Project Name:
Map it!
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Design for Children From Vulnerable Families; in collaboration with Ang Mo Kio Family Service Centre
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Duration:
Jan to April 2017
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Team:
Mathilde Gaucher
Hansel Wong
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Role:
Interaction Designer. Project direction; Ethnographic Research ; Design Probes Creation ; Service and system mapping; Prototyping
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Challenge: How might we enable social workers to better design for children from vulnerable families?
In Ang Mo Kio, there's a huge number of rental blocks for families who are economically and socially vulnerable. We found out that this led to a huge number of children from these families to be scarce of quality learning opportunities in comparison with the rest of the Singapore population. AMKFSC Community Services swooped in to filled this gap by organising after-school activities for these kids, however attendance has been dropping tremendously throughout the years. They came to us to find out why.
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DESIGN PROCESS
We adopted the 4Ds method, Discover - Define - Development - Deployment.
Discover Our Target Users: Facilitators
We first interviewed our stakeholders, the staff from various management levels in Ang Mo Kio Family Service Centre. Through the interviews and observations, we were able to understand their predicament and problems at a deeper level.
Discover Our Target Users: Children
Naturally, we realised that simply interviewing the children will gain little insights and our presence would be disruptive. Hence we decided to create design probes to sieve out their needs and wants in a more engaging manner, from creating their dreams with craft materials to performing out their ideal day.
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The artefacts, with responses from the kids were returned to us and used to craft insights, inspire ideas and generate prototypes. We realised that a huge gap was in the evaluation of the sessions post-activity. Currently, they hand out survey forms to the kids that they often hastily scribble after class, which led to lesson plans that were un-targeted and random.
Defining our Insights
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Through our ethnographic research, we recognised a key pain point that encourages the vicious cycle of ineffective lesson programmes for the children is the un-engaging evaluation methods. Based on our ethnographic research, even with the finest of intentions, facilitator and teachers have difficulties getting the children to understand their lessons due to mismatch in interests.
Defining the vicious cycle
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This unlocks a vicious cycle of challenges - the un-engaging evaluation methods leads to feedback lacking efficacy which in turn does not provide facilitators with useful insight to plan new class programmes. This result in activities that doesn't interest the kids, explaining the drop in attendance.
Defining the design aims
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We will need to design methods for facilitators to provide opportunities to the kids to reflect after a lesson and creatively express their thoughts.
Defining the user goals
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We knew that it was not sustainable for us to merely design experiences and tools that would be once-off, so the big question challenge was: How might we purposefully design for facilitators to enable them to design better programmes for the kids, on a consistent basis? We went back to the drawing board and realised that instead of focusing on creating content for future lessons, we should enable the facilitators to be able to find out the effectiveness of their own lessons and how they can be improved.
3. Developing ideas and prototypes
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The prototypes were further developed along with the facilitators to create a toolkit that they could use to collect feedback and generate ideas for follow-up sessions with the kids that they could actually enjoy!
Outcome: A kit to get inspired by the kids!
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We decided to create a toolkit that allows the children to express their thoughts through the erasable surface of the modules, giving them a platform where mistakes can be made. Introducing MAP IT! , a fun and kinaesthetic toolkit for facilitators and teachers to:
- Encourage children's reflection on the lesson
- Create space for creative expression for children
- Provide a platform for facilitators to evaluate the activity
- Inspire other facilitators to plan more targetted kids-centric activities
MAP IT! comes equipped with Reflection and Expression modules, Prompt cards, Facilitator’s Inspire cards and a Base Module that doubles as packaging. With the new ideas for kids-centric activities, MAP IT! will lead up to an online ecosystem where facilitators from all centers can exchange ideas and the values attached with one another. MAP IT! will solve your idea blocks in no time.
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Reflection: Looking Back
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"Love is about how we treat people around us."
Akbar hesitated before scooting to a corner of the void deck, scribbling on the Expression module when we were talking about what we learn about love that lesson.
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Even though their family backgrounds are not the most ideal, with many of their folks either divorced, in debt and incarcerated, profanities spilling out from their mouth frequently, their hearts are passionate, their minds are creative and their energy is limitless, as long as we believe in their greatness.
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This has been such a humbling experience, where a project aimed to enable the children to learn resulted us in learning a thousand lessons from them instead.