The document outlines the development of tools and frameworks for teaching interactive electronics and physical computing at the Institute of Interactive Objects over several iterations from 2003-2016. It describes the evolution from early prototyping boards using Basic Stamps to the creation of the open-source Arduino platform in 2005. Key developments include establishing a dedicated lab space, standardized curricula using "Prototyping a la K3", exploring wearables and communication technologies like the Sweetblue Bluetooth library, and ongoing work in haptics, Internet of Things, and preparing students as "digital artisans".

2. INSTITUTE OF INTERACTIVE OBJECTS

4. Design - a workflow
1.
2.
3.
4.
analyse the field
if there are no tools available, invent them
with the tools in hand, make things happen
disseminate, talk about it

7. Tool 1 - framework for electronic
projects (pre Arduino)
● 2003 - 2004: tools for Interaction Design
students to learn about digital electronics
● technique: hand soldered prototyping board,
with interchangeable processor
● Basic Stamp (manufactured by Parallax Inc.)
● Programmable mainly from Windows
computers using Serial ports

10. Projects made by students
● collaborative sound sculpture
● physicalization of the use of toilets using
race car tracks
● alcontrol

13. Tool 1 - lesson learned
● if the goal is interesting enough, it is possible
to push the student’s curiosity to work with
very complex tasks

14. Tool 2 - framework for electronic
projects (rev 0002)
● 2004 - 2005: tools for Interaction Design
students to learn about digital electronics
● technique: pre-manufactured board,
components unsoldered, with
interchangeable processor
● valid for multiple projects by selecting which
ones of the components should be mounted
● Basic Stamp (manufactured by Parallax Inc.)
● Programmable mainly from Windows
computers using Serial ports

17. Projects made by students
● iBikt: the automatic confession booth
● Bipolar chair: Ikea blended with gender
stereotypes

19. Tool 2 - lesson learned
● immediate satisfaction actually works in
getting the students to focus in the design
aspects of a project, by no sacrificing the
technical aspects of it

20. Tool 3 - Arduino Serial (the birth of
the lab)
● 2005 - 2006: in cooperation with IDII (IT) we
created the open source Arduino platform
● it was bringing to the table the shared
experiences of two design schools in the
need for tools for designers to build things
● 8 bit AVR processors (by Atmel)
● Programmable from any OS using USB
● We realized a space was needed, but we
had only 6m2, so we used the cafeteria

23. Projects made by students
● Involuntary dance machine
● Luxus rocking chair
● XSense helmet

27. Tool 3 - lesson learned
● the better documentation you put in hands of
the students, the better their projects
become
● the more constraints you put on their
projects, the more they need to work with the
concepts
● things need to talk to things, objects need to
connect to other objects

28. Tool 3 - lesson learned
● you can now iterate interactive concepts
really fast, you can build it, check the basic
functionality and decide whether it will work
with users … if not, go back to the drawing
board
● THIS IS WHEN THE IDEA OF
PROTOTYPING A LA K3 WAS BORN!!

29. Prototyping a la K3
● it is no magic recipe, it is all about attacking
knowledge blocks within a technical skill
(software, hardware) and proposing
interesting design challenges to the students
for them to force themselves into learning
what is needed to make them happen
● this requires a precise control of the
experience, having good sources of
materials and documentation and timing up
the production of parts needed

30. Prototyping a la K3
● we divide the whole experience in phases
○ information: basic lectures about certain topics
○ exploration: mini projects to learn about different
aspects of a technology, it’s all about skills
○ video prototyping: a way to express interactive
ideas with moving images in a really short time
○ project: development of a bigger-contextualized
task
○ critique: we do design, we evaluate design not
technical excellence
● let’s see some explorations, week after week

31. Design explorations
● the digital material is made of bits, what in
the physical world translates into buttons
(inputs) and lights (outputs)
● the explorations made by the students
during the first week of work consist in
looking at what can be designed when being
VERY constrained
● week after week, the constraints include
more and more tools, what opens up for
wider explorations of the material

37. http://vimeo.
com/79106611

38. Prototyping a la K3
● the standardisation of our educational tools,
allowed us simplifying our tasks, allowing us
reaching a higher amount of students by
keeping the subject up-to-date
● we were also gaining expertise, what
allowed us condense the work to be done by
a whole bunch of groups in just a few pages

42. Wearables
● we started the exploration of other fields
where we thought physical computing would
gain relevance in, one of them was
wearables
● the field, a dream for many since the demo
of the demos, lacked of an easy way in
approach to start building things
● students took one of K3’s shared projects as
an opportunity to produce the most used
manual in wearable computing with Arduino

45. Prototyping a la K3
● once we had hardware tackled down, it
became clear that we had to explore ways to
make it relevant for people with other
interests, so we looked into ways on how to
get hardware to:
○ communicate to the internet
○ become even more ubiquitous in unexpected fields
like fashion

46. Our take in communication
● communication can be achieved in multiple
ways
● when thinking about design, we need to
keep in mind which is not the most efficient,
but the easiest one
● back in 2008 there were no truly portable
ways of making an easy to deploy network
connection for our designs, so we chose to
experiment with using phones as gateways

47. insert image from the sweetblue experiment
by 1scale1: the board with the phone and
the shield

48. Sweetblue - API to talk to phones
● as there were no easy tools to achieve the
communication between an embedded
device (like an Arduino board) and a phone,
we designed our own software library to do
so
● Sweetblue is both a:
○ piece of Android code that can be used even from
the Processing IDE to make phone apps
○ piece of Arduino code that can talk to the phone
via a bluetooth chip of any kind

51. Haptics - our own exploration
● the development of Sweetblue as a tool for
the classroom put us in contact with Dr. S.
Stenslie, at the Universities of Oslo (NO) and
Arhus (DK)
● we started the development of a series of
haptic augmented garments

54. The Google case
● Google is famous for deploying unfinished
technologies to allow developers and
designers explore certain fields
● one of those is the creation of cable
connected accessories to Android phones
● as we had experience in the field, we took
the opportunity of trying to make a very easy
tool to create accessories to phones and
applications to control them

56. Arduino ADK + Processing ADK
● Processing is one of the most extended
software packages for designers to learn
how to program
● it is Java, which is fully compatible syntaxwise with Android code
● we created a combo of:
○ a plugin for Processing to create Android apps that
would “wake up” when connecting an Arduino board
○ a library for Arduino to build hardware accessories
for phones

60. And a publisher got interested
● Android and Arduino are big buzzwords in
the embedded world, mostly because of their
strong link to the Internet of Things

62. Stitchies - a new platform for haptics
● the idea of connecting through phones,
brought us to the creation of our own haptics
platform
● it is made of simple cells that can detect
touch and send touch events through a bus
● at the end of the bus there is a different type
of cell that can communicate over bluetooth
or cable to a phone
● the phone will get the interactive garment to
talk to others over a network connection

66. Where are we going - education-wise
● IoT is the new hot potato in design, we
arrived early and are adjusting to the high
innovation pace characteristic to the field
● we need to bring wearables to the next level
● we need to integrate the idea of accessory
even more with in the education

67. How are we doing it
● learning by doing
● to meet the demands we need to treat
technology as any material in order to bend
it to the needs of the few
● develop craftsmen skills

68. What are we becoming / creating
The digital artisant (also called Creative
Technologist) which has a deep understanding
of
● the theories of human cognition
● the material he deals with
● the tools of his trade