Quilt Snaps:
A Fabric Based Computational Construction Kit
Leah Buechley, Nwanua Elumeze, Camille Dodson, and Michael Eisenberg
Department of Computer Science
University of Colorado, Boulder CO USA
Abstract
In this paper we present Quilt Snaps, a fabric based
construction kit consisting of a set of computationally
enhanced quilting pieces. Our discussion focuses on
three ways that children can engage with Quilt Snaps.
First, Quilt Snaps allows children to act as the engineers,
designers, and decorators of their own digital
manipulatives. Second, by playing with the manipulatives
that they've helped to construct, children can learn about
concepts relevant to programming, graph theory, and
dynamical systems. Finally, since Quilt Snaps is fabric
based, children can use the pieces they construct as
personal mobile display media.
1. Introduction
This paper presents a fabric based construction kit, Quilt Snaps, based on
the idea of communicating, computationally enhanced quilting pieces. The
Quilt Snaps project is guided by the principle, advocated by the nineteenth
century educational pioneer Friedrich Froebel [2] among others, that
self-guided exploratory activities that engage children intellectually,
physically and emotionally are an important way of learning. When
children are allowed to explore subjects on their own they will engage
in personally meaningful creative work, and will become emotionally
attached not only to the objects they build, but also to the knowledge
they independently construct through this process.
Froebel (who spearheaded the creation of kindergarten classrooms for young
children) designed a curriculum centered around what he called
"gifts": sets of tangible artifacts such as blocks, geometric shapes, and
craft materials. While Froebel's gifts remain wonderful artifacts for
conveying ideas such as shape, color and volume, they are limited to a
nineteenth-century portrait of technology; as such, they cannot teach a
child about topics like dynamics or programming, and they cannot communicate
with their users except through their static form.
In recent years, researchers have argued that the
educational attributes and expressiveness of tangible
artifacts could be dramatically enhanced by embedding
computational elements in them [3, 7]. Computational
construction kits and "digital manipulatives" can provide
new and powerful means for introducing children to
topics like dynamics, programming and electrical
engineering.
Research into computational construction kits has blossomed in the last
decade (see, for instance, [3], [5], [6], [7]). Such projects include work
in Lego robotics, building blocks that function as a tangible programming
language, and blocks that allow users to experiment with probability and
"flows of control".
While Quilt Snaps has things in common with previous construction kit
projects, the system possesses two unique attributes. It allows users to
decorate and help build their pieces, and it lets kids use their pieces in a
variety of creative and personalized ways. Quilt Snaps may be viewed as
"computational patches of fabric"; and as such, kids can use their patches
to decorate or embellish (e.g.) jackets, backpacks, and numerous other
personal items.
Quilt Snaps might also be viewed as a blending of ideas from wearable
computing (and smart textiles) with those from educational technology. While
the area of wearable computing has been a focus of active research in recent
years, techniques in this field have not been widely applied to educational
domains (though see Berglin [1] for a marvelous counterexample employing
temperature- sensitive fabrics in conjunction with computationally-
enhanced stuffed toys).
3. Quilt Snaps
Quilt Snaps consists of a set of computationally enhanced quilting pieces or
"patches" which kids can decorate and then snap together into a variety of
quilts, creating dynamic light patterns. Each decorated patch is a piece of
fabric containing a microcontroller, a Light Emitting Diode (LED) and snaps
on each of its sides.
Figure 1. An undecorated patch.
Every Quilt Snaps piece is built through an entirely solder-free and
wireless process. Using a technique pioneered by Post et al. [4], the
circuit on each patch is embroidered with conductive thread and a
computerized embroidery machine. The microcontroller is attached to the
fabric with a stitched-on socket and the snaps are riveted to the sides of
each patch. Figure 1 shows a picture of a square patch as it looks before
decoration.
As can be seen in Figure 1, a patch has three snaps on each of its sides.
These snaps connect pieces both physically and electrically, routing power
and digital signals between patches. Two of the snaps on each side are used
for power and ground and the third center snap functions as an input or
output. One patch's output sides attach to another's input sides. Arrows on
the output snaps allow a user to determine the direction of signal flows.
Each input side of a patch can also accept an input strip. Input strips are
thin fabric pieces that allow users to interact with their quilts and
patches. The current prototype includes touch and light sensor strips, and
battery strips which supply constructions with power.
When powered, each patch is constantly querying its
input snaps looking for signals from neighboring patches
or input strips. When a patch receives an input it displays
this input and then sends a signal out through all of its
output snaps. For example, a user might snap a touch
sensor strip to a patch, which she then in turn attaches to a
second patch. When she presses the touch sensor, the
first patch's LED turns on for one second. The first patch
then sends a signal to the second patch and its LED turns
on for one second. By snapping patches and input strips
into different arrangements, users can obtain a variety of
quilts and moving light patterns.
4. Quilt Snaps' Affordances
Quilt snaps were designed to be used in three different ways. First, users
can decorate their patches with electronic and crafting materials. Once the
patches are finished, users can interact with collections of them to create
quilts and patterns of light flow. Users can also treat the patches they
make as mobile media for artistic and digital expressionattaching patches to
their personal items. This section will examine each of these aspects of
Quilt Snaps in turn.
4.1: A Medium for Blending Art and Engineering
The sample Quilt Snaps patches shown in Figure 2 below were constructed by
researchers in our own laboratory. Nonetheless, the patches have been
designed so that they can be decorated by end users (i.e., students) in an
activity which blends crafting and engineering. In the decorating activity
that we anticipate for Quilt Snaps, users will be given blank patches like
the one shown in Figure 1 and LEDs to attach to their patches. Users will
design an image which creatively incorporates the LED; thenemploying felt,
fabric markers, conductive thread and other crafting materialsthey will
ornament their patches. During this activity they will learn how to
create a simple circuit, attaching the leads of their LED to two labeled
pads extending from the microcontroller.
4.2: A Construction Kit for Collaborative Learning
The Quilt Snaps activity allows for both individual creativity (in the
decorating phase) and collaborative work (in the later phases in
which patches are combined). Though users can interact with single patches
and input strips, they will obtain much more complex and interesting
patterns by linking their patches with others. Patches can be snapped into
a variety of configurations to build patchwork quilts and explore flows of
light. The quilts serve as a collaborative artistic medium. The directed
graph configurations created by the electrical connections in the patches
create flows of light through the quilts and might be used to model the
movement of electricity or water, or to explain concepts such as control flow.
Figure 2 shows how four squares have been snapped together to form a loop.
4.3: A Mobile Interactive Display
Perhaps the most potentially interesting aspect of Quilt Snaps is that it
makes use of fabric as a material substrate for "mobile computing" in
education. Since patches and small quilts require only two small watch
batteries for power, they can serve as portable artifacts that are, at one
and the same time, expressive of personal artistry and of interesting
computational or procedural ideas. Moreover, they can be attached to almost
anything that finds its way into student culture. For example, they might be
snapped onto clothing, notebooks, lunch boxes or hats. Figure 2 shows a
patch, a battery input strip and a touch sensor input strip attached to a
t-shirt. Quite conceivably, students might wear individual patches about
(e.g., on their clothing) and then combine those patches with many others
into larger mural-like patterns in group settings.
Figure 2. Quilt Snaps.
The crucial point here is that Quilt Snaps are created with an eye toward
tastefully incorporating the values of design and engineering into the
day-to-day artifacts of student culture. By allowing students to keep the
patches they've made, and by showing them how those patches can be attached
to personal items, we hope to strengthen students' interest in and
attachment to the lessons they learn in the course of design activities. We
are also optimistic that by giving children the opportunity to personally
invest in the work they do with Quilt Snaps, we may spark long-term
interests in electronics or computer science.
Finally, we hope that by presenting electronics and computer science through
this new medium we may attract students who have not traditionally
participated in these activities. In particular, we hope that activities
presenting opportunities for personal aesthetic expression may appeal to
girls more than (for example) traditional robotics activities did while
conveying the same educational content.
5. Future Work
Case studies with users need to be undertaken to determine if Quilt Snaps
and its companion activities can be used to engage children in electronics
and convey educational content. We would also like to begin long term
studies investigating whether such activities could impact girls'
participation in electrical engineering and computer science.
To increase the flexibility and expressiveness of Quilt Snaps, we intend to
add more input strips to the kit, incorporate more outputs like motors and
buzzers in the patches, and build special purpose patches with more
sophisticated display capabilities. For example, we may include numeric
display patches in the next prototype. We would also like to explore
enriching the design activity to allow users to participate in programming
the behavior of each patch.
6. Acknowledgments
Thanks to Mark Gross, Michael Mills, Mitchell Nathan, Andee Rubin, Mitchel
Resnick, Gerhard Fischer, Roy Pea, and Carol Strohecker for their
conversation. This work was funded in part by the National Science
Foundation (awards no. EIA-0326054, and REC0125363).
7. References
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