Itchy, Scratchy
Kyrie Jig Amon, Chaolan Lin · 2018
With children in low-income backgrounds often struggling more academically than children in a financially higher bracket, musical training, such as learning piano, can be implemented to bridge this gap. Although non-profit organizations can offer free piano classes for children from low-income families, musical instruments are often unaffordable for them to continue practicing. We designed an inexpensive robot, Itchy, Scratchy, for children to practice piano in an out-of-class context. Our prototype evaluation indicated that Itchy, Scratchy could act as an economical, effective, and engaging musical instrument, which is important for closing the gap in musical education achievement between different socioeconomic backgrounds.