SBIR Phase I: Computer Aided Design Toolkit for Desktop Digital Fabrication of Circuits on Paper

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是通过扩大工艺和电路设计交叉点的创造性和表现力，增加从事科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)的人员的多样性。该项目假设，通过创造利用熟悉的纸张工艺实践和内在激励价值的设计和数字制造工具，电路设计和制造的新手可以接触到艺术、电路设计和制造。研究表明，对于那些本来可能不参加STEM的人，特别是代表人数不足的少数群体、女孩和妇女来说，这种方法特别成功。通过开发支持数字电路设计和制造的软件，该项目使用户能够轻松地共享和构建数字设计模板，扩大了初学者友好型项目的覆盖范围，并创建了一个可以共同创作和共同教学的学习者社区。此外，通过使创作者能够将电路设计与桌面工艺切割器等对消费者友好的数字制造技术联系起来，我们将把电子产品的数字制造带出传统的技术环境，进入全新和更主流的受众。技术创新是开发新型电子设计软件，极大地降低现有电子计算机辅助设计工具的复杂性，使教育工作者、业余爱好者和艺术家等新手用户能够使用该工具。这将通过消除原理图抽象以及强大的模拟能力来实现，这些能力独特地迎合了富有表现力和艺术性的技术创造。通过将适合初学者的电子足迹与绘制痕迹的绘图界面相结合，用户将能够准确地呈现他们的设计，就像他们建造时的外观一样。通过将电气规则检查与电路行为模拟结合在一起，该软件将允许用户在投入时间进行制造之前自信地迭代他们的设计。为了应对这些挑战，该软件的设计和随附的物理工具包将通过一系列用户研究，与K-12教育工作者和业余爱好工匠密切合作，反复设计，以确保从未使用过电子设计软件的目标受众能够轻松地制造他们的设计，同时能够表达他们的不同兴趣。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 project is to increase the diversity of people engaging in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by broadening the creative and expressive possibilities at the intersection of craft and circuit design. The project hypothesizes that by creating design and digital fabrication tools that leverage familiar paper craft practices and the intrinsic motivational value the arts, circuit design and fabrication can be made accessible to those who are novices to circuit design and fabrication. Research shows that this approach is especially successful for reaching those who otherwise may not participate in STEM, especially underrepresented minorities, girls and women. By developing software to support digital circuit design and fabrication, this project enables users to easily share and build off of digital design templates, expanding the reach of beginner-friendly starter projects and creating a community of learners who can co-create and co-teach. Further, by enabling creators to connect circuit design to consumer-friendly digital fabrication technologies like desktop craft cutters, we will bring the digital manufacturing of electronics out of traditionally technical environments and into entirely new and more mainstream audiences.The technical innovation is the development of novel electrical design software that greatly reduces the complexity of existing electronics computer aided design tools, making the tool accessible to novice users such as educators, hobbyists and artists. This will be done through the elimination of schematic abstractions along with powerful simulation capabilities uniquely catered for expressive and artistic technological creations. By combining beginner-appropriate electronic footprints with a drawing interface for sketching traces, users will be able to represent their designs exactly as they would appear when built. By incorporating electrical rule checks along with simulation of circuit behavior, the software will allow users to iterate on their designs with confidence before they invest time in fabricating. To address these challenges, the design of the software and accompanying physical toolkit will be designed iteratively and in close partnership with K-12 educators and hobby crafters through a series of user studies to ensure that the intended audience who have never used electronic design software before can manufacture their designs easily while being able to express their diverse interests.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.