About Project Bloks

Bloks prototyping

Project Bloks was conceived in 2013 and research concluded in 2018. It began when a small group of interaction designers and programmers in Google Creative Lab got together. We wanted to help get the powerful ideas of computational thinking into the hands of younger kids by building on the long-standing academic research into using tangibles for learning.

We started small — doing extensive research into the existing lineage of tangibles, so we could figure out how to push the conversation forward. Pretty soon the project gathered pace, garnering interest from Google’s Education and Research teams, and along the way we developed relationships with Paulo Blikstein, Director of the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab, Stanford, and IDEO, experts in human-centered design.

Creating a platform that does the technical heavy-lifting for developers, designers, and researchers meant they could focus on innovating, experimenting and creating new ways to help kids develop computational thinking.

Project Bloks was a collaboration between Research at Google, Google Creative Lab, Paulo Blikstein (Stanford University) and IDEO. Additional member of design team: Arnan Sipitakiat (Chiang Mai University).

Many thanks to:
LEGO® Education, code.org, Raspberry Pi, Mirobot, Exploratorium, Science Museum, Ben Alun Jones, Genevieve Smith-Nunes, James Sheahan, Jim Bailey, Miles Berry, OLogic, Paula Zuccotti, Sheena Vaidyanathan.

FAQ

  • What was Project Bloks?
    Project Bloks was a research project that had the goal of developing an open hardware platform to help developers, designers, and researchers build the next generation of tangible programming experiences for kids. Creating a platform that does the technical heavy-lifting for developers, designers, and researchers meant they could focus on innovating, experimenting and creating new ways to help kids develop computational thinking.
  • Who was behind Project Bloks?
    Project Bloks was a collaboration between Research at Google, Google Creative Lab, Paulo Blikstein (Stanford University) and IDEO. Arnan Sipitakiat is also part of the team.
  • What were you researching and developing?
    A hardware and software platform to help developers, designers, and researchers build the next generation of tangible programming experiences for kids. We created a system that consists of two types of boards — the Brain Board and the Base Board — as well as interchangeable Pucks. The pucks can have different forms and can be programmed with an instruction (e.g. turn on, move left, jump, play music). When you place a puck onto a Base Board, the board inherits that puck’s instruction through a capacitive sensor. The Brain Board provides power to the Base Boards, and when multiple Base Boards are connected to it, the Brain Board can read their instructions and communicate them to any connected object.
  • Why tangible programming?
    Kids are naturally a playful, social bunch. They learn by touching things, building stuff, and playing together. Project Bloks is researching physical programming as a way to teach kids how to code — more like the way they naturally learn things. There’s a long-standing history of research into this topic — head here to find out more.
  • What are the technical specifications of the system?
    For more details about the prototype hardware and software features head over here.
  • Can I buy it?
    Project Bloks is no longer in active development and our research concluded in 2018. The Coding Kit is a reference device that is not commercially available.
  • Why is it called Project Bloks?
    Anything created with the Bloks platform has a block-like structure. Equally, blocks are a simple and elegant form of tangible learning.
  • Where can I read more about the context and potential of Project Bloks?
    Read the Project Bloks position paper.