How might microlearning be applied to demystify and effectively communicate the potential opportunities of Biotechnology to address challenges in complex social systems?

Solution Part 1 - Card Game

I defined a clean design language to make the complex content easily consummable by the kids.

To get started with, we created a card game for children which would introduce them to different topics in biotechnology.

Why card game?
To ensure that the solution is accessible even to the kids in developing countries who do not have access to any gadgets.

Game Play 1

Thoughtful Design
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The design of each card involved considerable thought and inspiration drawn from our research findings. The illustrations metaphorically depict the content underneath, since metaphors facilitate easier learning in children.
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Additionally, we repeatedly refined the content to ensure its simplicity, enabling children to understand and absorb it with ease.

Game Play 2

Stakeholder Analysis

Along with a team mate, I conducted a Stakeholder Analysis with representatives from UNICEF to better understand our audience and find a direction in our Design journey.

Following a comprehensive stakeholder analysis and consultations with UNICEF, we identified children aged 10-13 as our primary audience. This decision is grounded in the understanding that this age group is most receptive to learning new Science concepts.

User Research

During the user research phase of the project, my primary responsibility centered on the crucial task of recruiting children from diverse cultural backgrounds, specifically from Bahrain, Myanmar, India, Brazil, and Thailand.

We conducted interviews and co-design activities to keep children engaged during the interview.

I played a pivotal role in synthesizing data from our user interviews.

My approach involved forming themes from the user quotes that the team collected from the interviews, and forming insight statements from the themes. This led to creating specific "How Might We" statements, that helped us set a direction to our next steps.

Sketching out different ideas before jumping into the solution helped in diverging our thinking.

Usability Testing

We tested our prototypes with 40+ children

Lessons learnt:
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1. We need more number of cards. Currently we have 4 sets. We at least need 8 sets.
2. We need to make sure to indicate clearly that the cards could be cut.
3. Children could relate more with the drawings that have a character/human in themWe might need to use color for illustrations.
4. We need to find new ways of playing the cards such that the game itself includes reading out the topics.
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The good side we discovered about our solution:

1. Children are naturally discussing about the content in the cards.
2. The cards are easily adaptable and can be designed in different languages.
3. No formal education is required to play the games.Easy to understand the game play

Prototyping

In the prototyping phase, I focused on developing the web components while also contributing to the main concept of the card game. My role was crucial in ensuring functionality and user engagement.

This approach allowed us to refine our designs dynamically, ensuring they met user needs and project goals effectively.

Here are two concepts that initially FAILED!

Augmented Reality game

One of our initial solutions was to build an interactive experience in Augmented Reality for children.

This concept was rejected by UNICEF due to technical limitations. This solution besides being hard to develop, would not be accessible to many children who do not have access to smartphones.

FAILED PROTOTYPE

Digital Library
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While the digital library was an easy to build concept, the problem about accessibility still remains unchanged. So we changed our strategy to design a solution that is accessible to more children and then revisit this idea.

FAILED PROTOTYPE

Defining constraints

Before proceeding with further concepts, we took a moment to discuss the constraints of our solution with UNICEF team to have a clear direction.