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That's just a small sample of words used by pupils to describe Pinball, a new site from ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland Learning, when we took it out to schools during its development. Producer Rachel Duckhouse met young people from all over the UK, demo'ing prototypes and showing early designs to them and their teachers, and their responses were diverse to say the least!

Pinball is all about creativity - about 'bouncing your ideas about' and getting inspired - whether it's brainstorming ideas at the beginning of a project, mixing up ideas for a new story or play, or helping to make quick decisions against the clock.

Pinball is new and different and therefore we have to check that teachers and pupils understand it. So user testing is vital.

But it's difficult sometimes to know what to do when one class loves the design of a site, and another can't stand it. What do you do when one group of pupils is captivated and can't be pulled away from creating all sorts of stories and project ideas with your prototype, and another group is bored stiff?

The answer - keep going, keep testing. We ended up getting so much feedback from pupils and teachers up and down the country, (everyone had something to say about it!) that we were able to spot patterns and could pin-point design elements and features that were successful, as well as several things that needed to change.

For example, with Dot Dash - tool to help with brainstorming ideas - lots of pupils became frustrated that they couldn't move their ideas around to create an arrangement that worked for them. So we added that feature. Now you can drag ideas around the screen to position them wherever you like. Many teachers and pupils also said they wanted to be able to change the colours, to help with colour coding ideas into groups. So we added that too.

We're pleased with what we ended up with, but development continues. We're working on two more tools right now, and so any feedback you may have, please send it in. We're always keen to hear from users and find out what they think. Please take a look at Pinball and let us know how you would use it and how we could improve it - I know you'll be honest!

Rachel Duckhouse

Dot Dash prototype - most pupils enjoyed creating colourful mind maps based on their school projects.

Whilst other cheeky monkeys preferred to just press 'ENTER' a million times to create this beautiful, but unexpected effect. Something we'd never considered trying ourselves, but interesting to see. Testing with school children always means testing to the limits. And it didn't break!

A wireframe of Wild Reels, used by a Technology student to mix up ideas for a new design. The tool works, but no graphics have been added yet.

The final version of Wild Reels, with graphics.