A Redesigned Reconstruction Kit for Rapid Collaborative Debugging and Designing of E-Textiles.

In this paper, we present an iteration on a "reconstruction kit" for e-textiles, a flexible-state construction kit that allows for rapid deconstruction and reconstruction of sewn, programmable circuits. The reconstruction kit was redesigned to be more modular and was tested in more computationally and spatially challenging debugging and design situations by four pairs of students, familiar with e-textiles, in an introductory computer science course in a U.S. high school. Analyzing think-aloud protocols of the four sessions, we examined affordances and limitations of how students debugged and designed with the reconstruction kit and in which ways collaborative interactions were supported.