IWS Observations - Danielle Tisdale

For our assignment, I observed the Ozobots on Monday February 18th.

The three different signs I used were:

• No sign 
• Two signs at either end of the table that just said Ozobots!
• Two signs at either end of the table that said: "Ozobots codes, What do they do?" with six listed code examples on each sign. I labeled the codes with numbers but did not specify what they did.

I chose these types of signs because when I got to the workshop, the sign for the Ozobots had disappeared, and I thought it would be interesting to observe the space with a lack of signage. Since the sign was gone, I decided to test out a basic version of the sign on the chalkboards. For my last version of the sign, I wanted to give guests a bit of a challenge and see if they could determine what the different codes did without any explanation. 

• No sign (2:45-3:15)
• Most guests were younger kids who would go up to the table unprompted and begin drawing. Sometimes they would have the ozobot follow the lines, but a lot of them didn't see or notice the ozobots. The kids that went to the table seemed to be mostly interested in drawing pictures or writing their names and if they tested the bots, would ignore them when they couldn't follow the inconsistent lines. There were one or two kids who tried to design a track for the ozobot to follow and tested it out a number of times. There was only one set of parents that spent time with their two kids at ozobots without the sign, and they interacted with the bots and their kids the way I had expected them to. The dad was drawing a multicolored path without codes for the bot to follow on  separate sheet of paper and not paying attention to his kids, and the mom would coach one kid on how to write her name and then help her other kid fix the lines he'd drawn so the robot would follow them. The mom was very hands on and would take the pen from her kids occasionally while the dad was spending all of his time drawing his intricate path for the bot. 
• There was one kid that Matthew had to save from falling off of the table when he went to grab the ozobots!
• I think the complete lack of signage was a mixed success, a lot of kids were drawn in by the available pens and just began experimenting on their own, but a lot of them didn't use the bots either.  I think with the lack of signage, adults thought the table was just for kids to scribble on.
• The two Ozobots! chalk signs (3:15-3:50)
• Something I noticed with the two signs was that less kids walked up to the table on their own and more parents noticed the signs and directed their kids over there. The behavior of the kids that ended up at the table was similar to when there was no signage, but the behavior of the adults was very different. There were two adults at separate times that came in without kids and just began drawing and testing out the ozobots, which didn't happen when there was no sign. There were a few kids and parents who recognized what Ozobots were and played with them for a few minutes before they lost interest. One of the parents that joined her kid in playing with the bots began explaining that ozobots had code, and she walked him through it but never took his pen from him to do it herself, she just explained it to him and then grabbed her own pen and bot and started testing out different color codes. 
• I think this sign was most successful for adults but least successful for kids, I think some of the kids saw signs and didn't want to engage with the ozobots until their parents showed them what it was. The adults seemed to like the sign, it drew their attention to the bots without pressuring them to do something specific with the bots.
• The signs with code examples asking guests what the codes do (3:50-4:30)
• The guests that interacted with these signs up were the most engaged out of all the guests, but less guests approached the ozobots with these versions of the signs. There were a few families that spent at least 15 minutes at the ozobots, and one that spent 20 minutes there while these signs were up. The parents were very engaged with the ozobots and with their kids and worked together. Only one mom tried to do the codes for her son, but soon just let him draw (he was about five and only wanted to draw) and then began testing codes for herself. There was this one mother and daughter pair that spent so long at the ozobots and figured out what the codes did and discussed them, and then figured out that the codes can also work backwards. They tried many iterations of their tracks, and then incorporated four or five codes into their final track and were excited to get the bot to read the codes both ways. 
• This sign was the most successful for continuing engagement, but least for drawing guests in.