Introduction

In the first semester of 2008, a group of Srishti students were brought together to participate in the Microsoft Research-sponsored Design Expo. Two groups were formed from students whose interests and grade levels varied. The projects took place with coordination and oversight from the Center for Education, Research, Training and Development (CERTAD) and the Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA). The students were given a design brief that consisted of two challenges: one consisting of Srishti's existing commitments to cultural, educational, artistic,and design-based engagements with society, and another consisting of a more general challenge to design a user interface and/or interactive experience around the theme of learning and education. They were asked to develop a project that synthesized these challenges into one unique approach that incorporated the concerns, commitments, and constraints that were implicitly and explicitly embedded in the issues raised. At the conclusion of the workshop, one team will be selected to present their work at the Microsoft Faculty Summit in Redmond, WA in July, 2008.

Design Challenge I: Srishti's Technology and Society Engagements

Teaching and Learning with Technology for Children in Urban Poor Communities
A collaboration with NGOs, academics and designers. The project aims to create sustainable livelihoods by empowering and teaching the children of India's growing urban poor communities.

Bangalore Space Arts & Culture Initiative
This initiative grew out of the Bangalore Culture & Space Symposium which was a gathering of philosophers, space scientists, educators, and artists that took place at the end of September, 2007 in Bangalore, India. The symposium examined current themes at the intersection of space science, technology and arts from a cultural perspective. It took into account many perspectives involved in space research as an attempt to lay the groundwork for future collaborations between symposium attendees and hosting organizations.

Students were asked to develop a project that engaged the Indian Space Agency's Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon in 2008.

Design Challenge II: Learning and Education and Interactive Experiences

The 2008 design challenge explores the importance of learning and education. Software can improve the daily life of a wide variety of users through learning and education: from promoting creativity and curiosity in new topics, to demonstrating novel ways of providing instruction, to rethinking education systems and tools. In addition, we hope students think about learning and education in a variety of cultures and learning styles. Although learning & education is a broad, universal topic, projects should be designed for the needs of a particular user group in a particular situation or culture. Users groups may include: mobile “learner”, on-line community, preschool, elderly, office workers, individuals who share a particular learning disability, visual or hearing impaired, different roles (student, peer, teacher, social network, and researcher), etc. Communicate your design by first explaining the situation (via background research, interviews with your users, and describing the local culture or education system), and then explaining your design solutions (through scenarios, innovative designs and interface simulations/prototypes). We encourage you to think beyond traditional software, toward solutions such as lightweight user interfaces for inputting (entering) and outputting (disseminating information) which integrate with everyday life.

view the full MRS Design Expo Brief

Projects

The two projects that emerged were Play Revolution and Moon Vehicle. Their project blogs can be visited by clicking on their names here or in the sidebar on the left.

Pedagogical Structure of the Course

The lab itself and the social interactions were influenced in part by the GROCS lab at the University of Michigan. Thanks go to Linda Kendall-Knox for her willingness to share their process.

The pedagogical structure of the course started as a fairly straightforward entry into the design considerations that would go into developing user interfaces, based at least in part on a design rubric developed by Tom Brinck.

This plan was quickly abandoned for a more socially-embedded model of design that would adapt to the different concerns and questions we were going to encounter. The primary article guiding this process was entitled "Products and Practices: Selected Concepts from Science and Technology Studies and from Social Theories of Consumption and Practice" (Ingram et al. 2007).

This article stressed six stages of technological adoption: acquisition, scripting, appropriation, assembly, normalization, and practice.

Other text were also made available to guide explorations, including:

McCullough, M. (2004). Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing. MIT Press Cambridge, MA, USA.

Morville, P. (2005). Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become. O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Sterling, B. (2005). Shaping Things. The MIT Press.

Tidwell, J. (2005). Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design. O'Reilly Media, Inc.

And many others as found by the groups themselves...

Assessment

Students were given frequent personal feedback and a midterm progress report. The group assessment criteria were:

Completeness: How complete is the project? Did the members engage in the various processes fully and thoughtfully? Is there an appropriate level of primary and secondary research?

Process: Is there evidence of the team having engaged in multiple processes or working processes to arrive at their solutions? Did they use the most appropriate processes?

Internal Consistency: Does the design and its iterative process follow from previous work and knowledge gained? Do the "parts" of the design proposition fit together-i.e. do they mutually inform and reinforce each other? Do social, technological aesthetics networks make sense?

Quality of Solution: Is this an improvement? Does it make the world a better place? Is learning and education qualitatively enhanced?

Documentation Quality: Is the overall finish and clarity of documentation excellent? Does the documentation tell a story or clearly communicate its intended idea, message, and propositions? Is it navigable? Are all the pieces accounted for?

Interdisciplinary collaboration: Does the prototype or design proposition reflect the contributions of members of different disciplines and/or the inputs and expertise of its team members?

Originality: Does the design proposition show unique and new interface designs along with new applications?

Practicality: Is the prototype based on what is most realistically likely to happen with technology in the context proposed?

Design point of view: Does the design should take a clear stance? Does it address a real user need and show how it is addressed by the solution?

Design validation & user feedback: Does the prototype show how user involvement was used to evolve the design concepts? Do they show how they used real users and incorporated their feedback?

Degree of finish: Are the prototypes understandable and clearly described? They need not be ‘implemented’ or built to a final detail level. It is important that they actually design the user interface. What is the UI degree of finish?

Presentation skills: Is the project team capable of being able to present in an engaging and crisp manner about the project goals; ideas and process of design?