rapid prototyping and iterative design.
Before we launched Scratch in 2007, we
continually field-tested prototypes in
real-world settings, revising over and
over based on feedback and suggestions from the field.
4
more meaningful
We know that people learn best, and
enjoy most, when working on personally meaningful projects. So in developing Scratch, we put a high priority on
two design criteria:
Diversity. Supporting many different
types of projects (stories, games, animations, simulations), so people with
widely varying interests are all able to
work on projects they care about; and
Personalization. Making it easy for
people to personalize their Scratch
projects by importing photos and music clips, recording voices, and creating
graphics.
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These priorities influenced many of
our design decisions. For example, we
decided to focus on 2D images, rather
than 3D, since it is much easier for people to create, import, and personalize
2D artwork. While some people might
see the 2D style of Scratch projects as
somewhat outdated, Scratch projects
collectively exhibit a visual diversity and
figure 5. sample scratch script (from Pong-like paddle game) highlighting computational
and mathematical concepts.
personalization missing from 3D authoring environments.
The value of personalization is captured nicely in this blog post from a
computer scientist who introduced
Scratch to his two children: “I have to
admit that I initially didn’t get why a
kids’ programming language should
be so media-centric, but after seeing
my kids interact with Scratch it became
much more clear to me. One of the nicest things I saw with Scratch was that it
personalized the development experience in new ways by making it easy for
my kids to add personalized content
and actively participate in the development process. Not only could they develop abstract programs to do mindless
things with a cat or a box, etc… but they
could add their own pictures and their
own voices to the Scratch environment,
which has given them hours of fun and
driven them to learn.”
We continue to be amazed by the
diversity of projects that appear on the
Scratch Web site. As expected, there
are lots of games, ranging from painstakingly recreated versions of favorite
video games (such as Donkey Kong) to
totally original games. But there are
many other genres, too (see Figure 4).
Some Scratch projects document life
experiences (such as a family vacation
in Florida); others document imaginary
wished-for experiences (such as a trip to
meet other Scratchers). Some Scratch
