# Engaging 9-year-old software developers

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## Summary:

* Understand the problem with your product’s current interactivity and creative initiatives that let developers be creative.&#x20;
* Understand how you can help them using your product.
* Test creative initiatives and get feedback.
* If you want people to see that value, it’s really important to get it to a way that people can explore and be curious and let them play and be creative.
* Understand the outcomes and measure how it has impacted the experience of your developers.&#x20;

## Scribbles:&#x20;

### The problem

* This product does not feel intuitive.
  * It doesn’t feel intuitive and natural.&#x20;
* Hard to use.
* Not the coolest thing in the world.

### How can they help them?

* Make it easier to see the value, easier for us to understand, and show developers why they should be using messaging and why they should care. &#x20;
* Make it easy to try out.&#x20;
* Give people opportunities to play because right now, it’s pretty hard to get going, so they want to give them that chance.

### Children are very discerning customers.

* They really made sure that they would appeal to them.&#x20;
* So they decided to use Scratch.&#x20;
  * Scratch is an open-source project developed at MIT.&#x20;
  * Basically, it’s a visual programming style.&#x20;
  * It lets people click and drag things together like little blocks, and that shows the syntax of the program without worrying about the syntax of the program.&#x20;
* Max (speaker)  decided to go away and try to make some things so that they could use messaging with Scratch. ‌
* “Where does my 9-year-old come in?”&#x20;
  * They wanted the kids to be able to see the value.&#x20;
  * They decided to find a real test subject.&#x20;
  * His team lead has a 9-year-old son.
  * Using this and using this program, he was actually able to create a little game in Scratch.&#x20;
  * But he was also able to save his score by putting it onto a messaging queue.
  * He was able to understand why he was doing that and why he was able to see his high scores again.&#x20;

### ‌The Scratch Extension (Scratch X)

* Program runs in a browser and communicates with a Raspberry Pi.&#x20;
* Basically, they’re allowing that to actually send messages and give them instructions.&#x20;
* Then, they're taking the score from here and they're putting it back to the program.
* Gives a sequence of lights to be played on here, and the user then has to try and remember that sequence and play it back.&#x20;

### Outcomes

* This has allowed them to actually go and talk to developers -- developer conferences.
* It meant that they can actually now have a conversation with their developers, and with people who maybe want to understand why they should use messaging and what the value is.&#x20;
* Developers can see that value.
  * They found that their developers really do understand what’s going on here.
* People actually get to have a play with something and they get to have some fun.&#x20;