The increasing popularity of microcontroller platforms like Arduino enables diverse end-user developers to participate in circuit prototyping. Traditionally, follow-along tutorials serve as an essential learning method for makers, and in fact, several prior toolkits leveraged this format as a way to engage new makers. However, literature and our formative study (N=12) show that makers have unique preferences regarding the construction of their circuits and idiosyncratic ways to assess and debug problems, which contrasts with the step-by-step instructional nature of tutorials and those systems leveraging this method. To address this mismatch, we present a prototyping platform that supports personalized circuit construction and debugging. Our system utilizes an augmented breadboard, which is circuit-aware and supports on-the-fly hardware reconfiguration via contextualized guidance and in-situ circuit validation through interactive tests. Through a usability study (N=12), we demonstrate how makers leverage circuit-aware guidance and debugging to support individual building patterns.

翻译：随着Arduino等微控制器平台的日益普及，越来越多的终端用户开发者得以参与电路原型设计。传统上，跟学式教程已成为创客重要的学习方法，事实上已有若干工具包采用这种形式来吸引新晋创客。然而，文献研究及我们的形成性实验（N=12）表明，创客在电路构建方面具有独特的偏好，且在问题评估与调试上存在个性化方式，这与逐步指导式的教程及采用该方法的既有系统形成鲜明对比。为解决这一不匹配问题，我们提出一个支持个性化电路构建与调试的原型设计平台。该系统采用增强型面包板，具备电路感知能力，可通过情境化引导实现硬件动态重配置，并借助交互式测试进行原位电路验证。通过可用性研究（N=12），我们展示了创客如何利用电路感知引导与调试功能来支持其个性化的构建模式。