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3. Pedagogical theories and socio-emotional learning

This week I worked with an Epilog fusion laser cutter to design a tool that could be useful for my UX design classes.

Designing a Tool

I draw the real size wireframe using Adobe Illustrator, using thin red lines for the parts to be cut, and black shapes for the parts to be engraved.

Preparing the file

After saving my file as a PDF, I have to “print it” in order to send it into the Epilog interface :

Here’s the Epilog Dashboard :

I have to select the right setting regarding the material I will be using, in my case it is a 3mm MDF.

Here are the setting used on the Epilog Fusion at the Fablab Sant Cugat :

Laser Cutting

After setting up the parameters, the material and the machine, let it cut :

A Physical Tool for UX Design Prototyping

Here is my tool :

The wireframe is the same size as a regular phone, we can slide a paper inside and draft an application using the grid around the drawing surface.

I am giving UX Design classes to students that are studying business management, design is not their speciality and the course is a 4 weeks workshop in their curriculum. It means they need to produce a result and understand easily how to do it.

As the wireframe is the same size as a phone, they can also “test” their application and the navigation they designed. This would solve a major issue I met when teaching this classe only with Figma, they design only on the computer and they don’t mind the accessibility of their application when using it with a phone.

Reflections

  • Think on one or two educational activities in which you could integrate laser cutting at some stage of the activity. Explain briefly the activity. Do not forget to clear indicate the learning outcomes.

Going deeper with the wireframe project, I could design more wireframes and tools to enhance this solution : Wireframes for tablets and computers, adapting the size. Designing normographs for icons and blocks could also be helpful.

  • Reflect on your own practice. When you prepare a lesson activity what are the things that you take into consideration? What are the critical aspects? What additional aspects do you need to take into consideration if you utilize digital fabrication processes?

While preparing a lesson activity I have to think about the costs of the materials, and the time to prepare them. In the case of the Wireframe, this is a tool that would be helpful for the students to focus on the solution and not on how to get a good result when drawing.

It is different for digital fabrication workshops, where there is something to build or to design, there, I have to think about the accessibility, students have differents rythm so the complexity of the activity should be adaptative so each participant can get a satysfying outcome out of the activity.

  • Reflect on your past educational activities. How have you considered Socio-Emotional learning (or soft-skills) when preparing the activities? How do you integrate these soft-skills in your education? Could you provide some concrete examples? How have changed your perspective on socio-emotional learning / soft-skill / horizontal competences after this lecture.

As I am not excatctly a teacher, I never thought about those aspects before. However, I was not too fond of school and of sitting and listening for hours. The better solution for me to focus on something is by using my hand and building things : I was horrified by mathematics before I started designing architectural models, but I loved it so much that I was spending some time to find the right formulas to get the right measurments in order to have a nice and accurate result.

It is easier to get to learn when you are interested in something.

Valuing the failures is an important thing to do when we are trying to make the students create something. If you don’t fail, you might not understand why it succeeded. Allowing and discussing failures is an important point value with the students. Also, it is important to “let them” fail, meaning, it is better to let them do mistakes instead of telling them before not to do something because it might not work, let them experience that it is not working so they can reflect on why it is not.