1
00:00:00,777 --> 00:00:05,193
Today, I'm going to talk to you about sketching electronics.

2
00:00:05,193 --> 00:00:10,561
I'm, among several other things, an electrical engineer,

3
00:00:10,561 --> 00:00:14,258
and that means that I spend a good amount of time

4
00:00:14,258 --> 00:00:18,632
designing and building new pieces of technology,

5
00:00:18,632 --> 00:00:23,172
and more specifically designing and building electronics.

6
00:00:23,172 --> 00:00:27,530
And what I've found is that the process of designing

7
00:00:27,530 --> 00:00:33,124
and building electronics is problematic in all sorts of ways.

8
00:00:33,124 --> 00:00:37,965
So it's a really slow process, it's really expensive,

9
00:00:37,965 --> 00:00:40,405
and the outcome of that process,

10
00:00:40,405 --> 00:00:42,821
namely electronic circuit boards,

11
00:00:42,821 --> 00:00:45,850
are limited in all sorts of kind of interesting ways.

12
00:00:45,850 --> 00:00:49,490
So they're really small, generally, they're square

13
00:00:49,490 --> 00:00:53,855
and flat and hard, and frankly, most of them

14
00:00:53,855 --> 00:00:58,168
just aren't very attractive, and so my team and I

15
00:00:58,168 --> 00:01:02,156
have been thinking of ways to really change and mix up

16
00:01:02,156 --> 00:01:06,817
the process and the outcome of designing electronics.

17
00:01:06,817 --> 00:01:10,905
And so what if you could design and build electronics

18
00:01:10,905 --> 00:01:14,945
like this? So what if you could do it extremely quickly,

19
00:01:14,945 --> 00:01:20,610
extremely inexpensively, and maybe more interestingly,

20
00:01:20,610 --> 00:01:25,874
really fluidly and expressively and even improvisationally?

21
00:01:25,874 --> 00:01:29,196
Wouldn't that be so cool, and that wouldn't that open up

22
00:01:29,196 --> 00:01:31,644
all sorts of new possibilities?

23
00:01:31,644 --> 00:01:35,028
I'm going to share with you two projects that are

24
00:01:35,028 --> 00:01:39,737
investigations along these lines, and we'll start with this one.

25
00:01:39,737 --> 00:01:45,474
(Video) Magnetic electronic pieces and ferrous paper.

26
00:01:45,474 --> 00:01:49,306
A conductive pen from the Lewis lab at UIUC.

27
00:01:49,306 --> 00:01:52,180
Sticker templates.

28
00:01:52,180 --> 00:01:54,740
Speed x 4.

29
00:02:10,259 --> 00:02:14,408
Making a switch.

30
00:02:22,209 --> 00:02:24,896
Music: DJ Shadow.

31
00:02:40,175 --> 00:02:43,492
Adding some intelligence with a microcontroller.

32
00:02:56,735 --> 00:03:00,234
Sketching an interface.

33
00:03:04,268 --> 00:03:12,067
(Music)

34
00:03:13,635 --> 00:03:17,805
(Laughter)

35
00:03:17,805 --> 00:03:23,511
(Applause)

36
00:03:23,511 --> 00:03:26,508
Pretty cool, huh? We think so.

37
00:03:26,508 --> 00:03:30,292
So now that we developed these tools

38
00:03:30,292 --> 00:03:34,030
and found these materials that let us do these things,

39
00:03:34,030 --> 00:03:38,198
we started to realize that, essentially, anything

40
00:03:38,198 --> 00:03:40,582
that we can do with paper, anything that we can do

41
00:03:40,582 --> 00:03:42,997
with a piece of paper and a pen

42
00:03:42,997 --> 00:03:45,414
we can now do with electronics.

43
00:03:45,414 --> 00:03:47,782
So the next project that I want to show you is kind of a

44
00:03:47,782 --> 00:03:51,342
deeper exploration of that possibility.

45
00:03:51,342 --> 00:03:55,206
And I'll kind of let it speak for itself.

46
00:03:55,206 --> 00:05:25,652
(Music)

47
00:05:25,652 --> 00:05:31,020
(Applause)

48
00:05:31,020 --> 00:05:35,820
So the next step for us in this process

49
00:05:35,820 --> 00:05:39,548
is now to find a way to let all of you

50
00:05:39,548 --> 00:05:42,444
build things like this,

51
00:05:42,444 --> 00:05:45,524
and so the way that we're approaching that is by

52
00:05:45,524 --> 00:05:48,131
teaching workshops to people where we explain

53
00:05:48,131 --> 00:05:51,244
how they can use these kinds of tools, and then also

54
00:05:51,244 --> 00:05:54,986
working to get the tools and the materials and techniques

55
00:05:54,986 --> 00:05:58,736
out into the real world in a variety of ways.

56
00:05:58,736 --> 00:06:02,320
And so sometime soon, you'll be able to play and build

57
00:06:02,320 --> 00:06:06,114
and sketch with electronics in this fundamentally new way.

58
00:06:06,114 --> 00:06:10,114
So thank you very much. (Applause)