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Explore the intersection of creativity, innovation, and software design in this course. Learn to leverage APIs to create diverse computing environments and facilitate radical design thinking. Dive into concept and implementation projects to develop cutting-edge solutions across various domains.
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A Radical Design Course:Leveraging APIs for Creativity and Innovation in Software Fred Martin, Georges Grinstein, and Sarah Kuhn University of Massachusetts Lowell
Premise • Software design is too complex • APIs are solution • Design techniques to encourage creativity and innovation • Domains to span software and other areas
Micro-API Pyramid Model • Apex is domain-specific and scriptable • Base is diverse collection of computing environments • Middle layers negotiate and provide defaults
Ideas Developed in Univ Course • 11 students, 3 faculty, 1 TA • Students from CS, Engineering, Economics, and Education • 1st half of semester: concept projects to study creativity and process methodology • 2nd half of semester: implementation projects
Radical Design • Goldenberg-Mazursky: “a creative idea is an idea about which field experts agree that is is creative” • What about experiential process? • Our definition: Radical Design combines creative process and innovative outcome
Creativity Methods IDEO cards Also: organizational culture & norms (W iki) Template Methods de Bono’s Thinking Hats
3 Concept Projects • Toilet group • Hearing Devices group • Workstation group
Implementation: Focus on APIs • Joshua Bloch: “An API should do one thing and do it well” • OpenGL, Lucene, OpenHaptics, Google Maps, Google Calendar, TivO HME, Player/Stage, AppleScript • Rapid API mashups • What is an API? Language? App framework?
API Groups • GraphicsHapticsSound • SlangMapper • Student Tracker • Sound Alert for Robots • Email+File Merged Search/Vocalization
GraHapSo • “Enable the learning and experimentation of Physics via interactive environments that are easy to set up.”
SlangMapper • “Linguistics website for tracking slang words, their origin and their usage. Our goal is to track, verify and record slang across the United States.”
Results & Discussion • Integration of creativity-focusing techniques with software design • APIs becoming centrally important; orientation helpful outside of course • Micro-API: needs to be scriptable; better if kept as top-level design goal