User testing - round 2

I took my Little Boards to a friends birthday party last night. He has two boys, aged five and seven. And I was there with Adam, who's five in 7 weeks.

After dinner I opened up the box of Boards and stepped back.

Here's what I observed:

• the other kids, who had been play with Lego, were instantly interested
• Adam helped connect the power box and switches to make stuff go
• The 5 years old said "oh - these connectors are like the ones for a computer" and then proceeded to start connecting things together.
• The 7 year old said "Did you make these?" I said yes. Then he asked "Even the electronic bits?" Again I said yes. He replied "You're clever." I quite enjoyed that moment.
• Having a switch on the power box is confusing - I'll definitely remove that switch. You can still unplug the battery to kill the power.
• They wanted to plug every output Board in a string to see everything going. Unfortunately the 9V battery wasn't able to drive a motor and fan in series. We managed to find a big 10Amphour 12 volt battery though - which made all the Boards run fine, but also meant the power regulator heatsink got hot enough to burn fingers. And it meant the power board was tethered to a battery the boys couldn't move around.
• Once we had everything connected up, including the 12 LED Board, they closed the curtains and  turned the lights off to better appreciate the LED's. Everyone loves colour LEDs!
• Then the 7 year old said "Oh! These are big Lego blocks. I know... we've got some more, I'll go get them." So then we had a big box of Duplo that caused Adam to quickly build up a rescue vehicle with the LED block. The other's were suggesting other ideas too.

Sadly - that's when I had to wind things up so I could get Adam him home to bed.

I need to build power power Boards so that several kids can build projects at once.

I should build a "rescue vehicle flashing lights" Board for Adam.