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Link to prototype https://xd.adobe.com/view/8c942209-f35b-4ae6-b73c-69bb56bcf5c8-d9c7/?fullscreen
What does design fidelity mean? That's similar to saying the amount of detail in a design. What are the benefits of prototyping? The benefits of prototyping are that you can visually picture your design using graphical tools and graphically detect problems in layout, design, appearance and accessibility with prototyping. Also you could use it to explain or partly demonstrate an idea to someone before you make it. It's always good to draw a picture before you do anything, always start with a picture, and a prototype is like a picture only with a little working functionality built-in too.
Describe how you applied some of the interaction design principles in your design? Mine's kind of like a photo maze. As soon as I figured out gradients and drop shadow I was able to be creative with it.
I matched user experience with expectations by adding rollover effects for things that do stuff, I kept a consistent design, sort of cartoony and colorful mostly, I did not follow minimalism because mine's a maze and I had to have lots of stuff to hide easter eggs within it. I utilized reducing cognition by animating between pages when it fit and including 'next' links since I couldn't seem to keep the animation working every time. It kind of seems like the rollovers interfere with the animations and/or vice versa and/or the test play button doesn't always work right. I put a lot of artboards up, so I probably put it to the test pretty good, and it didn't seem like it wanted to work 100% correctly, but most things did.
I utilized user engagement by using wild colors and creative shapes with shadows and inlay, as well as by putting enough details to make it confusing and interesting. Since it's a maze, it's supposed to be confusing on purpose, like a labyrinth. It does take you in circles though, so it's not a labyrinth you get stuck in, you always wind up back at the beginning so you can try all routes through the maze. I guess that means I utilized user control as well since you can go back to the beginning and try another route. I utilized perceivability because generally speaking you can tell what stuff does, although not exactly where it goes most of the time. I utilized error handling by checking all routes I could check - and that took a lot of work because it just wasn't working a lot of the time, for some reason I think it's the play button.
I utilized affordability by simulating real buttons with my rollovers - I used movement a little bit, the lightning bolt bounces up and down when you click it and I tried to make the stop sign do that too but it wasn't working exactly like I expected it to - and after I gave up on movement I fell back on color rollovers.
Do you think providing more toys, games, and programs related to computer science can narrow the gender gap? What are other obstacles that can arise? For instance, an expensive code camp might offer better quality education than a free introduction course through an app or site. What are some ways to address these issues? Isn't that completely patronizing and also completely opposite of encouraging technical skill building? Is the real issue really whether engineers are females, or is it that females don't get equivalent fairness with regard to career pay? I know for a fact that females are capable of being very smart, because they outsmart me all the time, and I'm no dummy. I personally started programming, when I was twelve, for I think exactly five reasons: #1 it gave me something technical to do before everyone else woke up every morning #2 because I actually liked making the computer solve interesting problems for me, #3 because I had an idea, which was AccountBlaster (although I did not have a good name for it until 29 years later, I won't even say what I called it back then) and #4 because at the time, computers were new, and it seemed like they were an emerging thing that nobody knew how to deal with. I figured if I learned how to deal with computers early on, I could maybe help people with them later. I think those were all good reasons, and I have a really similar mentality to this day. #5 was that the person we bought the computer from also gave me a programming book (Hypercard API reference) to go with it - also which happened to be written by someone who had a name that I identified with. If I were not a male, I don't see how any of those reasons would have been influenced - except maybe the matching name - but if you go back six months more - the reason there was a computer at my house in the first place - this was 1988 - just when they started popping out - was that the vice principle of my elementary school told my parents to give me one (a Mac Plus.) Would he have said that if I were not male? Perhaps not!? I'm not sure! We'd have to go back and see if he was telling this to male families or to every family. But I think that is the reason right there - people - people perpetuate these stereotypes, and hence the division.
Actually, having the API reference book helped a lot too, so maybe give JavaScript API reference and example books out to kids, show them how to hack and add to websites with JavaScript and CSS. And next time you're out walking your dog, and someone says "Is it a boy or a girl?" shoot them a laser eye and say "Why's it matter?" I think that a big part of this problem is with humans perpetually distinguishing every chance we get. It's built into the language, him/her he/she, etc. Blue or pink clothing, right from the get-go. Even in canvas at CSUMB we get to be he/him / she/her or they/them. So I think the answer is - give out API reference example books to kids - and that people need to really stop distinguishing who is what, every turn. That answer may seem to lean away from the question, but if it really doesn't matter, then ignoring gender when it doesn't matter should correct the apparent issue. Like race, most of the time it really doesn't matter, unless there are special circumstances like we're lifting up something, (lifting needs slightly larger muscles, etc.) singing something (voice) etc. And if it's really a problem, honestly, I bet you could trace it, if you had all the data. If there's fewer female engineer workers, there's probably fewer female engineer applicants, and if there's fewer female engineer applicants, then there's probably fewer female engineer students, and if so, there's probably fewer prepared female young mathematics and science students, and if so, the teachers and parents are not doing their job ....etc. I think the source could be figured out. Sounds like a good engineering problem to figure out...And again, I really think we should make sure that is actually the really problem and not just an observable effect of some larger underlying problem, or a misguided non-problem off to the side from the actual problem of females not getting fair career pay in their actual field of choice.
In the article, “Colleges Have Increased Women Computer Science Majors: What Can Google Learn? “ Maria Klaw became the president of Harvey Mudd College which had 10% women graduates in Computer Science. After a week or two observation, she changed the names of classes and introduced a new intro class that was for students with no programming experience. Out of all the changes she made, and the changes at Carnegie Mellon, which do you think is the best and which would you like to see implemented in CSUMB? I would suggest that paired with the name changes of the courses there was also probably person-to-person promotion which was the real reason the statistics evened out, not because of changing the names of the courses. Word got out they were catering to females, which was in turn a more attractive curriculum to be a part of.
Do you think it is fair to separate students by creating introductory programming courses for differing levels of programming experiences? What issues do you think could arise? Yes, it is fair to separate students by skill just like in mathematics courses at early ages. I see two reasons for this: A) you can't learn a higher level than you're ready for and B) when I was a kid the future math classes were like levels in a video game I had yet to achieve. I often listed all the courses I would need to get to calculus, which just seemed intriguing and mysterious to me - because I didn't have access to it until later - so it was like an itch I was craving and striving for all along. If you give them calculus before they're ready, they'll scan through it and never learn it or anything before it. And I think it's probably the same with any other subject, math is just really layered as far as skills, because it's been around for so long and it's so fundamental, there's so much to it that has dependencies on lower levels of knowledge. Engineering is similar, so I'm pretty sure it's not only fair but a great idea to separate the levels. We don't need everyone programming at the same level, we need everyone programming at their own personal highest level.
“While 66 percent of girls aged 6 to 12 have an interest in computing programs, that falls to 32 percent for teen girls aged 13 to 17. And by the time young women enter college, the number has fallen even further to 4 percent.” Why do you think the percentage of girls interested in computing programs drops off so heavily between these age groups? What do you think can be done to counter this trend? I don't necessarily think you should fight to counter this trend directly, because of what I said in my first answer. Why fight the trend of natural interest, since it may be a natural trend. Just give them fair career pay in the careers they are naturally choosing, instead of trying to get them to be interested in something they're not. Maybe females really don't want to be programmers (in general.) If you push kids one direction, that won't necessarily work - they could just wind up going the other direction. It sounds like females are being pushed toward something to the end of supposed career fairness, and it's backfiring because the real problem isn't actually that interest in engineering careers declines as kids age, that could be a side issue. Kids don't want to deal with engineering, they want to do what they want to do. Plus, technology is moving so fast now, kids probably can't even keep up with it anymore. I just heard a family walking past my house just the other day "Dad I have an app idea!" (little girl's voice briefly explains idea) Dad: "Um, that actually already exists..." Whatever people/kids are doing is what they want to do. The problem isn't that there's no interest, they aren't interested because they aren't interested, and that is for some reason being illuminated as a problem when really the problem is unfair career pay. You're seeing either the effect of the problem, or trying to attribute the statistic to the cause of unfair career pay, but either way, this isn't a root problem of anything. If someone's not interested, they're not interested, and if it's a group of people, there has got to be a reason for it. And if it's just their interest we're talking about, then that can't be a problem, because they have the right to be interested in whatever they want. If they are interested in a career that doesn't pay well, someone should mention that to them, early on hopefully, and tell them what would pay well, perhaps. And how can we discuss differences in male and female careers without going all the way back to hormonal causality. There are big differences in males and females, one is hormones, and another big one is the very real and natural behavioral tendencies associated with having those different hormones inside of us. Are women able to literally control men in personal situations because of hormones? Vice versa? If the playing field isn't level underneath, how can it really be actually level on the surface? My answer is that we shouldn't fight trends of interest, we should pay people fairly for their careers, whatever they choose.
There's sort of one more thing about this - like the Ski Squaw stickers - why do people want other people to do what they do? The sticker that says "Surfing sucks, don't try it" is better.
In response to Abraham Borg's response to the first question: Can toys related to computer science narrow the gender gap? I was starting to think you can not really make toys centered around programming, until I wrote this paragraph. The reason is that programming is exactly the opposite of playing with toys - it is creating toys from the parts we have. At first I thought, no toy can be the parts for another somehow more complete toy, because if it were, it wouldn't be a toy itself, and you wouldn't need to make it into some other toy. Instead of fighting the paradigm and trying to make programming into toys, I could suggest we illuminate the fact that you get a toy, at the end, after you get your programming done, and it's whatever toy you created yourself, with your programming, so you can make your toy as awesome as you want! I am an adult by age, but a child by heart. I still see exactly what I saw in all the toys I ever played with, and I most distinctly replaced entire sections of toys (Legos - out!) literally with programming, because it's better. The flip side to this is that Legos are, I think, pretty close to programming already. Parts->toy. There isn't a closer toy to it, so if we do make toys that are for teaching programming, start with Legos. Ok - how about this - Legos with wiring - there's already Lego boards, you put your pieces on - those should be circuit boards....the Legos should be chips...that programming toy, I would play with. Why didn't I think of that when I was a kid!? The little toy spaceships you make already have little fake lights on them - wire up all those Lego lights! The spaceship could land on the board, connect to the chip, and actually make stuff happen, new mission instructions downloaded from the space-base to the ship, new code for the lights to flash differently...etc. So I'm changing my 'no' to 'yes', as long as the new toy is circuit-code-embedded Legos, or similar! Clegos?
In response to James Meaden's third answer to the fourth question, what's up with the drop in interest in engineering as female kids get older? I agree with what you said, and it made me think, okay, so, the females are leaving engineering, and going and doing something else. If we are interested in them being interested in engineering, then I think we should go wherever they go, and ask them why they left. Was it something we said? There could be a real, actual need for females, since we are engineering for everyone, we literally need help from females helping make at least design decisions for other females at the very least. Perhaps if we ask them to return to the field, tell them why we need them, ask for specific help, like, can you help us on this project we're working on, would probably be reasonable, just like you said, group work set up with diversity in mind.
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