Teaching with Tangibles

The companion material is free for classroom use — no licence, no sign-up, no request needed. This page collects what is most useful for a course, and how to cite it.

What is free to use

Everything below is open to students and instructors without an account:

IoT Security Scorecard → A 19-question audit aligned with ETSI EN 303 645. Students assess a real product and get a risk grade with prioritised fixes. Works well as a lab exercise. Security Requirements Generator → Produces an archetype-specific requirement list mapped to EN 303 645 provisions. Exports to Markdown or CSV, so it drops into a written assignment. Regulatory Landscape → Maps which frameworks bind a given connected product by archetype, market, and buyer — CRA, PSTI, IEC 62443, ISO 27001 and others. Compute Locator → Places a workload at edge, hub, or cloud by weighing latency, bandwidth, cost, and battery life. A good in-class design argument. Per-chapter source lists → Every citation in the book, chapter by chapter, with live links and archived snapshots. Usable as a reading list on its own. Glossary → Plain-language definitions of the connected-hardware vocabulary, each linked to the chapter that introduces it.

Also free: 26 chapter previews and a full sample chapter in EPUB.

Where it fits in a syllabus

The book runs in six arcs. The mappings below are the most natural fits:

Course	Arcs and companion material
Hardware / IoT product management	All six arcs as the spine. Scorecard and Compute Locator as lab exercises.
Embedded systems — security module	Arc V (Chapters 18–19) with the Scorecard and Requirements Generator. The CRA reporting explainer gives a current regulatory anchor.
Technology entrepreneurship	Arcs I and III — hardware's structural constraints and validation traps. Chapter 2 works standalone as a case discussion.
Business models / servitization	Arc VI (Chapters 20–22), the seven-layer Tangible Stack, and the unit-economics material in Chapter 13.
Industrial design / HCI	Arc IV (Chapters 14–17) on positioning, first impressions, and killer features.

Suggested assignments

Security audit. Each student picks a connected product they own, runs the Scorecard, and writes up the three highest-priority gaps with a proposed remediation order.
Regulatory scoping memo. Given a product concept, use the Regulatory Landscape tool to determine which frameworks apply, then argue what that does to the launch timeline.
Compute placement defence. Use the Compute Locator on a workload, then defend the placement against a classmate arguing the opposite.
Source critique. Take a chapter's source list, pick three citations, and assess whether they support the chapter's claim. Good for teaching evidence evaluation.

How to cite

The book

Frischoff, Yoel. Tangibles: How Software Turns Hardware into Platforms. Tel Aviv: TheRoad, 2026. ISBN 978-965-596-117-1.

A companion tool

Frischoff, Yoel. "IoT Security Scorecard." Tangibles companion site, 2026. https://tangibles-book.com/tools/iot-security-scorecard/

Desk and examination copies

Instructors considering the book for a course can request a desk or examination copy. Please write from an institutional address and include the course name, level, term, and expected enrolment.

Yoel Frischoff — [email protected]

Guest lectures and remote Q&A sessions for classes using the book can also be arranged.

Classroom permissions: the companion tools, chapter previews, source lists, and glossary may be used, linked, and assigned in any educational setting without a licence. Screenshots of the tools may be reproduced in slides and course materials with attribution to Tangibles by Yoel Frischoff. Reproducing full chapters in a coursepack requires written permission — email the address above and it will not be difficult. Last updated 4 August 2026.