Exam Aid: Question Box

Team NDvidual

Computer Science students Ahmed, Michael and Maggie are NDvidual – a team who have created Question Box to help neurodivergent individuals navigate through their exams .  

Give us a brief overview of your project

Question Box is a nine-button keypad designed to be a simple, tactile user interface for people who undertake exams. We aim to help neurodivergent people who struggle cognitively. It can often be very overwhelming with the stress of an exam and the amount of information you have to process all at once, especially with the number of commands on the keyboard that you might have to type. Question Box was designed to take difficulties away for these users and to give them a more straightforward way of working on their exams.  

Why is there a need for what you’re creating

Our target audience would be schools. In the UK, around 15% of the population is neurodivergent; within the education system, neurodivergent individuals' needs are often not understood or neglected. We wanted to create a product that caters to our audience, as it is something some of us within the team struggle with. 

What made you want to develop this idea?

We are passionate about building this due to understanding how beneficial this concept could be. We already understand the audience we are catering to as we have some of that base knowledge from our own experiences, so it’s quite a personal project. 

Can you explain about the kind of equipment you are using, and how you are creating the physical product?

So, we’ve used three breadboards which are used to build circuits, we have two types of resistors that limit the electrical current in our circuit board, LED lights and buttons, Arduino Uno’s which are our controllers, and we will be using C++ to code the controllers.  

What challenges have you had to overcome?

We’ve gone through a few iterations of this model. When we started, we were unsure how to execute the physical product best, but our tutors helped us and boosted our confidence with our idea. We overcome our challenges by coming together and debating our concerns as a team. We have tried to assign ourselves tasks and roles based on our strengths. This has helped us achieve more as a team.

Are you excited for Innovation Festival?

We have never been to Innovation Festival before, so we don’t know what to expect. I know that we will see lots of other groups showcasing their work – we have already seen many of them through their websites, but it would be cool to see them in real life. We are looking forward to seeing how innovative other people’s concepts are, and seeing if any of them would be beneficial for us to use.