Maryam Ashoori

TJBot: An Open Source DIY Cardboard Robot for Programming Cognitive Systems

TJBot is an open source, interactive robot designed to encourage people to build with cognitive services in a fun way. He is a paper robot, which can also be 3D printed, and comes with an initial set of recipes that bring him to life. Recipes are a combination of step-by-step instructions plus sample code that walk people through the assembly of the robot, its hardware components, and software code that connects him to Watson cognitive services. TJBot can be programmed to listen, speak, see and recognize, shine his LED, understand emotions, and wave his arm. TJBot was designed for two communities: makers, who enjoy the DIY aspects of building and programming novel devices, and students, who can learn about programming cognitive systems. At our demo, people can build their very own TJBot out of cardboard and interact with him through speech.

Creating the Mood: Design for a Cognitive Meeting Room

Mood affects the decisions we make and our attitudes toward work and the people with whom we work. The availability of peripheral and focal information also affects the quality and speed of decision-making processes. We are exploring ways to use ambient lighting, music, and images over the course of group meetings in order to understand how these ambient elements affect the quality of meetings, peoples attitudes, and the decisions made.

Entanglion: A Board Game for Teaching the Principles of Quantum Computing

Educational games are a creative, enjoyable way for students to learn about technical concepts. We present Entanglion, a board game that aims to introduce the fundamental concepts of quantum computing -- a highly technical domain -- to students and enthusiasts of all ages. We describe our iterative design process and feedback from evaluations we conducted with students and professionals. Our playtesters gave positive feedback on our game, indicating it was engaging while simultaneously educational. We discuss a number of lessons we learned from our experience designing and evaluating a pedagogical game for a highly technical subject.