Week 6 Lab: Laptop and CS Separation

A Lab designing a mechanism that actually enforces device-free time

Before the Lab#

Bring one item from Activity 2’s list — a deck of cards, a small jigsaw puzzle, dominoes, checkers, a physical crossword, or Jenga — or an equivalent. Pairs without one share with a pair that brought a spare.

In the Lab#

Introduction. Last week’s plan was a destination outside the usual radius. This week’s mechanism is about a boundary inside the room you’re already in — the one between you and a laptop that stays open by habit, not decision.

Activity 1 (groups of 4, paper only): Brainstorm. On one sheet of paper, write a hobby or interest that has nothing to do with computers or gaming in the middle and circle it. Around it, write at least four things about it as their own circled words, each joined back to the middle with a line: where you’d actually do it, what it costs, one person any group member already knows who does it, and what the first session of trying it looks like. If a group can’t fill in one of those four for a given hobby, cross it out and start a new circle with a different one. The group picks whichever hobby has all four filled in to develop further.

Presentation: Each group pitches their hobby in 30 seconds. No technical language allowed — the tutor calls it out live if it slips in.

Activity 2 (pairs): Pick a game, then design your mechanism. Choose one from this list, or bring an equivalent: a deck of cards (a simple game like Go Fish, or a round of Uno), a small jigsaw puzzle, dominoes, checkers, a physical crossword, or Jenga. Play it for 15 minutes. Notice you’ve just spent that whole stretch without a phone or laptop out — not because of a rule, but because both hands and both people’s attention were already on the game. Then design one mechanism for home that reproduces the same effect on purpose: where the laptop physically goes for a stated device-free window, what happens if it comes back before the window ends, and the one allowed exception for a genuine deadline.

Discussion / debrief (pairs): Show your mechanism to another pair; they ask what stops you from just picking the laptop back up the moment you’re home.

Wrap-up: Ask which pairs designed a mechanism they’d actually trust to hold once nobody else was watching — that’s the gap between a good idea and one that survives contact with an empty room.

Afterwards#

Run the mechanism for a week before week 7’s Lab. Bring back whether it held, and if not, where it failed.