PROJECT DETAILS
Roles
Co- Project Manager
UX/UI Designer
Research
Prototyping
Tools
Mural
Adobe XD
Micorsoft Teams
Microsoft's Inclusive Design Toolkit
Research and Design tools
Collaborators
Shemara Read
Kristen Dingle
Frank Zhang
The project focuses on how to better improve the future of play in daycares/educational settings while also aiming to help children with their emotional development. Through in-depth research of play and emotional development in children as well as the completion of pre-selected design activities, these helped support the progression of the project. This led the team to a final solution in form of an experience within the targeted space that helps to promote play and allow children to work with their emotions in an abstractive and creative way.
THE PROBLEM
Contest Brief: Play is under threat. It has become a "nice to have" rather than a "need to have" where we are taking play away from kids: 2 in 10 kids say they have no time to play and parents struggle to see the value of it - packing kids full of extracurricular activities and traditional school learning.
CHALLENGE
How might we support daycares to help children learn how to express their emotions that promote positivity, strong values, and healthy development through play.
GOAL
To ensure that our solution is suitable for all children in as many different environments, contexts, and scenarios as possible.
THE SOLUTION
An interactive wall called Build N’ Draw, that promotes free play and semi-guided play while also allowing children to abstractly express, recognize, evaluate and understand their emotions through the use of magnetic legos, the opportunity to draw, and guided prompts all while being in an inclusive, collaborative yet also personal and self-explorative space.The interactive wall functions as an installation when not being in used as each cube uniquely displays the children’s emotions in an abstract and creative way. The cubes are ever changing, making the installation dynamic.
THE USERS
The target users are for children who are in daycares, kindergarten and specifically the younger ages of primary school because this is the prime age for children to get to know and better understand their emotions.
User needs: children need to know how to handle with their emotions, understand who they are, know how to properly interact and communicate with others and the outside world while being able to observe and explore freely on their own.
THE PROCESS
A semester long process filled with weekly meetings, in-class lessons & activities, peer critique sessions, progress meetings, feedbacks from professor, endless ideation, continuous research, and reoccurring refinements
RESEARCH
Research was heavily focused in the beginning of the project as the group wanted to gain a better understanding of the importance of play in childhood and how that affects children's emotional development which helped ground the design direction and provided a foundation of knowledge.
Click here to take a look at the full Research Report 📄
BRAINSTORMING
Design activities were carefully selected as a group through open discussions and strategic approaches that were deemed to be the most helpful in the development of a solution to the problem challenge.
Design Studios was utilize to help generate a wealth of ideas in a short amount of time.
Solution Sketches allowed each member of the group to share their best idea to move forward.
Importance/Difficulty Matrix helped narrow down the idea by establishing priorities and next steps that are impactful yet feasible.
AHA MOMENT
The AHA moment came from a critique session feedback where the suggestion was to combine the initial idea. This was a turning point in the project as it provided an opportunity for the group to rethink the initial solution from another perspective which allowed more user's needs to be met. This was the moment where the group saw clarity of a solid solution forming and was confident in it.
USER JOURNEY
In order to create authentic user journeys, it is important to gain insights on children's emotional cues and how they interact with a physical space during play and so, interaction dairies was conducted. This helped to stimulate inclusive design through the observation of verbal and non-verbal interactions in a natural and non-simulated environment. Due to COVID-19, this activity was adapted to watching available videos of children playing at parks, in school, and at home to help supplement real-world observations. This helped in creating a realistic user journey for how they would interact with the final product.
FINAL SOLUTION SCENARIOS
The Build N’ Draw covers the entire wall, providing children with a vast amount of space to interact and explore. One way that children can interact with this experience is by playing directly on the wall while they stand. Children can follow the guided prompt but is not limited or restricted to it as they interact with a cube of their choice while being able recognize and understand their emotions through legos and drawing, and the choice of playing with others.
REVISIONS
A Context & Capability Match was conducted on the final prototype to help the team look at the solution through a more empathetic lens and better understand the different experiences that people may face. The team came up with three different situational cases when using the prototype which led the group to revise the final solution and include several features that truly helps in promoting inclusion and allow many children to interact with it despite any temporary or situational limitations.
Key Rationale of Solution
Build N’ Draw supports emotional development by providing a way for kids to work through difficult emotions through play. This is beneficial because it creates an outlet for kids to process difficult situations, recognize and express them in a positive, and creative way through the abstract use of magnetic legos and drawings of their own.
Build N’ Draw supports an innovative future by limiting the use of space in a classroom.
With play being viewed as a break from work and not for its importance of helping children with their development, Build N’ Draw can be an innovative way to help daycares/educational settings incorporate play back into the schedule all while exercising their collaborative skills and enhancing their emotional developments.
Reflection
This was a project where I had grew and learned a lot about leading a group, virtually. It was a struggle working in a team setting all done online as it was missing the physical interaction with each other. In the beginning, the group struggled with the challenge and coming up with a solution because of the lack of project direction and leadership in the group. Not being able to physically connect with others made it more challenging to hold people accountable and easier to stray off from the project. Through this project, I had the opportunity to step up when no one could and made sure the group hit each milestone and stayed organized throughout. I learned a lot about my leadership style and recognized the areas that needed to be improved to gain successful outcomes. I was able to work on these problems to help me become a better leader, and so, each time the group met up, I was able to become more confident in leading the team towards a final solution. I prepared the agendas for each group meeting and lead the activities that needed to be done to ensure the group was progressing in the project. This project helped in strengthening my leadership, collaborative, and communication skills.
Next Steps
- Conduct user testings on real users to continue improving the solution.
- Evaluate the cost of the solution to see if it is feasible in the real setting.
- Narrow down the solution's complexity while still ensuring the original goal.
- Explore different ways the design can be integrated into different environment and better suit the users.
