Applied Play in Learning
2020
Applied Play
Design for Play
Design School Kolding
With the background of studying in Taiwan until college, I always have an expectation of having a more playful and well-communicated design for textbooks. Eventually, I asked myself, “How might I, as a play designer specialised in communication design, contribute to Taiwanese textbook redesign?”
I started with doing research on the stakeholders for textbook productions. I drafted a stakeholder map by reading research on textbooks and other online materials. I later confirmed my findings with teachers and editors.
The people/parties on the map either directly or indirectly affect the design and production of every year’s textbook. The structure shows multiple links between multiple parties. However, during my interviews with teachers and editors (respectively), I discovered that the strongest link in this map is between teachers and sales. Teachers could contact the sales through a LINE message group(similar to Whatsapp) whenever they find mistakes or flaws in the textbooks. On the other hand, sales could speak on behalves of teachers’ preferences in the publishing company. In short, the whole textbook business is also based on customer (teachers) and market demand.
And then I went on to the whole production to see where I could position myself in. As the production process is quite complex and contains various variables, I wonder if the publishers could deal with the high demand and still make good designs every year.
I imagine a high stress in designing all the content so I dug deeper into the quantity part as it might be my chance to participate in the actual textbook design. I did a quick math based on my personal knowledge:
The next step, I gathered with a group of designers and offered our help to the publishers. They were interested and agreed to meet.
We did some examples of our visions for the future textbooks and showed them along with our portfolios to the editors and chief editor during the workshop.
As we exchanged thoughts and knowledge during the workshop, I figured there is an understanding gap between what is considered practical and probable for the publisher and the designers. And we will have to find a way to deal with this issue.
I used the graph below to categorise the main activities happening in the classroom. By doing so, I defined where the aim of my design would be at. (the red dot)
After the workshop, I reconsidered my design goal. Although the project is in collaboration with the textbook publishers, I don’t necessarily have to focus on the textbooks. Act as a third party, I could focus on introducing play elements into the process of learning and furthermore, inspiring both teachers and publishers to involve play in their practices.
It is always a challenge to design and create play experience where the play activity itself affords specific learning. Before initiating the ideation process, I thought it would be a good idea to match designers’ competencies with textbook subjects and age focus. For me, I chose to focus on 7 to 11-year-old kids, and the learning of Chinese characters.
There are over 50,000 Chinese characters, and around 20,000 in use. To construct a character, one would need to learn the basic 8 strokes. And that would be my starting point.
I started with an animated graph in which I combined a simple vertical stroke with an imaginative creature.
But I quickly realised that an animation has very limited interactions. Also, I’ve only showed the form of the stroke but failed to inspire curiosity and encourage further learning. Therefore, I went on to the next stage where I designed a set of learning cards and a worksheet to tryout with kids. (see below)
#1 Each card has 2 sides, and there’s 1 particular stroke on both sides of the card. I asked kids to use their imaginations to finish the drawing on the blank background side. To finish the other side, they will have to go to someone who knows Chinese and ask the person to teach them one character that contains this stroke.
#2 The worksheet has a similar idea to the cards, only with one step more, that the kid is asked to make up a story/ sentence that combines both the drawing in the first step and the character in the second step. By doing so, the kid would have a stronger impression on both the form and the meaning of the character using their own visual and thinking structure.
I first tested with a non-Chinese speaking adult. Later I did a drawing session with one 8-year-old girl and one 8-year-old boy. Below is the result of the girl.
I learned from the session that the method did have an impact on offering a memory structure for the kids. However, for real learning to happen, my design might need to have another step in which “repetition“ occurs. I decided to implement the learning process, and turned it into a game.
I looked into the Octalysis Framework and defined what I could offer and how I could balance the learning and playing aspect in my design.
I started to construct the game by listing the steps and elements. And then I made a prototype of the whole game set as shown below. I am currently planning to present my project to the publishers and propose another collaboration.
