Meaningful prototyping in Primary Education

Abstract

At the moment design is taught in primary education. Teachers often use the design cycle which consists of six phases: 1) Exploring & formulating the problem, 2) Generating & selecting ideas, 3) Generating & selecting concepts, 4) Building prototypes, 5) Testing & optimising and 6) Presenting. There are several tools available for teachers to use when doing a design assignment in class. These tools are focused on exploring, ideating and presenting, but tools for prototyping are missing. In a previous project Nadine Rodewijk developed a game, the Prototype-discussion-game, which was meant to help children in purposefully prototyping. This game is the starting point of this project and the goal of this project is to develop materials that are a contribution to the available tools for designing in primary education and make children use prototyping in a meaningful way.Explorative research, interviews, observations and literature, show that children often do not have a goal when prototyping, while experts use prototyping to find things out. Designing is an iterative process and prototyping allows you to iterate. At the moment children often only make one prototype at the end of their process for communication purposes.In this project three tools are (further) developed in order to stimulate the children to purposefully prototype and use prototyping to iterate in their design process. Due to COVID-19 all the tests in this project could not be performed in schools, since all schools were closed. Therefore, all the tools are tested at home. One of the developed tools is the Skill tool. The goal of this tool is to teach children necessary skills for prototyping. When children do not know how to make things, they will not be able to make meaningful prototypes in a design assignment. Children get a step-by-step instruction in text and image which they have to follow. In the last step the children need to apply the skill they just learned in a different context. This way children already have practised applying the skill in a different context before they have to create a specific prototype in a design assignment. Another tool is the Prototype-discussion-game of Nadine which is further developed. The goal of the game is to make children aware of the different goals prototypes can have. The Prototype-discussion-game is a card game in which groups of 3-4 children have to combine prototypes with goals. The children have five cards with different goals for prototypes on them and they need to combine one of the cards to a card with a prototype on it. The children need to give an argument for their choice and need to discuss which goal fits best with the prototype card. The tests in this project show that the game makes children aware of the different goals and is experienced as a nice and educational game to play. The last tool developed for children is the Iteration tool. The goal of this tool is to guide children through the necessary stages in order to iterate (see Figure 1). In order to iterate you first need to look forward and plan for the prototype you are about to make. Then you execute your plan and once it is finished, you look back and reflect on your progress and process. Lastly, you process your learnings and decide on what the next step would be before you enter the iteration model again by planning for your new prototype. The tool consists of multiple worksheets which are related to the stages of the iteration model. The tests show that using the Iteration tool helps the children to prototype purposefully. In this project there is also a tool developed for teachers. This Info booklet provides information about the role of prototyping in a design process. The booklet also provides examples and information about the tools developed in this project that can be used in class when prototyping. Teachers mentioned that this booklet is very informative and can be useful when preparing a design assignment.