Tinkering at Tinker.it in London

I am now in London, spending two weeks working with the nice folks at Tinker.it. The main goal of my time in London is to work on their educational toolkit called TinkerKit and see how it can be further developed.

It is really exciting to develop such a kit because it has so many possibilities and variables. It contains both old technology (cheap and proven) and the latest stuff from semi-conductors vendors. A toolkit has to be useful and helpful to people: that is easier said than done. What is useful? The big answer is: it depends! You need to balance flexibility and simplicity. What is useful for a first-time user can be very different for an advanced user. An advanced user might enjoy very basic features if pressed by time or under certain condition/mindset. So it is never black or white. It’s all grey!

Here are some high level characteristics or qualities I found interesting to consider while thinking about the ideal toolkit:

–openness and level of visibility/accessibility (simplification of complex processes but no secrets of what is going on under the hood)
–hackability (possible to use with third-party parts, for unintended uses)
–added value when time is tight (ability to get going quickly and get results fast, within minutes)
–versatility or 5 ways of doing the same thing (don’t expect that users will only use the device as intended)
–human friendly (technology that speaks for itself, ‘transpires’ its status or ways of working)

I’ll let you know as this project evolves.