SBIR Phase I: Computer Aided Design Toolkit for Desktop Digital Fabrication of Circuits on Paper

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 project is to increase the diversity of people engaging in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by broadening the creative and expressive possibilities at the intersection of craft and circuit design. The project hypothesizes that by creating design and digital fabrication tools that leverage familiar paper craft practices and the intrinsic motivational value the arts, circuit design and fabrication can be made accessible to those who are novices to circuit design and fabrication. Research shows that this approach is especially successful for reaching those who otherwise may not participate in STEM, especially underrepresented minorities, girls and women. By developing software to support digital circuit design and fabrication, this project enables users to easily share and build off of digital design templates, expanding the reach of beginner-friendly starter projects and creating a community of learners who can co-create and co-teach. Further, by enabling creators to connect circuit design to consumer-friendly digital fabrication technologies like desktop craft cutters, we will bring the digital manufacturing of electronics out of traditionally technical environments and into entirely new and more mainstream audiences. The technical innovation is the development of novel electrical design software that greatly reduces the complexity of existing electronics computer aided design tools, making the tool accessible to novice users such as educators, hobbyists and artists. This will be done through the elimination of schematic abstractions along with powerful simulation capabilities uniquely catered for expressive and artistic technological creations. By combining beginner-appropriate electronic footprints with a drawing interface for sketching traces, users will be able to represent their designs exactly as they would appear when built. By incorporating electrical rule checks along with simulation of circuit behavior, the software will allow users to iterate on their designs with confidence before they invest time in fabricating. To address these challenges, the design of the software and accompanying physical toolkit will be designed iteratively and in close partnership with K-12 educators and hobby crafters through a series of user studies to ensure that the intended audience who have never used electronic design software before can manufacture their designs easily while being able to express their diverse interests. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.