Designing Roller Coasters
Emma Mercier
Ken Rafanan
Brian Tobin
Ruhi Vasanwala-Khan
Sarah Walter
Design Objectives and Significance
Our product “Smart Sticks” is in many ways a redesign and amalgamation of ideas we encountered through the design process we engaged in.We aimed to create a product for nine to eleven year olds, although we envision it engaging older children and adults.We sought a gender neutral technology toy that would foster creativity and involve children in using the computer as a tool that aided their creativity and allowed them to view the computer as a toy, a communication device and something over which they had control.We also wanted to include physical manipulatives because engage children; children in our target age group report that they enjoy building things, and the success of Lego Mindstorms made us realize that constructing remains motivating after many other play activities have been abandoned.
The product has three independent sections which build on one another to expand the possible activities available to the user – the physical construction kit, the computer software and the on-line community.The primary idea of “Smart Sticks” is that it allows children to build roller coasters out of a construction kit, which consists of slightly malleable pieces (to enable curves, bends etc to be created) that are blue-tooth enabled so that the pieces perceive each other, and, when the structure is complete, can communicate with computer software that creates a three-dimensional image on the computer screen.From the computer screen, it is possible to run simulations, build an environment for the roller coaster and store the construction for future use (and to allow further creation with the actual pieces without losing a design forever). These computer files can be shared with others via email, who can “ride” your simulation on commercially available software (e.g. Flash, QuickTime) if they do not have “Smart Sticks” software.The third component of Smart Sticks, the online community, was influenced by popular online building communities, such as Lego Mindstorms and LUGnet, where members may exhibit and share their constructions and learn from feedback from peers and expert users.The “Smart Sticks” online community will be carefully constructed to allow for large numbers of creations to be available to users and to establish frequent design competitions and an archive on design challenges for users.This adds an element of competition, but also creates an arena for sharing expertise, for displaying creations and for developing an identity as someone who can design and create with technology.
Figure 1: Construction set pieces
Figure 2: Prototype
Figure 3:Example of an environment created within the “Smart Sticks” software
User Scenario
To help us envision how the Smart Sticks components would work together, we constructed a user scenario. It illustrates the independence of eachcomponent as well as how each component contributes in different ways to the child’s entire learning experience.
Kenny, Ruhi and the Roller Coaster:
Kenny and his dad are at the toy store. They pick up a box labeled “Smart Sticks – Creative learning toy: Kids build roller coasters and can see it on their computer and send to their friends!”Kenny’s dad thinks that at eighty dollars, this is a good deal, especially since he reads the small print which says “Developed by researchers at StanfordUniversity”.
At home, Kenny takes out the building materials and starts to build. He did look briefly at the “design challenges” that came with the set, but he prefers to build something on his own.Kenny builds a roller coaster with loops, corkscrews, and steep drops; he thinks it would be a lot of fun to ride. So Kenny wants to find out. He is fortunate to have a computer at home, so he asks his dad if it is okay to install some new software. His dad agrees, and they install the Smart Sticks software.
Kenny opens up the application on the computer and selects “Connect to My Real-World Structure…” The computer prompts Kenny to place his roller coaster close to the computer so that the blue-tooth technology can work.This is shown with a simple illustration, so Kenny does this easily. The software then recognizes an incoming structure: “Getting structure information…” Kenny waits just a bit as his physical model is rendered in 3D on the computer. “Cool! Hey Dad, check this out!” Kenny yells when he sees his model on the screen. They both watch as Kenny runs a ride simulation on the computer. They get to see from a first person perspective what it is like to ride Kenny’s roller coaster, or they could see the ride run from the side, rotating their view. Kenny is happy that nobody fell off his ride, and it looked like a lot of fun. He does want to make the final drop a little steeper. So he goes back to his physical model and increases the height of the final drop. The change is updated on his screen as the model is still within communicating distance of the computer.The ride in the simulation looks like even more fun now!
Kenny decides to show off his construction to his friend Ruhi, who he knows has a Smart Sticks set. He selects “Email this Construction…” and fills out the wizard to email the roller coaster to Ruhi.
Later that day, Ruhi checks her email and sees the message from Kenny. If she didn’t have the Smart Sticks software, she could view a movie of Kenny’s simulated ride. Since she does have the software, it opens in her application, and she rotates the roller coaster to view it from all angles. She is impressed at Kenny’s novice attempt. The simulated ride looks awesome. She thinks that the loop on Kenny’s design is especially cool. She draws a selection box around this area on the screen and selects “Print Instructions for Selected Area”. Out come the instructions for this loop; Ruhi goes ahead and builds this to add on to her roller coaster. This loop is the crowning element of her ultimate ride. She is extremely proud, and sends her mega-roller coaster design to Kenny.
Kenny checks out her roller coaster the next time he checks his email. He decides that these roller coasters are cool enough to share with a lot of people. He saw on the box something about a web community for Smart Sticks builders.Kenny’s dad agrees that this would be a good thing to do, and, after checking that Kenny has logged into the correct community and that the terms and conditions of use make it an appropriate place for his son to join allows Kenny to become a member.Kenny quickly finds the menu item to upload his design to the community. He labels his area “Ken and Ruhi’s MegaCoasters” and invites some of his friends from school to check out the designs, by sending them an email from the site. His friends can view ride simulations and the 3D model of the roller coasters Ruhi and Ken have posted. They post a few comments for areas to improve, like to make the roller coasters look cooler.
Ruhi reads this comment and agrees that the roller coasters could benefit by some decoration. She uses the software to color the roller coaster neon green with blue vehicles. She also decides to add a sign on the side of the roller coaster with the name of the ride: “MegaCoaster”. She adds some blinking lights to this sign, and some shrubberies around the bottom of the ride. The roller coaster looks so good now that Ruhi wants to update her physical model. She prints out the designs for the sign and shrubbery. The computer tells her how to attach these elements to her real-world model, so she does. She then runs the simulation again with the decorated ride. It looks like a real roller coaster! Ruhi is so engaged in this activity that she becomes a regular member of the “Smart Sticks” community, completing the design challenges and winning a number of design competitions, even when she competes against teenagers and adults.After completing a long project with Kenny, where they pool their “Smart Sticks” to build a very large, complex roller coaster, they win the annual collaborative designers prize and Ruhi decides that she wants to do this forever so she will pursue a career in engineering, so she can design roller coasters in the real world.
Design Rationale
The target users for our product are between the ages of nine and eleven years old. At this time, the child’s peer group shapes his or her perception of personal achievement. Erikson (1963) has called the developmental period from age six to eleven the “Industry vs. Inferiority” stage; children compare their abilities to those of their peers. If a positive assessment results, the child feels industrious; a negative assessment contributes to feelings of inferiority. Children should be encouraged at this age by providing challenging tasks that are not too difficult to complete, and by encouraging children upon completion of the tasks. The Smart Sticks roller coaster construction set, software, and web community encourage children to challenge themselves at a level with which they feel comfortable. A child’s building task is defined by the child. A “design challenge” is also presented on the Smart Sticks community website to further challenge children’s creativity in roller coaster construction. The web community also helps to encourage children, providing an arena to show off one’s creations and receive constructive feedback from others.
Boys and girls during early adolescence tend to behave in stereotypical gender roles (lecture 2/28). The Smart Sticks set has been designed with sensitivity to identity development; it is believed to engage both boys and girls while allowing them to remain comfortable in their gender role. Budd, Clance, and Simerly (1985) have shown that no sex differences exist in types of constructions built with blocks for preadolescents, failing to support Erikson’s theory that children build according to their gender morphology (boys build tall erect structures and girls build quiet enclosed structures). Karpoe and Olney (1983) found that within “all girl toy” or “all boy toy” conditions, both boys and girls construct similar scenes and tell similar stories, suggesting that sex differences in play are dependent on the toy, not the child. In addition, we observed at the Tech Museum of Innovation that both boys and girls enjoy playing with the roller coaster builder and simulation exhibit.
Gender differences in computer use are also evident from an early age, (OECD, 2002) and it is likely that these differences in use lead to different trajectories in computer use as a teenager and adult. Margolis & Fisher (2002) report male computer science undergraduates expressing how they “fell in love with computers” at an early age, viewed them as toys and happily spent their entire days ‘playing’ with computers.Female students on the other had reported that they had other interests – not just computing – and while some mentioned playing with computers with their parents, many felt left out and inferior because they did not have the same background of playing with computers.The AAWU Tech Savvy report (1999) shows similar findings with girls portraying a “we can but I don’t want to” attitude towards computers and viewing the computer as a tool rather than a toy.These findings led us to believe that activities should be designed to help girls view computers as toys and see themselves as creators rather than consumers of technology. Thus, when we were developing the building set concept, we paid particular attention to creating building scenarios in which both girls and boys would be interested, such as constructing a house or a roller coaster.
After reviewing research in the area of spatial ability, toys, and science and math achievement, Tracy (1987) finds that playing with toys such as construction sets seems to be correlated with the development of spatial ability skills. She states “these kinds of toys provide users with concrete experiences in the manipulation of objects and patterns, construction, and movement through space. More importantly, these toys must be manipulated so that they ‘work’”. Therefore, constructing physical roller coaster models, especially so that a virtual ride simulation is successful, may contribute to the development of spatial abilities.
Other evidence suggests manipulatives enhance children’s development.Although a lot of this information is aimed at young, preschool aged children, it is highly likely that the concepts carry through to older children and adults.Cartwright (1990) views large block play as important for preschool children’s development, stating that it allows children to create their own learning environment and the ambiguity of the blocks requires them to ask questions and negotiate about what the blocks represent.
The use of LEGO is also well studied, especially in its relation to LEGO mindstorms, the tools that allow children (and adults) to build robots and program them in a basic computer language.Although there has been controversy over how well these sets foster to learning without a structured curriculum, Mauch (2001) suggests that they can be used, within a curriculum, to develop word problem solving skills. However, further research is necessary to validate this claim.
The manipulatives research is complemented by project-based learning research, which points to the need for learning to occur in a context.Kafai, Marshall & Ching (1998) report high levels of motivation and persistence when 10-12 year olds were engaged in a long-term project designing software to teach younger children about astronomy.The CAB consortium report (2001) of Italian preschool children using a simplified version of LEGO mindstorms, also report good results for children engaged in long projects using collaboration and manipulatives.Throughout our design process we wanted to create something that children could manipulate as well as view on a screen, and the interviews and literature suggested that children found manipulatives and construction both interesting and motivating, so we perused the idea of using a ‘middle tech’ approach to develop our toy.
Resnick, Bruckman, and Marin (1996) present two guidelines for the design of construction sets. The first is that construction kits should form a “personal connection” to players’ interests and experiences; users should draw on previous knowledge to connect new ideas to their pre-existing intuitions. Smart Sticks pieces were inspired by popular construction kits, such as Tinker Toys and K’Nex, so that pieces will seem simple and familiar to children. The roller coaster construction set builds on children’s experiences with physical manipulation. The creator of kindergarten, Froebel, filled classrooms with physical objects so that children may appreciate and recognize patterns in nature; Montessori believed physical activities and materials enabled to children to explore on their own (Resnick et al, 1998). Smart Sticks builds on these foundational ideas of encouraging physical manipulation of objects while adding a computational aspect, which allows for complex simulations. This computer piece connects with Resnick, Bruckman, and Marin’s second guideline for designing construction sets, “epistemological connections,” meaning the kits should connect to important domains of knowledge and encourage new ways of thinking. The software component of the Smart Sticks system allows children to think creatively about spatial relations of their construction, as well as the physics of the ride simulation. In addition, the online community highlights real-world roller coaster builders, so that children feel may think about their play in light of the real business of roller coaster construction. It is our hope that some children may feel encouraged by their experiences with Smart Sticks to pursue a career in engineering or design.
Finally, our design team formed because of a desire to create a toy which was imaginative and creative.From Singer (1994) we learned that children use imaginative play to make sense of their world as they are growing up.He cites Piaget who claimed that imaginative play is an intrinsically adaptive feature of our human condition, and yet it does not seem that imagination is fostered beyond middle childhood.Singer claims that pretend play increases with age, although we struggled to find evidence of this in other literature.Newman (2002) explores the use of personae in computer games, and investigates, claiming that the characters are frequently low in intrinsic personality traits to allow players to take on that character, imagining themselves within the game.This is perhaps an important element, and suggests that riding the roller coaster after creating it in The Tech museum was an essential element in the exhibit’s popularity.
We also investigated creativity, and were surprised that little is written about the role of creativity in play, or the need for creativity in identity development of teenagers.The argument over whether creativity comes out of chaos (e.g. Chi, 1997) or is formulaic and can be quantified (e.g. Goldenberg, Mauzrsky, & Solomon, 1999) seems to be the most salient ideas within creativity literature, once you leave the realms of creative and imaginative play for preschoolers. However, informal interviews with children indicated that being able to create while they play is important, and the teachers expressed concern that budget cuts, and a focus on standardized tests resulted in abandoning the creativity elements usually associated with elementary and middle school.