Haha, this week started off really funny. I was in NYC last year and have witnessed some serious snow then, so I was expecting there to be a decent amount of snow on Monday, but…

Surprisingly, I think attending class from home through Zoom was actually quite effective. I was trying hard to catch everything everybody was saying so that I don’t miss out on anything interesting, and I think because of that it (the bad connection coupled with the virtual experience) made me more attentive. The downside was of course that we could not collaboratively make anything physical during class but I think overall we did well in organizing a makeup class over Zoom.

 

Thoughts on Homework Readings:

I have been thinking a lot about the readings we have been doing and how they relate to the readings I have done in the past. Below is some analysis I have done over the last couple of weeks which I also included in my self-assessment.

As Seymour Papert put it in Mindstorms, “Piaget has demonstrated how young children hold theories of the world that, in their own terms, are perfectly coherent.” In other words, their model of the world is no less developed than the model of the world adults hold. Here, an analogy could almost be made to machine learning where you have different machine learning models that are optimized for different end uses.

Additionally, Papert goes on to say that “one of the more subtle consequences of [Piaget’s] discoveries is the revelation that adults fail to appreciate the extent and the nature of what children are learning, because knowledge structures we take for granted have rendered much of that learning invisible.” There is a certain joy to teaching, or just being around, children because children do things differently than us. Often adults see actions performed by children as naïve, or as some less informed version of what they would have done themselves, but this could be the result of adults imposing their own worldview, and own learning model, onto children, when in fact a very different kind of learning model is at play in children.

In CC Lecture last semester we read Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence. In the book, Bostrom explains in detail where artificial intelligence stands currently and what main hurdles we are facing before superintelligence, in any kind of form, can be achieved. In his explanations, he discusses about very specialized machine learning models that perform one task extremely well while completely failing at others. The challenge is to construct a machine learning model that can handle all kinds of tasks including highly creative, abstract tasks. Since human superintelligence has not been achieved yet, understanding how those with different learning models than ours learn, work and play would serve us well in building a much more holistic picture of how learning takes shape in our minds. Observing and learning from children in this sense is a step we should not skip.

 

Initial Project Ideas:

While looking through the links in the syllabus, I noticed that there is actually a great reference on the RiverKeeper website to data on the amount and type of trash found in and around the river. Each year the Riverkeeper Sweep takes place on the Hudson River estuary which involves cleanups, invasive species removal, and shoreline restoration. An impressive number of volunteers contribute to this effort annually – more than 1,700 volunteers.

 

As starting points for our Earth Day projects, I had the following ideas:

• An interactive and educational data visualization connecting the hidden cause and (often hidden) impact of using non-biodegradable products
• A fake news fantasy story about the wacky, dangerous and promising aspects of synthetic biology, specifically gene editing, for species preservation. Inspired by the following two projects:

– A real-life project about using gene editing to bring back extinct species: https://reviverestore.org/

– An online science fiction story about growing your own sneakers using gene editing: https://www.nextnature.net/projects/rayfish-footwear/

 

During the Zoom session, it was helpful to discuss about our ideas as I think two really important points emerged from the discussion. These were:

• We should consider how an ordinary person can understand and take action locally
• We should focus on the specific collision/conflict points and aim to educate the public about these

 

Additionally, the user archetype interviews that were mentioned sounded like a research technique I would like to learn more about. In my opinion it’s challenging to conduct any kind of accurate user study in the design world, regardless of whether it is quantitative or qualitative study. Learning to do these well is a great skill to have for any designer working with users/clients for whom they are designing.

 

Low-Res Prototypes

Here is the low-res prototype Raquel and I prepared for Week 6.

 

‘Owl’ Presentations

Hearing the different stories the students presented to us this week was a very interesting experience. We were testing the Meeting Owl 360 this time and the storyboard presentations happened virtually through it.

Firstly, the Meeting Owl is an interesting piece of technology. It did definitely allow us to have a virtual presentation session and it did feel like genuine, authentic experience. The only downside was that sometimes the children were out of view or their storyboards were too small for us to see on the screen. But these problems also exist in the real world when a child presents their work to a group. A unique side effect of using the Meeting Owl I thought was that it forced us to gather around the owl. The children were gathered around the owl (so that we could see them through the camera) and we were kind of also leaning towards the owl in our chairs so that we can all appear on the screen. The fact that we were gathering around an object called an ‘owl’ and it resembled an owl gave the experience a warm feeling in my opinion. This, coupled with my fascination with technology in general, counter-balanced any of the more practical issues I brought up before.

In terms of the ideas conveyed through the storyboards I felt that the students all took ownership of their stories/ideas when they started their presentation and that was really nice to see. But a few of them also seemed to lose their enthusiasm halfway the presentation possibly in reaction to the reaction they were receiving from us. When I felt a bit confused about their story, it was almost like they could sense that they were confusing us, which made them lose their initial enthusiasm. But I think this is when the audience-teachers could encourage them a little bit and nudge them towards an interesting point that they raised previously for example. I feel that if they can get over this small hurdle, they would really be unstoppable.

 

Stories as Systems

The storyboard/systems thinking exercise we did in class was also very interesting. When I prepared my storyboard for homework, I decided on the “what should my story teach children about?” first and then tried to come up with a story. The story revolved around species extinction and how humans can upset the ecosystem without even realising it. Not many people know that Passenger Pigeons, which used to be endemic to North America, are now extinct, or that they even existed. But an organisation named Revive & Restore is investing heavily into genetic research to bring back the birds. Their genetic engineering method involves introducing Passenger Pigeon genes to the birds’ closest living genetic neighbour – the Band-Tailed Pigeon – slowly over several successive generations to finally arrive at a very close genetic proximation to Passenger Pigeons.

Below is a storyboard that attempts to convey these different elements. I do think that the storyboard could be further adapted to a more traditional folk-style storytelling using imagery that also has folk aesthetic, with a touch of magic/science.

The class exercise we did involved analysing the system suggested by the storyboard yielding many interesting connections as to who sets the fire (see the storyboard above), who is/sends the visitor bird, and what’s in it for Revive & Restore if Passenger Pigeons were brought back? We separated the different elements of the story into different realms:

the real reality (a forest fire takes place, a visitor arrives, etc.),

the intermediary – used to describe how different events are connected to one another,

conspiracy realm where hidden connections may exist between events and characters that we may not be aware of (such as the visitor bird herself being a passenger pigeon spirit who wants to be revived and thus visiting the band-tailed pigeon at a moment of despair when the forest fire had just destroyed his home; or the Revive & Restore organisation setting the fire and sending the visitor bird as part of their master plan to bring back extinct species to make lots of money like how they do in Jurassic Park; and so on).

It was interesting to dissect the original story in this way and learn about the different layers as well add interesting layers to it. I’m looking forward to going through the LCCS students’ storyboards to see if there is a synergy between the story we developed in class.

First Impressions

Last week’s visit to the Learning Community Charter School was without a doubt the highlight of the semester for me so far. I quickly realised that the group I had picked was made up of three highly energetic, enthusiastic boys full of ideas (literally full of ideas!).

When I asked them questions like “what do you want to fix in the world?”, the boys initially seemed unsure, hesitating to give an answer but then one of them said “the ocean”. What was interesting was that the other two boys both responded to this in agreement, nearly shouting “yes, the ocean!”.

When I asked them to try to be more specific about the problem and prompted them with the follow up question, “what about the ocean?”, they all pointed to the problem of waste.

We then followed this with “So, how will you start to tackle this issue? Where will you start?” This made their responses much more specific and one of the boys suggested that we should stop dumping waste into the ocean in the first place. I thought that this was a forward-thinking answer suggesting a more long-term solution to the problem than a quick fix up. Therefore, the focus of our exercises became “How to prevent more waste from entering the ocean?”

Iterations

For every iteration of this general idea, what was almost amusing to me is the fact that the boys each took turn leading the team. If one of the boys presented an idea genuinely as a solution and with enthusiasm, the other two always tended to support that with a “Yea, and we can add/do/make…”. But of course, oftentimes ideas that were presented only to emphasise a funny point yielded more jokes from the team. The boys obviously were good friends and most of the times behaved as one unit. In such a unit, it was easy to see an idea take shape, morph and evolve as the boys easily followed each other’s newer additions.

So, given this as a premise, I felt that the group only needed very few gentle nudges to arrive at the final idea that they presented: an incentivised method of reducing waste that goes into the ocean. Melting the plastic that would otherwise go into the ocean to make other things with was the first idea that the team came up with. When prompted with the question, “What should we make with the plastic?”, ‘a boat’ was the answer.

Embrace Technology?

An app was another one of the first ideas. The purpose of the app was to keep track of how much plastic a person was recycling and receive points for each piece. When asked what the points would be for, one of the twins answered, “When you collect a certain number of points, you win something”. Immediately after he said this, he seemed unsure about what that reward would be and trailed off. Previously he has mentioned about giving away the boat made out of recycled plastic, but this time it seemed that he did not want to just give it away to the person with the most points. From here onwards, the other two boys took over and the conversation started to change direction. But it was obvious that our boy who wanted to reward the person with the most points was still fixated on his idea, but just not sure how to express his idea in its entirety. The team also seemed to be well aware about fraud and how digital accounts are vulnerable to hacking. Their way of thinking revealed that they wanted to prevent any such things that may impact their product negatively by eliminating the possibility of such issues arising from the very beginning. I am not sure if they knew it, but they were designing an entire system – casually, while making lots of side jokes.

Systems Thinking

Eventually our system became one that operates in the same way to lotteries. The recycled boat is not simply given away but is given away as the ultimate prize to a lottery-style competition. For every certain number of plastic pieces that get recycled, the recycler receives a point that can be confirmed in their app. This means each recyclable plastic product will have a code on it that will be scanned at the ‘recycle bin’. For our presentation, we paper-prototyped the boat, the bin and the app.

The experience of interacting with these kids revealed to me that children are natural idea generators, and their interactions are the most fruitful when they make a team effort. Feeding off from one another, children make a unit and it appears that they are more effective if they are with their friends as friendly competition keeps the team moving forward!

Lastly, our team struggled a little bit to follow the actual structure of the class and the given instructions for each design exercise. The boys seemed more fixated on their current ideas and less willing to adapt their idea to the given design prompts. But I think that from the midst of the ensuing chaos, some partial follow through with their original ideas and some partial adaption to the exercise questions, our team came up with a very interesting idea.

While going through my notes, it is clear to me that the two most interesting points we discussed/touched on last week were the youth readiness skills, as highlighted by the UN, and the I wonder exercise we discussed about.

Upon doing some research on the readiness skills, I found the “Global Competence Model” which describes Internal Readiness Skills and External Readiness Skills.

Global Competence Model

Internal Readiness Skills start from the self, focusing on Self-Awareness, followed by attitudes which include Risk Taking, Open-Mindedness, and Attentiveness to Diversity.

External Readiness Skills include Global Awareness and Historical Perspective which may include hidden aspects that inform a person’s values and beliefs. This group also includes interpersonal skills that a person develops over their lifetime and reflects a person’s level of experience interacting with others. Intercultural Capability refers to the more pragmatic ability to apply cultural knowledge to personal interactions, to modify their behavior to show respect for different cultures, while Collaboration Across Cultures refers to the ability to work effectively in diverse teams.

More information at https://globallycompetent.com/global-competence-model/

I wonder, too…

The I wonder exercise in my opinion allows us to frame a problem/task in a way that really capitalizes on the creativity that young people (and old people!) are able to bring to the table when tackling global issues. When problems are seen through a less nuanced lense and with genuine curiosity and a healthy dose of naivety, sometimes a valuable discovery is made and/or insight is obtained.

 

1. What did you learn about what we are doing in this studio for the semester? Did anything stand out as something that you like/dislike?

This semester we are partnering with several nonprofits/organizations to carry out a project centered around educational technology and co-design. Specifically, we will be collaborating with students from the New Jersey based Learning Community Charter School to design experiences/projects that will be showcased during Parsons Play Tech on the 13 April and Earth Day on the 20 April. The possible topic/theme we will be exploring is The Hudson River ecology as one of the project partners is the NY/NJ Baykeeper organization. During this co-design process, we (including students from LCCS) will be teaching and learning from each other using innovative tools such as the Rumii, the virtual classroom platform, and Mouse Create, an online educational platform by a nonprofit dedicated to making technology education accessible to children.

Personally, I am fascinated by the fact that learning and teaching is increasingly moving into a digital, or virtual, space. This is opening up opportunities for learning in under-served areas around the world but it also presents unique challenges of its own around internet connectivity, device availability etc. The opportunity to experiment with both Rumii and Mouse Create is very exciting and I can see this experience later informing my work in the nonprofit sector. There are definitely many questions I would like to try to answer through this class in relation to where best designers today should invest in if education is where they would like to contribute to. Additionally, working with real-world stakeholders – the students, the school, those creating new educational technologies, and a community partner – is going to be an invaluable experience for any designer who wishes to act as a bridge between disciplines and stakeholders. I’m excited by this challenge.

2. What did you learn about Design Thinking?

I think originally ‘design thinking’ was referring very much to the unique thought process of designers that is reflected in their making; hence the ‘thinking’ in the phrase? It consists of initial surveying (research) of the problem/focus area, iterations of possible improvements/changes, with evaluations of each iteration. But more recent uses of the phrase seems to have a more action-focused explanation – that you’ve got to start making something even if you cannot foresee a perfect solution no matter how much you think everything through beforehand. At the core of the phrase, though, is the idea of breaking down a problem into smaller pieces (part systems thinking as explained in Thinking in Systems: A Primer) that can be easily ‘processed’ and ‘digested’. It is generally encouraged in many problem-solving contexts because together the smaller components make up more than just their sum (e.g. an effective solution!).

I think the ‘design’ part of the term is interesting because although the iterative process described above is present in other disciplines – say, engineering – perhaps it is called a ‘design thinking’ process, as opposed to an ‘engineering thinking’ process, because in design there is more room for mistakes and failures. As well, designers know that they cannot know everything, and cannot have all relevant data before they make a decision. Part of the task of being a designer is to follow their intuition, and part of design thinking is also about making the whole, and then analyzing its impact on the world to learn from it, before fully understanding, or knowing, what the smaller components do/should be. In effect, it’s a forward thinking process that enables you to get unstuck from an unfamiliar and ambiguous situation.