Interaction Design

Client: Fifth grade students, teachers, and parents

Audience: Fifth grade student in the State of Virginia.

Expectation of Site: Information presented in a simple understandable way, while give the viewer a interesting story line while teaching scientific principles of the site.

Outcomes:

Students will have the ability to comprehend, and retain information on scientific principles.

Site materials (scientific principles):

Oceanography: Continental Shelf/Slope/Rise

Marine environments

Physical properties of the Ocean, in this case, Depth.

In researching this topic not only went to fifth grade sites teaching the subject matter, but also to national sites designed for an older audience. This gave me the depth I needed to understand the subject and how it could be properly presented.  No I have not use all of the research information, but what I have chosen to use is the most pertinent to the subject matter.

Research for this started with the basic idea of what a 5th grader would want to see.  It also need to to be balanced with what my skill level would allow. I think looking for information from from college sources to start, and then using those as a basis of understanding for being able to use sites that are targeted toward the 5th grade age group.

I have tried to search for experts in the Oceanography field of study, and other sources that explain the topics.  I do think that more information would be needed at the beginning, but at the time of this post I have all the information I need.

It took me a while to find a concept that I was both passionate about, and felt I could find a good solution to teach 5th grade kids. I chose to use Georgia’s social studies standard on understanding citizens’ rights & how they are protected by the constitution.

Develop Site Concept

Two concepts I’m considering at the moment:

• Follow an illustrated character through several situations, educating the audience on possible outcomes, and have the audience choose a desired outcome.
• Have students draft their own constitution, letting them select what they feel is important, and showing them how the decisions they make will affect the outcome of the country. (step-by-step process resulting in a happy/medium/sad ending illustration)

a. Explain the responsibilities of a citizen.
b. Explain the freedoms granted and rights protected by the Bill of Rights.
c. Explain the concept of due process of law and describe how the U.S. Constitution protects a citizen’s rights by due process.

More Info:

SS5CG1 The student will explain how a citizen’s rights are protected under the U.S. Constitution.
(page 3)(info)

First of all, let me just say that I’ve enjoyed being reintroduced to 5th grade science. I think I understand it a little better this time around. ;)

I’ve chosen North Carolina’s 5th grade standard course of study. From their Science section I’ve choses Competency Goal 2 which reads, “The learner will make observations and conduct investigations to build an understanding of landforms.” In other words, my website will deal with how natural forces help to shape and create landforms.

For my first step, I set out to find understand the subject. Admittedly, I’m still in this process but I’ve found a lot of good information at ask.com, scholastic.com, and Wikipedia. I also scouted around for other websites that may be trying to teach the similar subjects or targeting a similar audience. I learned a lot here as well:

Scholastic’s Dirtmeister

Nova Kids: Climbing Denali

Discovery Kids

PBS: Design Squad

Perhaps most importantly, I’ve become familiar with the seven objectives associated with Competency Goal 2.  I’m think that by finding ways to tie these “objectives” to the content will be very important. Right now I need to ask myself how I can make this site fun and engaging for students while helping the teacher’s easily work it into their lesson plans.

Research, Development, and Competitive Analysis Stage

After choosing Life Science and understanding the heredity of genetics for my topic I researched the material, brainstormed the purpose of making another genetics website for kids, and looked to see what was already being offered. What I found was there are many poorly designed and confusing websites. Those that were organized better were targeted more towards adults.

Learning should be fun for everyone. So, with this project I want to give students a place to have fun learning about genetics they can understand.

The goal of my website is to make learning easy and fun for ten-year-olds, their parents, and their teachers. The students are the primary audience. Teachers and parents are the second audience. I have made it this way because it is the students who need to learn the information, today ten year-olds are capable of managing a computer solo, and there are few sites done well that are targeted specifically to them.

The plan is to use simplistic language, relevant imagery, and a logical design.

Here are some examples of the kind of sites I found out there for kids. There were more, but I chose these because they were some of the better sites that I want to compete with.

MOUSE PARTY is a funny science website that you might find interesting about what drugs do to your brain. Enjoy!

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/drugs/mouse.html

This step is how I get my focus.

Client:
Fifth grade teachers & students’ parents.

Audience:
Fifth grade students in Idaho.

Expectations:
Simple, while addressing all information included in the standards & presented in a stimulating way.

Required Outcomes:
Understand the Structure and Function of Matter and Molecules and Their Interactions

1. Students should be able to identify the characteristics of an element, compound, and mixture.
2. Students should be able to recognize the differences in molecular distance between a solid, a liquid, and a gas, as well as differences in basic molecular motion.
3. Students should be able to recognize the change(s) in physical properties that take place when physical changes occur including ice melting into water and water being heated into steam.

Strengths / Weaknesses & visual audit of existing content:

A strength such sites have is that they are out there and people care enough to create them. They add a fun spin as well.

A weakness is that the ‘fun’ and ‘engaging’ parts of the sites tend to distract from what is being taught, rather than using those fun colors, shapes etc. to help focus on the concepts.

Organic forms and relaxed, cartoon-like styles may forget that design is still important even when creating something that is not in a formal, crisp style. Sans-serif typefaces tend to be used a lot, but perhaps it’s not true that sans serif = ‘all kids like it that way, and it’s always fun’. It can be overused; pulling away from more dynamic typography & legibility.

This assignment allowed me to find a way to assess the websites out there which would help me to see which ones could be used to better help a 5th grader adequately understand information. Specifically information about topics in science.

I feel that the client for this project are those parents and teachers that are looking for a simple and easy way to teach their 5th grade children or students the subjects in science. Now, the target audience would be the 5th graders themselves, from the ages of 10 and 11 years old that  allowing them to navigate this site on their own to learn and gain information about this topic. This site will guide them successfully through the site and expect to learn the objectives of the topic that would be taught in class in a California public school science classroom.

OBJECTIVES:
Water on Earth moves between the oceans and land through the processes of evaporation and condensation. As a basis for understanding this concept:

CONCEPTS:

• Students know most of Earth’s water is present as salt water in the oceans, which cover most of Earth’s surface. When liquid water evaporates, it turns into water vapor in the air and can reappear as a liquid when cooled or as a solid if cooled below the freezing point of water.

• Students know water vapor in the air moves from one place to another and can form fog or clouds, which are tiny droplets of water or ice, and can fall to Earth as rain, hail, sleet, or snow.

• Students know that the amount of fresh water located in rivers, lakes, underground sources, and glaciers is limited and that its availability can be extended by recycling and decreasing the use of water in our everyday lives.
• Students know the origin of the water used by their local communities.

I looked through many sites that created some competition for my site, but the topic of the water cycle and the process of evaporation and condensation were set up in a very interactive way and others used several images to helpfully show the cycle.

In conclusion, the objective are simple on this assignment. I must find a way to help the student successfully navigate through this site and allow them to stay interested and active throughout the site.

The goal for this project is to create an informative site that will teach 5th graders one topic from their core science curriculum. I chose to do mine on traits.

Main Objective:
Students will understand that traits are passed from the parent organisms to their offspring, and that sometimes the offspring may possess variations of these traits that may help or hinder survival in a given environment.

Objective 1
Using supporting evidence, show that traits are transferred from a parent organism to its offspring.

1. Make a chart and collect data identifying various traits among a given population.
2. Identify similar physical traits of a parent organism and its offspring.
3. Compare various examples of offspring that do not initially resemble the parent organism but mature to become similar to the parent organism.
4. Contrast inherited traits with traits and behaviors that are not inherited but may be learned or induced by environmental factors.
5. Investigate variations and similarities in plants grown from seeds of a parent plant.

Objective 2
Describe how some characteristics could give a species a survival advantage in a particular environment.

1. Compare the traits of similar species for physical abilities, instinctual behaviors, and specialized body structures that increase the survival of one species in a specific environment over another species.
2. Identify that some environments give one species a survival advantage over another.
3. Describe how a particular physical attribute may provide an advantage for survival in one environment but not in another.
4. Research a specific plant or animal and report how specific physical attributes provide an advantage for survival in a specific environment.

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Competitive Research:
Doing research on competitive sites was very helpful. Some of the sites I looked at seemed to focus more on the visual elements that would catch a 5th grader’s attention, rather than readability. It doesn’t matter what age you are or how exciting a little cartoon button is, if you can’t read or navigate, then it doesn’t work. This also helped me get some ideas on how to organize links and categories.

The daunting task for my subject matter is to not go the cheesy route. There are plenty of examples below of what not to do. No child left behind? Looks like people creating websites for children aren’t giving the poor kids a fair chance. Hierarchy, clear copywriting, and imagery are all key elements to hold a 10 year old’s attention. My job is to harness A.D.D. in a good way.

The idea is to make a site for a 5th grader to use and learn from; not to make it look like a 5th grader created the website.

-You can quote me on that…

My discovery phase has been eye-opening to say the least. Lets look at what I am competing with:

Structure

Since my site document will determine my grade. I decided to weed out stuff that was redundant and also items that would be too difficult to represent electronically. I drew a chart so I would get it:

I also made a digital copy, that is cleaner and more concise to share:

My next phase is sketching. I look forward to figuring out what works or not. Goodnight till next time.

Thumbnails of my concept(s)

It took me about 9-10 sketches before they became more meaningful and thought out. Thinking through the eyes of a 5th grader is hard, but helps me get at the root of the problem. Once I understand that problem I know I can solve it with intuitive design. Intuition vs. arbitrary arrangement. Process vs. regurgitated information. I figured out a couple of concepts that will let the student know where they are in relation to the rest of the content. Hopefully the end user won’t be asking themselves when this hell of a web learning experience will end. If I indicate where they are and where they are headed there are no surprises and maybe, just maybe someone will appreciate it.

Here they are please excuse the blurry webcam…