Hands-on with Paper Circuits: Quickly Prototyping Interactive Designs

Educators have been working towards creating a more diverse computing community by engaging people in designing with computing technology. We present a Teachable Moment demonstration of paper circuits — one hands-on activity to engage people in learning about and designing with electronic circuits. Paper circuits is a fast, inexpensive introduction to circuits, that has the flexibility to also be used for interactive prototypes or Wizard-of-Oz. To this end, we describe a basic paper circuits activity in detail and suggest how paper circuits could be used as a prototyping design tool for HCI educators.