Looking "Inside" the Design
What's the Point?
- To help participants realize that design doesn't happen just on the surface of things, but inside of things as well, and that understanding what goes on inside is a vital aspect of design.
- To help participants articulate how their devices/machines might work, using storyboards to show sequence, action, and animation.
What You'll Need:
Several kinds of plan drawings, such as blueprints, schematic diagrams (see "Resources," below), instructions for assembling products such as toys, furniture, instructions for setting up a computer, etc.
What To Do:
- X-ray View:
- Display the drawings and give participants time to look them over.
- Ask, "What are these drawings for?" Help participants understand that the drawings explain how things are constructed, or how they function, or how to use them. Introduce the idea of looking at tools and machines as if they were being X-rayed, revealing their inner workings.
- Have participants make schematics or otherwise illustrate their Imagination Place! inventions to show what goes on inside--the mechanisms that make them work. Illustrations should include labels that identify parts, their functions, and how they relate to and affect other parts.
- Storyboards & Animation -- Have participants create a series of storyboards, demonstrating the sequence of various actions that show how their device / machine might works.
 Working with Imagination Place! in KAHooTZ
Tips & Tricks
Encourage participants to continue working to understand the KAHooTZ technical options and to use animation to show detailed inner workings of the larger device.
Wacky World
Participants visit Wacky Puzzles
and play with "Puzzle 3: Part of the Whole." They then create an Xpression of their own.
Participants visit Artifact
and create their own Xpression based on what is there.
Word Wave
Participants visit Buzz 2 and create a story based on the Xpression.
Design Xchange
Participants visit Design Specs: Looking "inside" the design
Views -- From Where I Am/ Sit/ Stand (To be developed.)
 KAHooTZ Help / KAHooTZ Tech Tips
- About Sequence -- Find out what sequence is and when to use it.
- How Do I... Make things happen in order -- Find out how to make thinks happen when you want them to by creating a sequence.
- About Text: What it is, the kinds there are and suggestions for using text.
 Design Notebooks
Participants' complete sketches of various views of their devices / machines including sketches of its inside and explanations of how their device might, in fact, work.
 Just Between Us
This activity is not intended to elicit drawings that explain the physics or mechanics of participants' inventions, but rather to give participants experience thinking about the parts that make up the whole machine, an aspect of technology that girls often feel is hidden and beyond their comprehension. Unlike tools such as vices, pliers, and screwdrivers, the "tools" that are traditionally part of the domain of females -- vacuum cleaners, toasters -- have complex working parts that are often hidden beneath a "designed" exterior.
 Resources
- How-to books of any kind (how to fix your plumbing, how to rewire a lamp, how to
make a dress pattern, etc.)
- The Way Things Work
- The Visual Dictionary of Everyday Things
- Machines: A Book of Moving Pop-ups
- Marbles, Roller skates, and Doorknobs: Simple Machines That Are Really Wheels
- Bathtubs, Slides, and Roller Coaster Rails: Simple Machines That Are Really Inclined
Planes
- Seesaws, Nutcrackers, and Brooms: Simple Machines That Are Really Levers
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