both the Saturday playtest at ETC and the Monday playtest at WLU. During our faculty meeting, the team and our faculty advisor, Ricardo Washington, did some brainstorming to see if we could give the “Make-a-Rainbow” activity more depth. We have landed on a design that incorporates the color wheel as well as tertiary colors. The team has presented our new design to our client, and we have made a plan on how to fabricate this activity and what needs to be done for documentation. On Wednesday, Bob Doepel, a CMU alumnus who currently works for Chicago Scenic Studio visited our project room, and the team showed some of our activities. Although this week is a short week, we have made important decisions that will help us move forward. 

Playtest Takeaways

The team has debriefed our playtest on Saturday at ETC and our playtest on Monday at WLU. We have playtested with approximately 15 kids during each playtest session. The playtesters at ETC aged between 4 to 13 while the playtesters at WLU aged between 7 to 8 and were all in the 2nd grade.. Both playtests were successful: we learned what we did well and what we needed to iterate on. For the ETC playtest, we specifically focused on testing whether “make a rainbow” activity would be engaging enough. For the WLU playtest, we brought some instructions of the activities for teachers so that we can figure out what kind of documentation would work the best. Below are our takeaways activity by activity. 

Whiteboard Key Takeaways

  • Maximum of 2 kids should be playing the whiteboard at a time
  • The amount of noise it might inspire in the kids is ok. However, for some teachers it may not be. Our client saw the noise as engaged learning.
  • Kids wanted their own real estate on the board, lines were drawn on the board to separate drawing spaces
  • The hardware held up well to kids using it 
  • Even the older kids (Brother and Sister 10 + 13 during playtest day) had fun working together on the board

LED Lightstrip Key Takeaways

  • Still super engaging 
    • Figured out all of the rules after seeing notation through trial and error
    • Collaborated to complete all the songs or create their own songs
    • Sang and danced together and then figured out what songs are
  • The final box seemed to hold up well over the multiple playtests (with 29 kids)
  • The clear box is a draw for kids
  • Notation needs to be clearer (already done with a new easier to read template)
  • LED lightstrip is kids’ favorite at WLU based on the survey that Lisa and Katy helped conduct.

LED iterations

Based on the feedback, we have already iterated the LED lightstrip.

We have made new notations that show different colors better, and we have made a cheat sheet that shows the music note that each color represents.

We added a touch pad that allows the teacher to turn on/off the sound at any time. 

Make-A-Rainbow Key Takeaways

  • At WLU, certain kids really got into the problem solving of it
  • At WLU, kids asked for sound
  • Still might be an activity for the older kids
  • At ETC’s Playtest day, Kids rarely played it voluntarily when there were other activities that seemed more attractive on the table 

Shadow Puppets

  • Continues to be fun and engaging
  • Can work with 3 kids
  • Obviously works best with lights off
  • Using the new power strip seems to work well to help kids explore light mixing and gives more control allowing for prompts
  • One mother during Playtest day suggested drawing on the whiteboard as the kids used shadow puppet. “Can you add toppings to the ice-cream.”
  • Kids react well to prompts such as 
    • “Can you make your favorite color?”
    • “Can you make  the background light blue?”
    • “Can you only make 2 shadows?”

Overall

The LED Strip, Whiteboard and Puppets are complete. Only minor polishing is needed.The instructions provided to teachers seemed to work out well, and even some of the kids were interested in reading the instructions. Teachers were able to run the activities without the Colorize team, and the activities were simple and intuitive enough that teachers could easily guide kids through. Kids were taking concepts from one activity to another. When Xiao was prompting kids at the end of the shadow puppets they were able to make the colors she asked. 

Our client, Lou Karas, was happy about how the activities sparked creativity and problem solving. Graduate assistants, Lisa and Katie, provided their honest feedback on whether an activity would be easy to plan a class with. With their feedback and kids’ reaction, the team has decided to redesign the “Make-a-Rainbow” activity.

Redesign of Make a Rainbow

After we came from WLU after the playtest, the team made the decision that we needed to redesign the make a rainbow activity. Here are our reasons

  • We wanted to introduce tertiary colors, however, the activity needed more purpose for kids to keep playing it. It also doesn’t have the depth that other activities have.
  • Currently the activity is built with buttons and outputs to LED light strips, the same material that we used to make the LED lightstrip activity. Since this activity doesn’t have sound, kids might compare the two activities and think that “Make-a-Rainbow” is a worse version of the LED lightstrip
  • From the LED light strip, kids learned that they could press two or three buttons at the same time to create another. However, even though they were given the same buttons, we didn’t really want them to press them at the same time for this activity in order to show how primary colors solely mix to create tertiary colors. The team is concerned that keeping the same color input method, RGB buttons, would be confusing for the kids. We don’t want kids to unlearn something that they learned from other activities.
  • Although this current “Make-a-Rainbow” is challenging and might be interesting to some kids, there are some color mixing problems. The color that was created might not be the correct color that it should make. We want to teach science responsibly. 

So the team brainstormed together with our faculty advisor, Ricardo Washington. We have landed on a new activity that incorporates tertiary colors and a color wheel. 

Here are our base design goals

  • Fill in the color wheel
  • Kids use the four LED setup as the prototype then the color they make gets stored in the light ring
  • Give kids some space for problem-solving to get all of the primary, secondary and tertiary colors
  • The activity is mainly designed for the older kids, first and second graders.
  • Different interface: Knob with button to allow only one color input at a time, this avoids confusion of not being able to press multiple buttons at once. We are also going to use a neopixel ring instead of LED light strips.

We believe this activity is able to bring the challenges of tertiary colors to kids while having the color wheel to provide structure and some familiarity. We want to incorporate a color wheel mode, a quiz mode and a creative mode. However, with the time limit that we have, we might only be able to get the base function working before the semester ends. We have presented the new idea to our client and explained our time limit. We are taking the risk of not having enough playtest on the new design, but we wanted to push for something that’s more engaging and unique.

Looking into Next Week

  • Continue Make-A-rainbow hardware and code, new materials ordered
  • Continue documentation
    • User Guide
    • Setup Guide
    • Video Scripts
    • Schematics
  • Minor polishing tweaks of finished activities