CAREER: Material Computing for Everyone: Democratizing Creative Computing via Unexpected Materials and Cultures

PI在这个项目中的目标是回答这样一个问题：我们能否通过将技术置于新的材料和文化背景中来吸引新的工程群体？为此，她将通过开发工具来激发和研究不同的工程社区，使人们能够在新的材料和文化背景下创造性地使用计算。PI之前的工作为她的假设提供了强有力的支持，即包括非正统材料组合的工具可以独特地吸引不同的受众。纺织品、纸张和油漆等材料具有强大的文化联系，可以平衡通常与技术相关的负面刻板印象。在这项研究中，PI将通过整合新材料和传统材料，将计算、电子、纺织品和纸张结合在一起，来探索这些想法。为大规模实验和协作开辟新的创造性领域的工具对于计算的未来和整个社会的未来都是非常重要的。同样重要的是连接数字世界和物理世界的工具，以及使计算多样化的工具和活动。该项目位于一个强大的十字路口。PI将设计和测试将计算与纸和织物相结合的工具包和课程，从而使不同群体的人能够建立混合数字物理系统。她将对围绕这些工具发展起来的现实世界的创意社区进行纵向研究。这项工作将有助于创造性支持工具、普适计算、教育技术和创造性社区的研究。更广泛的影响：PI希望通过为新社区（包括妇女群体、经济上处于不利地位的城市青年和老年人）提供参与计算机科学和其他STEM学科的令人信服的激励措施，项目成果将扩大人们对计算机的参与。在这项工作中开发的工具将通过提供外观和感觉与我们习惯的技术非常不同的技术示例来扩展计算文化。PI将把她的工具提供给教育工作者和公众，以确保这项研究具有长期的、现实的影响。

The PI's goal in this project is to answer the question: Can we engage new groups of people in engineering by situating technology in new material and cultural contexts? To this end, she will spark and study diverse engineering communities by developing tools that enable people to work creatively with computation in new material and cultural contexts. The PI's prior work provides strong support for her hypothesis that tools that include unorthodox combinations of materials can be uniquely appealing to diverse audiences. Materials like textiles, paper, and paint have powerful cultural associations that can balance the negative stereotypes often associated with technology. In this research the PI will explore these ideas by integrating new and traditional materials, bringing together computation, electronics, textiles and paper. Tools that open up new creative areas for mass experimentation and collaboration are tremendously important both for the future of computing and the future of society at large. Equally important are tools that bridge the digital and physical worlds, and tools and activities that diversify computing. This project is situated at a powerful intersection. The PI will design and test toolkits and curricula that blend computing with paper and fabric, and thus enable diverse groups of people to build hybrid digital-physical systems. And she will conduct longitudinal studies of the real-world creative communities that develop around these tools. This work will contribute to the study of creativity support tools, ubiquitous computing, educational technology, and creative communities.Broader Impacts: The PI expects project outcomes to broaden participation in computing, by providing new communities (including groups of women, economically disadvantaged urban youth, and senior citizens) with compelling incentives to engage in computer science and other STEM disciplines. The tools developed in this work will expand the culture of computing by providing examples of technology that looks and feels very different from the technology we're accustomed to. The PI will make her tools available both to educators and the general public in order to ensure that the research has long-term, real-world impact.