The Giant Room

Designing ways to connect better with kids in the classes of creative interests

Project
Background

This project was a research-based case study of 'The Giant Room' facility located in New York City. The purpose of the project was to study their system and identify key areas of improvement.

ROLE

UX Researcher, Lead Interviewer

METHODS
-Survey & Interviews,

-Trend analysis

-Co-Design

CLIENT

The Giant Room

TEAMMATES
Minahil Kasher, Yiran Chi, EungJung Yang

DATE

Sept-Oct 2022 (4 weeks)

Conducted secondary research, 3 parent interviews, and 3 kids interviews
Analyzed the competitors and laid out the trends.
Designed storyboards to lay out the solutions and final design opportunities

My Role

Context

The GIANT Room is an Innovation space for children from 5-10 yrs age to discover interests, ideate challenges they care to solve, get messy and bring their ideas into reality. It's goal is to encourage kids in STEM and creativity space activities.

Research Prompt

How might we better connect kids with classes based on their creative interests?

Research Goals

Post visiting the facility and attending their live sessions, they wanted us to improve the connection with kids when creativity is involved.

-Understanding areas of interest for children (i.g. Classes)

-Understanding how to communicate with kids

-Understanding how children enjoy in GIANT

-Understanding the tools to improve children creativity

Process

Week 1

Week 2

Field Trip to GIANT Room

- Desk Research

- Interview approaches & prep.

Week 3

Interviewing GIANT-associated people (Parent & Kid & Instructor)

Week 4

Work on synthesis & Final presentation

Research

Our desk research involved reading and compiling information about kids' psychology, behavior, and motivation factors. We took an interest in understanding what makes a kid interested in a subject and exhibit creativity.

Apart from this, we also identified other creative spaces which nurture kids' creativity, some of them were New York Loves Kids community, Smart City Kids, Steam Explorers, and The Maker Studio.

Interview prep

For parents & kids

For the instructors

Interviewing a kid is a challenge in itself. It was necessary to properly frame the questions and improvise on spot as per the child's responses. The questions were divided into Background, Research, and Wrap-up questions. A few of the research questions were along the lines of:

What is your role in your kid's creative process, including his creativity at home?
Can you tell us about a memorable incident from a session at GIANT?
How do you encourage kids to pursue their creative interests and talents?

How do you know that the kids are happy and engaged with their classes?
How do you come up with so many ideas for projects?
What do you think of innovation when it comes to kids?

Synthesis

Post 3-4 interviews, we understood their process and some of their pain points. We arranged all the text in form of a table and used the color coding technique to highlight the important points.

Green

Orange

Purple

Blue

Pink

Red

: Common theme

: Attention catching

: Huge insight

: Tools/ Activities /Class

: Question/ suggestion

: Emotion/ feeling

: Issue

We generated persona of kid, parent and instructor based on the interviews and mapped their user-journeys.

Persona card of a Kid:

User Journey map of a Kid:

Persona card of a parent:

User Journey map of a parent:

Persona card of an instructor:

User Journey map of an instructor:

Synthesis summary

Insights:

There are minimal class restrictions, so children have more freedom. It is critical to make them interested when the class theme is not of their liking.
Parents rely on the option of switching classes in case their kids are not interested in the original class.
Even if a child is not interested in a class at first, their interest increases after watching other kids do the activities.
GIANT Room instructors have the authority to only provide suggestions to the parents about the choice of their kids' classes.
Depending on the nature of the project and size, kids either click an image or carry them home.
Parents are reluctant to allow their kids to have an afterschool virtual class.

Trends:

Freedom of switching classes.
Kids love to explore activities involving 3D printers.
Hands-on projects are always a big hit.
Every project is aligned with the theme of that day
Kids are not bound to create stuff within a set type of class

Improvement Opportunities

1. TRIAL CLASSES
A trial class session for the kids/ parents to have an overview of the class, and curriculum before finalizing that class.

Effect: This will avoid the scenario of kids switching classes at a later stage and maintain consistency.

2. GIANT POINTS | REWARDS
Kids will earn a number of points after completing an activity/ task. They can use these points to select art and craft materials based on their creative interests from the provided free stuff for home use. There can also grab stamps/punch cards like a coupon.

Effect: Encourages kids to finish the started activity. It also teaches kids a sense of responsibility and how to use rewards in a better way.

4. CHALLENGES-BASED ACTIVITIES
Setting up an activity as a challenge for a kid to learn from it and move to their favorite activity later. This is more like a sandwich between 2 of their favorite things that are necessary for them to learn without skipping.

Effect: Allows the instructor to implement rules without enforcing them by force or prohibition. A fine line between creative freedom and a structured class is generated.