With HouseStories, kids learn to read and write the world around them by thinking about the most basic unit of their habitat: a house.
To grow young leaders who can grapple with complex challenges like global climate change, we designed a learning experience to demonstrate how cities adapt.
HouseStories UrbanEngineers
Product/UX Design | Client: HouseStories, Inc | 2018
Role
I led a team of seven to design a product series focused on teaching design and systems-thinking patterns, introducing important concepts of diversity, change and resilience to a 6th-9th grade age group. Our user research laid-out clear bridge to target education markets, earning the product featured spots at SXSW Edu, the National Association of Environmental Educators Conference, and giftED.
The Project
The client, HouseStories, aimed to provide K-12 youth with indelible, positive and empowering experiences learning about the built environment. To do this, we provided an adaptable framework which integrates normally siloed K-12 subjects and activates systems thinking, cross disciplinary learning and invention. The curriculum is currently being incorporated and tested nation-wide in STEAM-centered programs that cater to students of a variety of learner types and backgrounds.
Constraints
We needed to deliver a robust, 9-week curriculum in less than 5 months, aiming to have test concepts in classrooms by the next school year. While the product would combine analog and digital worlds, we would not be able to rely on the availability of devices in the classroom. How would the product stay affordable, accessible, and flexible to needs? To add to this, the systems concepts to be tackled by the kids were not easy ones. Even experienced teachers could find them demanding to understand, let alone teach.
To build a valuable beta, we formed a specialized team of 7 individuals with expertise in systems-thinking, STEAM curriculum, games, illustration and fabrication.
Research
PROBLEM
How can we offer students a profound experience with lasting value?
How do we outperform existing city-building games or programs that are widely adopted?
METHODOLOGY
1) Understand key user segments.
2) Identify other products and strategies currently available.
3) Facilitate expert reviews of these products.
4) From review, identify key design goals + metrics. Once prototype is made,
5) Conduct expert reviews assessing prototype performance against these metrics.
A student and teacher’s journeys were mapped at both the beginning and end of design. The exercise helped pinpoint how a digital experience might compliment or enhance offline learning.
FINDINGS
Three existing formats for city-building education were studied for their strengths & weaknesses. We formed benchmarks like usability, cost, simplicity, durability, customization, level of engagement, motivation, and learner-type accommodation. The product was designed to outperform in key ways.
Design principles followed: 1) provide a place for convening 2) be self-contained & intuitive 3) be highly customize-able 4) focus on discovering relationships 5) cover a variety of mind-body states 6) be role & team-building focused 7) be high-stakes / personal 8) offer small victories/bite-sized deployment
Design
CHALLENGE 1
How might we help young students to feel personally connected to abstract ideas about systems?
Personalize the experience. Provide a lightweight “passport” & design journal – a place to organize thoughts. A digital space extends learning. Students can challenge themselves, monitor their chosen design factors, and stories can be authored and shared. During beta-testing, user test data can be collected and specific learning modules can be troubleshooted here by the design team.
CHALLENGE 2
How might students learn to recognize the impact of place on lifestyle?
Build a personal connection to place by beginning with the self. Find evidence of design factors in one’s own life first. Then, show how these impacts scale up, gradually, from self to world. Make it easy to tackle multiple city contexts if desired.
CHALLENGE 3
How might a hands-on activity offer value that is different from that offered by a video game?
City-building video games often ask players to manage quantities of resource inputs and outputs in order to accomplish a goal. We decided to focus on a different purpose: the discovery of linkages between things.
Insights
Here are a few more lessons from the project.
1. In tight situations, people get creative. Help them do it (eg. hacks, DIY).
2. Tactile experiences make memory: pull people in with something to touch. Use space.
3. Kids do first, think after. Encourage doing, but introduce helpful hints and hurdles along the way.
4. Don’t over-explain. Let visuals give students room to discover.
HONORS
Featured Product in Playground, SXSW Edu, 2018
Featured Workshop in Sustainability, North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) Conference, 2018
Featured Workshop, Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented, GIFTed18 Conference
TEAM
John Bagarozy Nick Bradshaw Urechi Oguguo Nicolas Rivard Emily Royall Gabriela Santiago Hilda Tovar
+ Special thanks to Don Smeller and 10BitWorks Makerspace
ROLE
Product Design:
user research / market research / concept design / prototyping / fabrication / exhibit design
METHODS
interviews questionnaire / survey usability tests / benchmarking participatory design mind-mapping ethnographic field study market segmentation personas / scenarios / journeys alignment / gap analysis use cases storyboards wireframes interactive prototypes