Designing Computer Science STEM Toys for Children
THESIS STATEMENT
Technological progress through complex designs and integrated intelligence has made it a driving force behind our world’s economy. People of the future should not only acknowledge the importance of computer science but also understand its fundamentals. STEM toy design that focuses on computer science principles can be an effective way to introduce computer science fundamentals and basic programming skills to children.
OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT
Children, in general, enjoy interactive activities with their friends or parent, STEM toys can be designed with social interactive elements to facilitate better memory recall through competitive and repetitive playing processes.
why board game?
Parents’ intimidation subtracts from the appeal of products, making them less likely to purchase them for their children. A board game is not only less intimidating than other STEM toys in the market, but also it is relatively inexpensive.
Board games also have a social value that embraces the emotional element. Embracing human emotion is a valuable design factor for STEM toys. This factor can act as a distraction for players to focus on the opponent than learning. The learning part is still there, but players are intrinsically motivated to win than to memorize the knowledge at hand.
The board game not only embraces human emotions through competition, betrayal, shortcut, etc. but a board game by design also embraces repetition which also enhances human memory.
WHAT IS IT TEACHING?
The goal of this board game I have designed is to teach the very fundamentals of computer programming. These logical structures can be found in almost every computer code: If/else statements, Else-if statements, and while loop. Within these basic programming logics, there are also familiar characters and syntax.
DESIGN & prototype
The graphics that were applied for this board game mimic C++ programming language. There are two different playing cards that the player may select. The ‘if else card’ and the ‘while loop’ card.
FOUR ‘if else’ CARDS
TWO ‘while loop’ CARDS
4 PLAYERS | FAMILY GAME
On average, a family has four people. I want this board game to facilitate parents’ involvement. I also believe it is important for parents to be a part of their children’s initial learning phase of something new and complex because it gives children the opportunity to associate good memories in the future when they face hard challenges in this subject.
‘int a’, ‘int b’, ‘int c’, and ‘int d’ are the four board game characters the player can select to play as.
PROGRAM BOARD
I want this board game to be as intuitive as possible. Most board games have few pages of instruction manual. In this board game the instruction can be found on the ‘Program Board’ itself.
The instruction of this game is very sample, it only has 6 steps.
Roll the dice
Move your integer ‘int’ forward
Pick the card indicated on the step you land
Place the card on your ‘Program Board’
Take appropriate action indicated on the card
Give the dice to the person to your left
PACKAGING
I want to pay attention to packaging as I believe packaging is extremely important to attract consumers’ attention. For STEM toys focusing on computer science, I believe the packaging design should be as intuitive as possible, and as simple as possible because computer science itself is very complicated in the imaginations of most people.
