Final Prototype

Once the material was finalized we started putting our system together, working with a small model still had its own challenges. The measurements had to be precise so the slots could fit into the plastic cube and the opening from the reservoir had to match the slots so marbles from the reservoir could fall directly into the slots.

We used wood sticks (found in ice-cream bars) for the stand. It was fairly easy to work with wood sticks as they were easy to cut and glue.

The prototype came along well and now we had to connect it to the handyboard and test a working prototype.

Materials

After tens of prototypes with different materials we found and decided on materials found at a hobby store. I strongly recommend visiting a hobby store to find materials, it's a great place for these kinds of projects. The plastic sheet that we used is called Styrene Sheet used to create miniature models. The sheet has grids which makes it easy to cut with a normal knife and any plastic bond can be used to put it together. This material was used to create the slots of the machine and the slider that opens and closes to drop the marble, which is all attached to the Rack and Gear Pinion and motor. In the next post I will talk about the Rack and Gear Pinion.



For the marble reservoir, the center block that was holding the motors and slots, and the result container we used ready made pieces that we found at the container store.

Prototyping the new design

We started prototyping our new design and soon found it to be challenging due to the lack of materials and resources supporting the design. We used cardboards, plastic and wood but each had some problems.

After a lot of research and visiting many stores it became obvious that we have a big challenge ahead to build a gum ball like machine without much resources and limited time frame.

We started thinking of new shapes that can be easily supported in the limited time and resources. Our goal was to be able to find material that can be easily available. Our design changed again, see the two 3d drawings (done in Google Sketchup) below in this post. Once we did these drawings we started to look for materials and ready made material to support our design.

Design version 2

After the design change decision we started sketching and prototyping our new design. Here you can see our first sketches of the new design. The idea is inspired by a gumball machine to make it fun and intuitive for kids.

The basic concept remains the same, there is top reservoir to hold marbles followed by slots and a result container to hold resultant marbles.

We also created a Flash prototype that can be seen at Tim's (another member of the MarblePly Team) blog. Flash Prototype
To see it in action you can slide the slider to the right and press the red button.

Prototype demo and design change

So we demoed our clay prototype in the class and got some feedback from classmates and other graduate students at MIT, after some discussion we concluded to change the design to make the interface more fun and intuitive for kids. The design that we choose closely matched to a gum ball machine.

We could relate our idea with a gumball machine by seeing the top part a reservoir for marbles and instead of the coin knob we planned to create some slots there. And for the bottom part we thought of some sort of result container that kids can hold.

First Prototype with Clay

We did our first prototype using clay material, it was a great experience using clay as we could quickly put together the prototype. We used soft clay material which was easy to mold and easy to create different shapes. This was a great exercise to see the physical design of our idea, it helped us learn about the constraints and the interaction of the design.

The Idea

The idea behind the Multiplication Machine called MarbleTime is to teach kids multiplication in an interactive and fun way. We did some research and found out ways that teacher's use in school to teach multiplication logic. The method that we found most interesting is the Grid Method. It helps children learn multiplication using a grid, so for example to do 3 x 2 you would have to create 3 rows and put 2 objects in each row and then do a total of all objects, that brings to a total of 6 in this case.

We like this idea for the following reasons:

1. It gives a sense of physical space.
2. You can visually see why 3x2 is 6 and would not be 5.
3. With a grid you can physically operate with objects.

Welcome to MarblePly blog

This blog is created to give an overview of MarblesPly, a tangible user interface to teach children multiplication. This blog will also talk about the idea, vision, process, design, materials and challenges of this TUI (Tangible User Interface).

This project is done in a team of 3 people, i.e. Takao Tanizawa (http://takao-comp150.blogspot.com/) and Tim Nagaoka. You can read more about this project and their thoughts on their blogs.