Background information of the project

My group compromising of Samantha, Nick, Jusvin and I were tasked to develop a workshop for 360 participants with 90 groups of 3 to 4 people. They would be building a musical experience in 2 hours using a Makey Makey circuit board (an invention kit for everyone is an electronic invention tool and toy that allows users to connect everyday objects to computer programs), laptops and Scratch (an easy to use coding program which can also be paired with this board) but with no internet connection and a set list of materials that would be given to them. Success for this workshop is measured by the diversity of outcomes and is really seen in the participants using their materials in unique and distinctive ways to make their project their own. With only this information to lead us, our role was to plan a whole workshop which included testing of the software, coming up with prototypes, deciding on materials for the participants, shopping and packing of the materials, ironing out other miscellaneous details and lastly, slides, videos and word prompts to be shown to the participants on the actual day of the workshop.

We were guided by 2 mentors - Dr Kiruthika and Ms Doris Chow of the Physical Sciences department at the Science Centre and were assisted by a NUS undergraduate intern named Nicholas. During our time there, we were also provided with a computer lab and a workshop room to facilitate our process and were also given a budget of $360 to manage all the expenses that we incurred from the development of the workshop. A routine protocol we would follow is to send a scrum email to our mentors daily at the end of the day to inform them of our progress and any roadblocks that we met. This way, workflow for the next day would be much more smooth as we knew exactly where to pick off in the morning the next day - a morning meeting discussing the scrum emails and our plan of the day. This helped ensure that we would stay on task and also allowed our mentors (who had their own jobs and responsibilities) to still be in the know about projects while not having to constantly monitor us.

A brief timeline of our time there would be that in the first week we had finished researching and developing our prototypes, by the second week we had finished the brainstorming, shopping and packing of materials, by the third week week we had our friends test our our prototypes and had made slides and word prompts and to conclude our attachment, on the last week , we made another set of slides and a script to present in front of the whole Physical Sciences department and a few important directors of the Science Centre.

Record of our activities there

In the first week, we began with a lot of research. We were only briefly told about what the Makey Makey board actually is and were given very little information about the Scratch software therefore, we had to learn how the Makey Makey worked and how we were going to create the necessary code ourselves. After a day or so of research and with links provided by the mentors and relentless research we were able to teach ourselves how to use Scratch, how to connect the Makey Makey board with Scratch, what other shortcuts would be able to employ in our use of this software and so on. We then started on prototyping by brainstorming and pulling all our possible ideas together. Since the musical experience that the participants did not actually have could be composed of instruments and could be a random circuit as well, there was a lot of freedom with ideas for our prototypes. We agreed to come up with some instruments as well as prototypes made of random items like cardboard to produce a random sound effect that was not linked to the object, e.g. barks from a box. The intent behind the random sound generator was that it would propel the user into the thinking process as to how it works with its exterior not resembling an instrument and completely closed off in an opaque box. We also thought it would be fun to create some traditional instruments such as a violin and guitar out of cardboard. Moving on to the actual prototyping, we split up the musical instruments between ourselves so we could finish them as soon as possible. Some of the challenges we faced were trying to earth the circuit without directly asking the person to hold an earth wire or wear something to earth it. We came up with various solutions based on the instrument. For example, we made the bow the earth for the violin while the strings were made from copper tape. This would allow a note to be played when the bow comes in contact with the string.

For the second week, we moved on to testing of our prototypes by our fellow interns and would quickly think of ways to rectify and tweak our instruments based on this. The prototypes did take a lot of trial and error but it was very rewarding to see our efforts and brainstorming of concepts materialise into an actual working prototype. We also remade our prototypes to ensure that we could make them as compact yet functional as possible and for of course, aesthetic value after which we sent them to our mentors for approval.

Then, we focused on the actual shopping and packing for the boxes to be given to the participants. We started off brainstorming about what essentials we would require (the obvious ones like the Makey Makey board and wires) but also moved on to think about what other materials we deemed as necessary in the making of our own prototypes. The insights we received in our own experiences really assisted us in this - by comparing our prototypes, we were able to pick out common materials that, while may seem ordinary, can actually work to make a varied range of instruments and are multi-functional. To further enrich the workshop, we tried to come up with unique materials that you would usually not see in circuits but would still work just as well. Since, it was basically anything that had moisture, we did have a lot of options (perhaps even fruits and drinks) but had to stick with items that would be able to last long and were generally easy to handle for the participants. A few examples of such materials would be water, jelly and even slime! Lastly, for quantities, we tried to decide on ways that we could use everything in the store. We decided on a consumables box for each group (which included the different variations of materials) and a toolbox with all the essentials for each 2 groups to share.

This is a rough sketch of our final decisions in terms of variations of the boxes. We ended up with variations such as aluminium foil, copper wire and play-doh or even just paper and water. We had a good amount of this in store but also were missing some items like jelly and slime. Once we received a budget, we headed out to shops like SKP, Daiso, Value Dollar, Watsons and even Art friend. We had a problem using graphite in our prototypes in that it would often rub off within a single use of the instrument and that the graphite had to be dark enough for the instrument to work. Therefore, we even had to go to Art friend to specifically get 8B pencils. We also manually made the slime for 15 boxes and sealed them in airtight containers to hopefully keep them in the most optimal condition for when the workshop happens. Lastly, we made sure that all the boxes were packed and kept in storage, ready for use for the workshop.

During our third week, we finished up slides,word prompts and videos for the participants which was mostly foolproof but we did have to retake videos several times to align them to Science Centre's official guidelines for their videos.

By the end of the month, we had finished another set of slides and script for our presentation, all approved prototypes that had been tested by our mentors and fellow interns as well and were left with a unforgettable experience in the working world.

results and deliverables

3 content knowledge / skills learnt

2 interesting aspects

1) There is little to no handholding in terms of work at the Science Centre. Everyone recieves slightly vague instructions and a lot of details are figured out on the spot and are very susceptible to last minute changes. This sort of working style was exactly our mentor's mentoring style which did catch us offguard but we soon realised that this also forced us to be more independent and responsible for our share of the work while also propelling us to be more proactive and to think out of the box with our ideas and solutions during our attachment.

2) There are always new exhibits going around at the Science Centre which you get to visit during your break time from which you can learn a lot of things. You may also get a free pass into paid exhibits and a day for sight seeing if your mentors are open to it. A highlight of the experience would be to get to see the cute baby chicks hatch and grow down at the Science Centre and if you're lucky enough to catch them during their clean up times, the staff might even let you hold them!!

1 takeaway for life

My biggest takeaway from this experience would be the the people I got to meet and learn from during the whole attachment. Whether this be the mentors, our uni intern or even other fellow TJC interns, from each one I could learn something every step of the way. During this process, not being a physics student meant that I was already at a step back but I was lucky enough to have group mates who helped me understand earthing and some other parts of the circuit I was unfamiliar with. In no time, I was familiar with the whole system and was able to move on with the production of the prototypes. The mentors, in particular, opened my eyes to the realities of the working world while giving us tips and tricks to on how to stay on top of things and how to navigate what was initially a daunting thing to think about. I will forever be grateful for the values that have embedded in us and the friendships I forged during my time in WOW!