Hackaball

Key takeaways

Hackaball belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hackaball to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hackaball from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hackaball is an educational toy designed to teach school children computer programming through active play. It works by linking motion inputs from a gyroscope with various outputs to create games, aided by a companion app. Hackaball began as a project assigned to two interns at Made by Many in 2013, coinciding with the introduction of computing science to the National Curriculum for England. After identifying a perceived gap in beginner programming tools, they came up with six possible designs to investigate. Out of these, "Rule Ball" (later Hackaball) was chosen to be developed further. After three years of development, Hackaball's production was funded through a month-long Kickstarter campaign that raised over $240,000. Critical reception to Hackaball was generally positive: critics praised the attention to detail in Hackaball's design and its interactive nature. For their work on Hackaball, Made by Many was a finalist or shortlisted in several design awards, like Fast Company's Innovation by Design awards. Hackaball was named one of Time magazine's best inventions of 2015 and won a bronze and silver award in the 2015 Lovie Awards.

Production

Development Hackaball was created by two London-based design companies: Made by Many and the Barber Osgerby spin-off Map Project Office. It was conceptualised in 2012 by two interns at Made by Many—Ben King and Thomas Nadin—when they were given a side project to investigate the intersection of the Internet of Things with play. To tackle this, they aimed to make computer programming more available to children by using activities to teach programming. Made by Many felt that existing "beginner" programming tools were too complex for children due to having no prior subject knowledge. The timing of the project coincided with the introduction of computing science into the National Curriculum for England. To make it accessible to a wide audience, efforts were made to make Hackaball gender-neutral.

Two weeks into their project, King and Nadin drafted six possible designs to look into more. After consulting with Made By Many's co-founder Stuart Eccles and the general public, they decided to move forward with Hackaball (then called "Rule Ball"). Prototyping began after a new member, Melissa Coleman, joined King and Nadin on the project during the summer. Early prototypes of Hackaball were basic and crude, made of Arduino boards and foam balls or "sock[s] filled with a Raspberry Pi and some wires". A particularly difficult area of development was making the ball resistant to shock damage. According to Map's Jon Marshall, "It required a huge amount of technical experimentation to create a shockproof design for the inner-core module. There was also a lot of material experimentation to get the right amount of squash and bounce into the ball and sleeve design but retain the ability for users to open up the ball and see the inner working, and for charging the battery." Coleman said that she would test prototypes of Hackaball by throwing them down staircases or off the mezzanine in Made by Many's office. A separate team at Made by Many started designing the accompanying resources for Hackaball around that time. Some difficulty was encountered when creating the design for the companion app, which needed to use a simple programming language to be accessible to younger ages. After looking at programming languages like Pascal and Visual Basic, as well as other sources like "choose your path" and Mad Libs books, they settled on using a system based around "if this, then that" (IFTTT) constructs due to simplicity. In 2014, Made by Many began testing Hackaball in school playgrounds; throughout production, Hackaball was tested with over 100 families with children of varying ages. Around this time they asked Map Project Office, who was involved with a similar project Kano, to help out with hardware development after struggling to move forward with it themselves. Together, they began making new prototypes out of foam and card, before moving to 3D printing and vacuum casting. Coding began on the companion app, which was written in Objective-C and Swift by Made by Many's Julian James. Other contributions to Hackaball were made by Karl Sadler of Obelisk Music, and Kudu, who worked on sound and electronics respectively.

Kickstarter and release After producing a design ready to be presented to consumers, a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $100,000 was launched on 3 March 2015. By its end on 2 April, the campaign raised $241,122, with 2,312 backers contributing. Manufacturing contracts were arranged with a company located in Shenzhen, China, in 2016. After designs were finalised (after between 50 and 100 prototypes), production started on 26 August. The first units were shipped around the end of the year.

Design Hackaball's internal electronics consist of a six-axis gyroscope, vibrator, nine LEDs, rechargeable battery, memory, microphone and a loudspeaker (with a selection of sound effects). These components are stored within a two-part transparent ball made of polypropylene. A silicone rubber covering with a cut-out "eye" holds the pieces together and is used along with an internal absorber made of ABS and TPE plastics to make Hackaball shock-absorbent. The completed ball is sized in between a baseball and a football, with a diameter of 10 centimetres (3.9 in). Hackaball is shipped unassembled in a "broken" state. After assembling the two hemispheres using the silicone covering, users activate the ball via a tutorial on a companion app. The ball can then be programmed using the space-themed iPad app connected via Bluetooth. Icons are used in the app to make it accessible to different ages of children, with a focus on animated graphics instead of text. Programming links inputs, such as throwing or bouncing the ball, and outputs, such as flashing a colour or playing a sound, to create games using "if this, then that" statements. Programming games with Hackaball progressively unlocks new features to use in the app. Some example programs created by users include Magic 8 balls, whoopee cushions and alarm clocks; created games then appear in the app as constellations of stars. A number of pre-made games are available out of the box. Programs can be shared locally between users; unrestricted sharing was scrapped after parental feedback.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hackaball

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hackaball claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hackaball before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hackaball ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hackaball

In research: Hackaball appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hackaball in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hackaball is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Computer-related introductions in 2016, Educational toys, Electronic toys, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hackaball outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Hackaball in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hackaball means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hackaball out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hackaball in simple terms?

Hackaball is an educational toy designed to teach school children computer programming through active play. It works by linking motion inputs from a gyroscope with various outputs to create games, aided by a companion app.

Why does Hackaball matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hackaball?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hackaball.