IWS signage observations and reflection- Destiny

OBSERVATIONS:

Saturday 2/16 OZOBOTS

FIRST ATTEMPT (original sign with messy paper) “turn on the bot (button on side). Place it on a track. Notice what happens. Design your own track”

1:50pm

• No attention yet.
• There are tracks all over the paper.
• Bots on the table (readily available)

2:02pm  (duration of interaction: 12 mins)

• Girl walks over.
• Shows dad the bot
• Dad and young brother walk over
• “I have no idea what the patterns do”
• Dad points at cheat sheet
• Girl starts to draw track
• No notice of signs
• Little brother starts drawing
• Dad walks away
• “How do you turn it on?”
• Dad tries to plug it in and accidently hits the button
• Dad keeps walking back and forth
• “Daddy look at what mine is doing. It’s going super slow and then super fast”
• DAD “gotta gove someone else a turn”

2:06pm

• Mom walks by and reads sign
• Keeps walking to 3D modeling

2:07pm (duration of interaction:6 mins)

• Another little girl walks up and looks at table and what they are doing
• Walks away
• Comes back 2 mins later
• Watched
• Grabs for a bot
• Asks for paper and a bot
• being ignored
• Dad from other girl (might be her dad too) tells her she needs to draw a track
• 2:12 volunteer steps in and starts to facilitate to both girls above

2:13pm

• Older woman walks by looking at the table.

2:15pm (duration of interaction: 6 mins)

• Young family walks up
• Girl about 6, mom and dad
• Volunteer walks up and explains hot to turn it on
• STAYS THE ENTIRE TIME: QUIET
• Continues making a track
• Dad interacts with young girl not mom
• Mom rocking baby
• Volunteer plugs in bots

2:16pm (duration of interaction: 5 mins)

• Grandma walks up
• GMA “what is it that we are doing here?”
• Looking intently
• Mom of other girl explains and the gma proceeds to make a track and ask for bot
• “Its too light or small of a line.”

2:20pm

• Boy walks up and looks over shoulder of dad
• DAD “want to give it a try?”
• GMA offers seat
• Boy leaves

2:26pm (duration of interaction: 6 mins)

• Little girl with parents walk up
• Reads sign aloud!!!!!
• Does each step of sign
• Starts to make track
• Add codes to track
• Work as a team on one track

SECOND ATTEMPT (NO SIGN with messy paper)

2:31 pm

• Two college students (boy and girl) walk by looking at table and then walk out.

2:38 pm

• No activity since the college students
• Its super windy outside..
• One older man at coding
• Grandpa and young boy at stop motion
• Slight slow down from the 2:00 rush

2:41 pm (duration of interaction: 5 min)

• Teen girl walks up
• Grabs a piece of paper
• Looks at other tracks on table
• Makes track
• Keeps looking at other tracks/ cheat sheet

2:45 pm (duration of interaction: 4 mins)

• Mom and young girl walk up
• Mom looks at guide book
• Teen tells them to draw lines and the bot follows
• Teen leaves
• Mom helps girl to design a track
• “Draw a straight line”
• Mom doesnt know how to turn on bot
• Keeps referring to the booklet of instructions
• “So go like this ‘blue green blue’ then see what happens”
• Mom drawing track as well
  
  

2:48 pm (boy stays 3 mins)

• Gma and older boy join
• BOY “oh! I’ve seen these before”
• MOM “is it following the black line?”
• GMA “yes but it stopped at the red line is it supposed to?”
• GMA “what do the colored lines do?”
• MOM “ maybe we should see other stuff
• Boy stays and tries other tracks

2:52 pm (duration of interaction:

• GMA brings another boy maybe 7 to the table
• Another girl comes who knows them (maybe 9)
• GIRL “i love these”
• GMA “what do the colored lines do”
• GIRL “they tell the robot what to do”
• Make own track on paper
• GIRL  “ima do tornado”
• OLDER BOY “no ima do tornado”
• The kids have seen this before in their robots club at school
• Girl tells that they are coding
• Younger boy “k, now i’m gonna do another one”
• Mom tells gma they are “ozobots”
• Girl using instruction book
• Mom asks if they want to move on?
• They plug in the bots
  
  
  
  

THIRD ATTEMPT (simple directions written on top of paper and fresh paper) “Draw a track with codes for the bot to follow!”

3:08 pm

• Change paper

3:11pm

• Walks up to the table and glances
• Walks away

3:14 pm

• Mom walks up with 2 kids and a dad

• MOM “it says draw a track and it will follow”
• Mom directing kids on how to make track

3:17pm (duration of interaction: 9 mins)

• Boy and mom walk up
• Matthew help get them started
• Mom assist on thickness of line
• Mom walks away
• Boy continues to draw
• Mom comes back
• MOM “do you think it’s going to follow?”

3:21 pm

• Older lady watching from behind, smiling

3:29 pm (duration of interaction: 8 mins)

• Young mom and girl walks up
• MOM “the codes tell it something, here are the codes”
• Girl draws a track
• MOM “it turns color when it goes over colors”
• Matthew steps in and says “you need to make really think lines”
• Dad comes up and the mom explains how they work
• MOM “lets go check out outside”

3:32 pm (duration of interaction: 8 mins)

• Grandma comes up with young boy
• Gma watches boy start a track
• Gma asks me if you can buy them
• Then proceeds to call someone and tell them about them
• Gma tries her hand at track drawing
• Older brother and grandpa join later
• Gma explains the bots to the gpa and show him the guide
  
  
  
  
  
  

BLOG RESPONCE:

I noticed a few things during this investigation. First, I heard or saw a total of four people read the signs on the two attempts that had signs. Two in each. This made me think that the sign placement did not matter. The first attempt had the sign on the window as normal and the last had a simple direction written on the paper directly. I was hoping that having the direction in people's faces would create more interaction and clarity of the activity.

I noticed that no matter where the sign was or if it had a sign at all guests figure it out without direction. When I refreshed the paper, it was still was self guided by all guests. The older crowd was a little took back when there was fresh paper because there were not example tracks already there.

Lastly, I observed that the duration of time spent interacting with the activity did not vary among the different attempts. Also the time spent figuring out how the bot worked did not vary much either. However, I noticed that in the last attempt with the directions on the table, more codes were used more quickly. I think that was caused by having the simple phrase say "draw a track with codes". This hints that there is more than just drawing lines.