An Evaluation of Learning Resources in Support of Integrated Interaction and Electronic Product Design.

DS 62: Proceedings of E&PDE 2010, the 12th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education - When Design Education and Design Research meet ..., Trondheim, Norway, 02.-03.09.2010

Year: 2010
Editor: Boks W; Ion, W; McMahon, C and Parkinson B
Author: Badni, Kevin; Page, Tom
Section: NEW PARADIGMS AND APPROACHES
Page(s): 160-165

Abstract

Over the last two years we have seen an increased interest from our students in integrating electronic product design with interaction design in their final year major project work. Furthermore, this has been coupled by increasing interest in the use of Arduino (www.arduino.cc) as a prototyping environment for electronic product design. Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping
platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and a freely downloadable development environment; it is intended for designers, hobbyists, and those interested in creating interactive objects
or environments. Adobe Flash is used in interaction design as a platform for graphical interaction. Using Arduino and Adobe Flash, students are able to build fully working prototypes in their projects,
rather than creating non-interactive mock-ups. The worked outlined here comprised the evaluation of learning resources to enhance students’ learning in Arduino and Adobe Flash. The work reported here considers an action research project around the use and evaluation of learning resources in Arduino and Flash which were developed to support final year major product design projects. These resources were developed by the authors and a learning technologist at Loughborough University funded by the Centre of Excellence and Teaching in Engineering (Eng-CETL). The resources were evaluated by the authors and this evaluation forms the basis of this paper. A Grounded Theory approach to this evaluation was employed, whereby each subsequent study was designed using the knowledge and insight gained from the previous study. Moreover, the students observed gave a reflective commentary on their learning experience due to the controlled nature of their final year
projects.

Keywords: Interaction design, electronic product design, flash, Arduino

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