Week 6
Museum and MAKESHOP Visits
We visited the museum and MAKESHOP on Sunday and Monday this week in order to observe what kids would like to draw and cut. While we were there, MAKESHOP held Shadow Puppet Making activity which helped us a lot to understand what and how kids draw and cut shadow puppets and how important the teaching artists’ leading is. When we returned back to our project room, we covered our white boards with the answers to these questions according to our observations:
What kids like to DRAW and CUT?
- in silk screening activity
- names
- copying something already there.
- animals
- ages
- hearts
- stars
- snow flakes
- random shapes
- basic shapes such as square, triangle, circle
- monsters
- tracing their hands
- signatures
- in shadow puppet making activity
- stick-man figures
- animals
- houses
- creatures
- skulls
- octopus
- sun
- names in 3D
- squares
General Observations in MAKESHOP!
- When we give a blank paper and pen and ask them to draw, they stare at us and ask “What shall i draw?”
- They tend to copy the previous work unless they have something in mind (puppet making activity).
- They also like playing with their own & previously done puppets.
- Parents highly involve in drawing and cutting.
- When template shapes are not obviously shown, they are not getting used.
- For tracing shapes, the colors of the template shapes are important for some kids. (A 3-year-old girl traced a square just because it was pink)
- Activity is more focused when there is a T.A. who is aware of the activity and can lead. (puppet making)
- Girls like drawing and cutting hearts.
- Kids mostly cut pieces of the final product separately and them stick them together afterwards.
- Most of the kids (6-12) do not know what 3D means. They have ideas about lasers.
- Younger kids tend to draw lots of scribble.
- They like to color their drawings.
- Making toys out of laser cutter can be exciting.
- Laser cutter is good at cutting interior shapes with precision, it can handle intricate shapes.
Lessons Learned during Prototyping Phase!
- We did interface design first and observation second which should be the opposite.
- Kids draw arms/legs as lines. This was something that we did not consider in our design.
- We assumed more focus on the activity rather than generality in museum. There are lots of losing focus in one activity and moving to other activities cases.
Laser Cutter at ETC!
We brought the laser cutter from MAKESHOP to ETC. It is pretty big! We will be setting up in ETC for 3 weeks and after halves, we are planning to transfer it to MAKESHOP.
ETC Students’ Responses to Laser Cutters
We wondered what would our classmates’ would like to cut now and when they were 7. When we asked them, we got really interesting answers. Here is a couple of them.
Now:
- As an avid chef, I own several expensive high-carbon knives worth a couple hundred dollars apiece. First thing I’d do with a laser cutter? Put my signature on all my knives.
- slices of something that I would glue together for a model.
- myself, by accident.
- my name out of some nice looking plastic.
- cut simple shapes such as square or circle, then go for something like heart.
- stone tablet to try to make engravings.
- cut my cats’ figures into plastic.
- cut paper or cardboard to make a figurine for my desk.
- cut colored translucent plastic into a shape I could hang in the window and let the colored light shine through.
- engrave my name on my gadgets e.g. my phone and laptop.
- make a star wars memorabilia(probably Vader in Big head mode) out of wood.
At the age of 7:
- some sort of gun or other weapon.
- cut a sword or other play weapon out of foam or cardboard.
- write my name on something.
- design a toy made out of a wood block e.g. train.
- big letter A.
- a fish.
- a penguin
- a dinosaur.
- a robot.
- My Little Pony or Disney Princesses.
We also talked with Jason from SparkTruck about their experiences in kids’ designs for their laser cutter. Here what he says:
“…When we didn’t give them specific prompts, kids most often enjoyed cutting their names or signatures. We also had a bunch of flowers and robot ninjas. The most exciting thing about the laser cutter for students is seeing something they’d drawn with their fingers on an iPad get cut out with a laser. A laser cutter is one of the few machines that can create a custom object out of a semi-durable material in a short amount of time. Our age range is 7-13 years old…”
New Plans!
We decided to get rid of 3D element in our project, at least for now. Atulit, Akshaya and Dilara are working on a simple drawing application that has freehand drawing, template shape tracing and laser cutter outputting while Regis, Sahana and Sangyun will be setting up the laser cutter and make testings with current software.
Next Week!
- At the end of next week (March 2 & 3) we are planning to playtest our first drawing application.