We’ve all seen that inspirational Facebook meme:
“At 23, JK Rowling was broke. Tina Fey was working at the YMCA. Oprah had just gotten fired from her first job as a TV reporter and Walt Disney had declared bankruptcy.”
Until late last year, ArielZekelman and Felix Hu fit the mold of the struggling 23(ish)-year-old. But now,Zekelman, 23, and Hu, 25, are living in Silicon Valley after successfully launching a coding game for kids.
Zekelman, a recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Hu, a 2014 Northwestern graduate, are two of the co-creators of Osmo Coding, otherwise known as Strawbies, a game that uses tangible building blocks to help children learn the foundations of coding logic. The two met in a collaborative course offered jointly through Northwestern’s Segal Design Institute and SAIC called Data as Art.
“It started as a class project and became a weekend and after-hours project,”Zekelman said. “We just wanted to do something interesting with our time.”
Strawbies allows kids to connect magnetic, Lego-esque game pieces to control Awbie, the super adorable main character of the game, and guide him through his world to collect strawberries. Game pieces tell Awbie which way to walk, jump or run.
By physically connecting the game pieces, kids can grasp what’s going on within the game better than they would just through the iPad screen.
“When you think of coding, it can seem too abstract to teach kids,” Hu said. “But Strawbies brings a tangible aspect to something that’s inherently digital.”
When creating the game in early 2015, Hu, who grew up in China and Canada, andZekelman, who hails from Detroit, sought the help of SAIC alum and Detroit native Eric Uchalik to design how the game would look. Uchalik, 31, created the genderless, monster-esque character of Awbie.
“We started out with the loose idea of a robot,” Uchalik said. “Then we decided, ‘Why robots?’ And we came up with the cute, bizarre character of Awbie who loves strawberries.”
The three worked day and night out of a frozen Logan Square Airbnb with a broken heater (after sprinklers burst in their own apartment) to bring their game to life. Under the direction of Michael Horn, founder of Northwestern’s Tangible Interaction Design and Learning Laboratory, Strawbies came together, combining the foundations of tangible learning, programming, design and art.
“We know that for younger kids, interaction with the physical world is very important to learning,” said Horn, a professor of computer science and learning sciences.
Horn worked as an adviser for Hu and served as an inspiration for the game itself. Horn previously conducted a research project at the Boston Museum of Science that provided the basis for the idea of the game. The project offered museum-goers the opportunity to control a robot either through a program on a computer screen or by organizing blocks on a table. Horn’s research found that the blocks were much more welcoming to children across genders and age groups.
“Strawbies takes those principles and makes coding a more collaborative and creative experience for kids,” Horn said. “They’re drawn in from across the room to come play.”
The group began testing Strawbies in schools throughout the Chicago area, including Bennett Day School and Francis W. Parker School. Horn then introduced the Strawbies team to Osmo, the iPad gaming accessory Strawbies uses to connect the physical blocks to the game software. Osmo attaches to the top of a child’s iPad and reorients the iPad’s front-facing camera down toward the tabletop to recognize the order and organization of the physical blocks.
In July 2015, the three emailed the co-founders of Osmo to ask if they could use a console to program their game. By October 2015, they were demonstrating Strawbies game play for Osmo’s CEO, Pramod Sharma, and CTO, Jerome Scholler. Over Christmas, the three were flown out to Silicon Valley and given job offers, nearly a year after suffering through a winter in a cramped apartment with no heat to bring their game to life.
“Now, seeing young kids pick it up and start coding within minutes and laughing … it makes coding warm and fun,” Hu said.
Seven months into their time at Osmo, Zekelman said they’re still adjusting to life at a startup.
“You have one view of startups from the media, but I didn’t equate that to the ridiculous amounts of work and time that goes into it,” she said. “But when you like what you’re doing, you don’t mind working over hours.”
Strawbies is now being played in over 15,000 schools across the country.
The Osmo iPad accessory package is available through Osmo’s website or from Apple for $74.95.
@shelbielbostedt | sbostedt@redeyechicago.com
