Design By Numbers (DBN) was an influential experiment in teaching programming initiated at the
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...
during the 1990s. Led by
John Maeda
John Maeda (born 1966) is a Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft. He is an American technologist and designer whose work explores where business, design, and technology merge to make space for the "humanist techno ...
and his students they created software aimed at allowing designers, artists and other non-programmers to easily start
computer programming
Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called computer program, programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of proc ...
. The software itself could be run in a browser and published alongside the software was a book and
courseware
Educational software is a term used for any computer software that is made for an educational purpose. It encompasses different ranges from language learning software to classroom management software to reference software. The purpose of all th ...
.
Design By Numbers is no longer an active project but has gone on to influence many other projects aimed at making
computer programming
Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called computer program, programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of proc ...
more accessible to non-technical people. Its most public result is
Processing, created by Maeda's students
Casey Reas
Casey Edwin Barker Reas (born 1972), also known as C. E. B. Reas or Casey Reas, is an American artist whose conceptual, procedural and minimal artworks explore ideas through the contemporary lens of software. Reas is perhaps best known for having ...
and
Ben Fry
Benjamin Fry (born 1975) is an American designer who has expertise in data visualization.
Early life and education
Fry was born in 1975 in Ann Arbor, Michigan."Inside design now: National Design Triennial", by Ellen Lupton, Cooper-Hewitt Museu ...
, who built on the work of DBN and has gone on to international success.
See also
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Processing
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Smile software
Further reading
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External links
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Educational programming languages
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