Introduction: Tools for teaching

This project is about making new tools for teachers. In the everyday world there is an increasing amount of technology present. What we see is that schools are staying behind at the technology development. The only big change, in the way schools educate the children, is the presence and usage of smart boards in class. Still there is a teacher in front of the class, but the question is; is this best and efficient way to teach children something? Maybe children would benefit more from having the teacher stand in the middle of the class and have the children sit around them.

Concept: B.O.B.

We created a service which is called B.O.B. . The goals of this service is to gain insights in the home situation of a child, so that a teacher can adapt their lessons to the children or could arrange a meeting with the child or the parents when there is something wrong, which has great influence on the school results of the child. This service consists out of a doll and a database. The doll is standing at the night desk in a child’s room, which is able to register the emotions of the child while this information is stored in a database. This database can be accessed by teacher and parents to see how a child is feeling on a specific day.

Our report which contains more information about the process can be found here

A little movie clip about our final prototype.

Reflection

Last semester I did this B.O.B. project within the tools for teaching project. I choose this project (tools for teaching), because I wanted to develop my User Focus and Perspective competency. I wasn't able to develop this competency last semester, because I focused more on other competencies such as Integrating Technology. My former assessor advised me to choose this project, because it is a user-focused project. Besides that, I think it's informative to work in an area, namely education, which is known for its Conservatism. This creates an challenging area to work in, which I like. So I expect to get a couple of opportunities to develop my User Focus and Perspective competency and Ideas and concepts by setting up and doing user tests and trying out new brainstorm techniques.

Setting up the user tests and doing the user test went very good. Before we did a user test we first discussed the questions we wanted to ask with our coach to see if they were good. As so was the teamwork and communication. Even when we lost one team member a couple of days before the intermediate day, it didn’t affect the final result. For me it was even some sort of new experience to go through the design process as a team, because first semester I almost did the project all by myself due to team members who stopped with the studying Industrial design or team members which didn’t do anything. The ideation phase is also something which, I think, was very successful. Trying out new techniques to gain new insights was something which really helped me to develop my Ideas and concepts competency and ideas for the project. The only thing which could go better was the Form and Senses part of the project. I believe if we spent more time on the final project it could look better in terms of a finalized product. Our current prototype hasn't got that finished look.

If you want to watch this user test, please contact me. Due to the privacy rights of the children and the made agreements, this movie clip cannot be shown to everybody.

You aren’t doing a user test to get a confirmation of your concept. You don’t want the excepted outcome of a user test. You want to be faced with unexpected situations, which give you the chance to improve the concept. This is what I learned about doing user test. We did a user test, trying to find the right interaction to express a certain feeling. We managed to do this, but we also got to know that children like to talk when they express their feeling. That is the reason why our doll got a speaker and microphone to ask questions and to record the answers as extra clarification for the emotions of a child. We made several other decisions this way which were influenced by the result of our user test. I learnt also new brainstorm techniques, like the pressure cooker and quick and dirty prototyping. The pressure cooker helped me to get rid of those very obvious ideas when starting a new project. Those early ideas seems first very interesting and good, but ideas where you come up with without any proper thinking are often ideas others also will have or others already have developed. I also learnt that a pressure cooker is excellent way to get to know your team and so each other’s strengths and weaknesses, because you are going through the whole design process. That is something which I think is important to know so you are able to help each other better.

We also did an observation at the beginning of the project to get to know our users and their needs. We sat in the back of a third grade class, making notes of everything which we saw which we thought was interesting. First you write down almost everything that happen, but after a while you get pickier about what you write down, because you start to get a good impression and you start to see what’s interesting. Doing this observation was an excellent start to begin your project, because you get an clear image about your user and his or hers surroundings where the product or service which you are going to design will be used.

The quick and dirty prototyping technique helped me to approach a brainstorm on a more creative way than I was used to. I got feedback from my assessor that I need to be more creative in the starting phase of a project to come up with better ideas and original ideas. This technique helped me to do this. We sat down with a box full of junk and we just start to build things. I learnt that by doing this you spontaneously get ideas. This is where I got the idea for a block for children which you can turn on its side to tell the teacher that you find a question difficult or not, or if you’re feeling well yes or no.

During this project I managed to develop my User Focus and Perspective competency, which was my main goal. I am happy with the new learnt skills and experience I gained while developing this competency. First I didn't know where to start if you want to do a user test. But I now know how to set-up an user test and which questions you need to ask yourself before doing such test. Also the fact that I was able to develop my Ideas and Concepts competency, by learning about quick and dirty prototyping is something I am very satisfied with. I am satisfied with this, because being creative during the ideation phase was something I needed to work on according to the assessor. I also learnt that ethics are a very important part of your concept. There were some questions we couldn’t or only partially answer. I think if we could answer all the questions properly, our concept would be stronger. I hope by finishing the USE Base basic course to get a better understanding in this.

Now having experience with doing user test will certainly help me in the future when I want to another user test. Also the new learnt Ideas and Concepts techniques are something which can help me starting up new projects on a creative way.

I still need to work on the Social Culture Awareness part of a project. The ethical question that could arise during a next project should be properly dealt with. As a designer I learnt that you can learn much from involving users early in the design process as that a creative approach to something can result in original ideas or solutions. Also that ethics is an important part of the project and that a concept without ethical problems is a much stronger concept.