News/Research

Eric Paulos on Kaleidescope

27 Sep, 2021

Eric Paulos on Kaleidescope

BCNM faculty Eric Paulos received a 2020-2021 faculty seed grant for his work on Kaleidoscope, a web tool centered around the process of creation, rather than only the final product. Below, he describes its conception and its in-class debut.

During the pandemic, CS160: User Interface Design and Development went online. As a design course focused on small group projects, critique, and user testing, the remote format posed challenges to the class. How would students collaborate? How would they brainstorm, share drafts, sketches, and feedback? How would they develop a sense of progress across designs, or reflect on their learning? In the fall of 2020, we designed and deployed a web tool called Kaleidoscope to support some of these needs. In personal and group “studio spaces”, students shared over 3800 artifacts – design sketches, notes, photographs of prototypes, code, Figma documents, etc. – and left each other over a thousand pieces of feedback. Studio spaces collected artifacts across many mediums, creating a central repository for project progress and infrastructure for feedback within and between teams. At the end of the semester, students generated final portfolios from these artifacts for the class showcase. Research with this creative collaborative tool is ongoing with research publications forthcoming.

Explore the class showcase here!