Interaction Design

I didn’t realize how hard it would be for me to find the needed information to fill Massachusetts’ state science standards for fifth graders, I can only imagine what it must be like for them.

Most of the sites I visited weren’t targeting fifth graders, they seemed to be for an audience much younger or older than a fifth grade client. I ran into too many college lectures while trying to research a seemingly simple topics of adaption and environmental changes. These sites had a lot of confusing concepts and large vocabulary words that would be hard for most people to understand. The few websites I found that were too young for the target audience were really flashy with too many images with too little information.

brainPOP.com

The obectives and goals for Massachusetts’ fifth grade science standards are as follows:
Objective:
Adaptions and living things
Goals:

Give examples of how inherited characteristics have changed over time as adaptions to changes in the environment
Give examples of how changes in the environment have caused plants/animals to die or migrate
Give examples of how organisms can cause changes in their environment to ensure survival

Objective:
Energy/living things
Goals:

Describe how energy is derived from the sun and used by plants to produce sugar and is transferred within a food chain from producers to consumers to decomposers

Solid, Liquid, or Gas? There were a lot of different and interesting sites I found that taught the concepts of matter. One of them stuck out as somewhat successful to me because of it’s function and visual structure.

This was very interesting because it had a game-like feel to it. Kids aren’t very interested in reading a bunch of text with no pictures. They want something to do because they have a short attention span, so this little game helps them to be able to understand that when heat chemical reactions can or won’t occur when they are applied in different environments…

This one was pretty good at showing that for a solid, liquid, and gas: the whole thing could be magnified and you could see the tiny molecules and atoms. Not very good or clear visuals but may be interesting to a child/5th grader that doesn’t know anything about aesthetics.

Research

Who is your client?

5th grade teachers

Who is your target audience?

5th grade students (10 yr. olds)

What do they expect?

To learn about a specific scientific subject. In this case it will be about the  planets in our solar system.

Write a list of required outcomes: (these were taken from California Standards Test Questions)

-Students know the Sun, and average star,  is the central and largest body in the solar system and  is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium.

-Students know the solar system includes the planet Earth, the Moon,  the Sun, eight other planets and their satellites, and smaller objects, such as asteroids and comets.

-Students know the path of a planet around the Sun is due to the gravitational attraction between the Sun and the planet.

Objective:

Explain the following: The solar system consists of planets and other bodies that orbit the Sun in predictable paths.

Discovery

Content will be taken from books and articles. Illustrations and/or photographs are needed to get the idea across and make it interesting for the kids to learn. It’s a very visual subject because we can’t see planets with just our eyes, we need something to depict what they look like so that the students will be able to recognize what they are seeing. I will also need text that qualifies with the California teaching standards.

Competitive Analysis:

Strengths & Weaknesses:

Content- lots of info. heavy subject. possibly too confusing?

Web-minimal helpful and easy info. poor websites. old and ugly.

Print- Lots of information in books, etc. interesting. Possibly not modern enough. Needs to grab attention.

VISUAL AUDIT:

My concept: to create a clean and simple site. intriguing so it keeps the kids’ attention. don’t overload on the information. Colorful but not too distracting. Clear objective and options. Easy to read text so that it is fun for the child participating as well as beneficial and helpful in the learning process.

kidsastronomy.com

enchantedlearning.com

learningplanet.com

nasa.gov

This was a very crucial part of preparing to make a website, the information I complied really helped me understand and comprehend just what needed to go into the website, and helped to begin the next planning stage confidently.

Competition 1

Competition 2

Competition 3

Though at first this may have seemed like a pointless step it is very important and cannot be skipped. With filling out this small list you can understand the basics of your site and try to avoid mis-communication later on. I decided that 5th grade science teachers and Elementary schools are my clients and my target audience is 10-11 year olds.

In the competitors websites I found they either were too busy or did not have enough information, the navigation was hard to understand, and the information seemed very unorganized.I am focusing on California’s 5th grade standard and focusing on the water cycle and how water moves between the land and clouds.

It’s amazing how much I’ve learned since 5th grade. It’s even more amazing how much I’ve forgotten.

I’m looking forward to creating a website that teaches. One of the most important parts of being a graphic designer is being able to communicate visually and organize information. I’m glad we’re starting off with 5th graders to really push ourselves to make it as simple as possible. This is still very technical information and it would be easy to overload the kids with too much information.

Australia's version of the National Weather Service

Meteorologists from all over the world

Of the websites I found, most of them contained only technical information and were definitely not directed toward children. Of the websites that describe how weather is formed, none had any graphics to aid in the teaching process. Maybe I just don’t know where to look, but if I don’t know where to look, I’m sure the 5th graders aren’t any better off.

In researching 5th grade science standards I found a lot of them interesting. Designing and teaching fifth graders is a lot different then trying to design and teach adults. I researched my topic and found that there aren’t very many well designed sites to teach kids about weather. 

I learned that kids really need a simple design and that a lot of websites don’t have a simple way to navigate the site information. Bright ideas, images to explain concepts and short easy to read information. Here are some of the sites that I found while doing me research for the competitive analysis. As you can see, a lot of the websites could use some work to look more fifth grader friendly. 

My objective I decided on was “Describe and analyze the formation of various types of clouds.” The requirements for this standard are to teach the kids the four main types of clouds, how they are formed and how they affect the weather. 

This website was very hard to navigate.

This website is teaching about the water cycle.

A lot of the teaching sites could use some work to make them more 5th grade friendly.

My client for this project will be the Colorado School Board with the target audience as their 5th grade students. The main objective will be to create an informative resource that will help the students learn the science concepts in the following objectives:

1. Identify the appropriate scientific tools that are used to gather data for an investigation.
2. Identify the appropriate metric units for length, temperature, mass, and volume.
3. Represent data and evidence from an experiment in visual form.

http://www.teachingmeasures.co.uk/mass/classdial/dialdrag.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/maths/shape_space/measures/read2.shtml

As part of my research process, I conducted a brief competitive analysis. One of the more obvious strengths I observed from my visual audit was interaction. Most of the sites I visited were largely, if not completely animated.

The strength of the interactive sites is that it creates a very strong, memorable experience that will stay with the students. It also serves as a powerful testing tool to check the learner’s understanding of each concept.

The downfall of the all flash site, however, is the forced spoon-fed delivery of information. This is where the strength of the static sites comes in. The ability to search, copy and paste, and jump to the desired information offers a power of its own in the learning process.

My conclusion is that it would be better to leave the style of each site within its own stronghold: the static for teaching, and the dynamic for testing. Following this method would incorporate the best of both worlds to give the student a richer educational experience. The scope of this assignment is focused upon the teaching of information and ideas to the students, so it will follow the implementations of a more static design.

The research, discovery, and competitive analysis stage of this assignment was crucial in helping me see the big picture and make some very important decisions before getting to involved in the designing of the website. I decided that the clients are 5th grade teachers, and the parents of their students, who may have to assist the children in their homework. The target audience is the students themselves, so more specifically, 10 or 11 year old boys and girls.

I decided that the students need something informative, yet very simple. Visuals will be a very important part of grabbing the attention of the students. The website needs to be well written, very easy to navigate, and most of all a fun experience. The size of fonts, colors used, amount of information on each page, number of pages, and other similar factors will be a huge part of keeping their interest. Most of these factors made the competitors pages nearly impossible for a 5th grade child to navigate. They are much too busy, and although this may not be professional terminology, they are incredibly cheesy.

I chose to focus on the North Carolina 5th grade science standards, which state that students should learn to identify and analyze forces that cause change in landforms over time including water, ice, wind, and gravity. I decided to have a main page with general information on erosion, with four additional links to pages on erosion caused by water, ice, wind, and gravity. My pages will also contain illustrations to help the students understand. It is my goal to create very simple, colorful, pages that get right to the point without confusing the students or overwhelming them with to much information.