Through the active participation of the students, it was possible to identify the difficulties they encountered in their design processes, the constraints of the given tools, and the strategies they developed to cope with these problems.
The students found the methods of connecting JavaBeans somewhat confusing; this was mostly due to the fact that they had not fully grasped the function of each of the JavaBeans. In some cases, they decided to group several functions into one JavaBean thus creating a type of meta-JavaBean. Although meta-Beans might be less flexible, they certainly seemed more intuitive to use for the students.
As the students worked on developing their own applets it became clear that the JavaBeans available to them were insufficient. Students repeatedly requested Timer JavaBeans, Collision JavaBeans9, and Drawing JavaBeans10. Although they were not constrained in their design ideas, it was evident that in order to support the imagination of the students, a more sophisticated set of JavaBeans would have to be provided.
Remarkably, the students demonstrated their understanding of the underlying technology by explicitly suggesting new directions for research. They anticipated some of the JavaBeans still under development such as the Collaboration JavaBeans; these would allow students to construct tools which could be simulataneously shared across the network.