Electronics as material
what we thought we wanted
an easy way to use electronics prototyping kits for Smart Design
- simple enough for people with little to no electronics knowledge
- supports quick and loose ideation
- easy to assemble and disassemble
- small and mountable
- reusable
what we really needed
- not a prototyping platform, but a material
- already enough prototyping platforms
- industrial designers don't actually want to do software logic - they want to work with a tangible thing like
- cardboard, paper, nuts, bolts
- all you need is a power source
what we came up with: littleBits
you can grab it and use it, but can escalate to a more complex prototyping tool
discrete components that are not quite raw
so they use magnets: small, impossible to connect incorrectly, easy to snap together
no logic: it's just on or off once the components are together
using cardboard with copper tape to mock up surface mount
some ideas
- create a recorder modules to preprogram common behavior and configurations
- moving to 3 wires so that it is compatible with Arduino for more complex interactions
- make it open source to enable libraries of configurations
- get wider adoption!
