reilly's Blog

  • Reilly Ellis

    Brainstorming Badges

    By Reilly Ellis

    My current project is creating community support for a set of badges based on different skills. This week, being the first week, consisted of a lot of set-up and brainstorming. In addition to...

  • Reilly Ellis

    Connecting Gears

    By Reilly Ellis

    After the meeting last week, I started out this week trying to tame the snarl of badges thoughts that were whirling about in my brain. Here is the (simple) story of how badges work. User Jenny...

  • Reilly Ellis

    Badges Project Proposal

    By Reilly Ellis

    1. The high level problem: How can we introduce new programming concepts to non-programmers in a fun and motivating way? Learning through play and self-discovery has many advantages. The user can...

  • Reilly Ellis

    Badges Proposed Website Design

    By Reilly Ellis

    Proposed Website Design** Legend:Green: remixOrange: goalPurple: beginner (bronze)Blue: intermediate (silver)Yellow: advanced (gold)Alex, a female middle school student (and fictional Looking Glass...

  • Reilly Ellis

    Sketches out the Wazoo

    By Reilly Ellis

    This week has been very light on the coding and heavy on the brainstorming. I started out this week by thinking about what programming concepts we would want to have as badges. I worked backwards...

  • Reilly Ellis

    Replies to Comments on the Proposal

    By Reilly Ellis

    Here are all of my replies to the comments on my proposal. Kyle: Re: Gears Design vs. Patches Design I went back and forth a lot on this. In the end I decided that having some gears have no cogs...

  • Reilly Ellis

    More Wrinkles

    By Reilly Ellis

    After submitting our project proposals at the end of last week, this week was all about listening to the feedback on our proposals and modifying them accordingly.I received helpful, interesting,...

  • Reilly Ellis

    Sticking Stickies

    By Reilly Ellis

    After having lots of one-on-one conversations with myself about the badges system, we were able to put them to the test this week. The other REU students, Jordana, Caitlin and I sat down in the...

  • Reilly Ellis

    Of mushrooms and gears

    By Reilly Ellis

    After creating the storytelling badges as a whole last week, this week was all about defining the details and drawing designs. I spent some time parsing out what the individual skills would be...

  • Reilly Ellis

    Runnin' on Ruby

    By Reilly Ellis

    This week, I dove right back into the fun (and sometimes confusing) waters of the Community. I started this week by designing the badge icons in Inkscape. I think they are quite cute, but I’m...