Botley in primary school

Botley 2.0 is a learning robot controlled through command sequences, without a screen. In this university UX project, we explored how teachers could use it in grades 1 and 2. Our aim was to develop clear tasks and prepared classroom materials.

From a fixed lesson plan to a toolkit: Teacher feedback quickly showed that a rigid 45-minute concept fails in heterogeneous classrooms. We rebuilt it as a modular toolkit: with operating instructions, three learning games and three example lesson plans.

Consistent information architecture for busy teachers: Every game page follows the same visual grid: materials, preparation, teaching notes, steps. Teachers do not need to read continuous prose; they grasp how to run the activity at a glance.

Designing for hardware scarcity (unplugged coding): Schools rarely have a full class set of robots. Complementary worksheets such as “Matching routes” and “Listening and drawing” train translating paths into command sequences on paper, while the physical robot is used at stations.

In a formative usability test I ran five activities with a group of three second-graders in a LEGO maze. Alongside insights into task complexity, a critical operating error with the device itself emerged.

The problem (mental model clash): Botley 2.0 stores previous commands until they are actively cleared with a dedicated button. The children entered a new route, pressed “Go”, and the robot ran the old sequence plus the new one. Cause and effect were opaque to them; frustration followed immediately.

The in-session iteration: Because we could not change the robot’s hardware, we fixed the problem through the physical companion materials. Still during the same session we added a START card that must be placed before every row of arrow cards as a visual reminder: clear the memory first, then tap. In the following runs, that operating error occurred noticeably less often.

The project shows that when tech tools enter the classroom, the bottleneck is rarely the device itself. It is the bridge into teachers’ everyday practice. A good product here needs strong service and information design above all.