Teaching Design for Change

I find this TED talk really interesting and inspiring about the Design in Education. Emily Pilloton, the speaker, presented her experience in integrating design not only into a school studio but into a whole rural community. She presented some interesting design principles and approaches that should be considered when designing for education and development.

The first is design for education and it refer to the intersection of the physical construction of the space and materials and the experiences for teachers and students. She implemented this principle through the design of Learning landscape where students play and learn in the school backyard.

The second approach is redesigning education itself in the sense of how education administrated, the services offered , and for whom. The last approach Pilloton and her company used is design with education, which means teaching design thinking using construction and fabrication tools to solve real community problems.

Also, she presented some design principles that I see fundamental for us to consider:

• Design through action
• Design with, not for
• Design systems not stuff
• Document, share, and measure
• Start locally, and scale globally

Adobe Museum of Digital Media

A great idea and creative design. What could be a perfect exhibit to display digital media than a virtual museum?

Massive space, no doors, no guards, interacting with the artworks in its environment, and the museum is always open, that's only few advantages. Regardless of it's creative design, what i consider great about this idea is the virtual environment itself. When i see a digital media artwork in an exhibit, i always feel it missing something. I want to interact with, i want to zoom in and out, i want to flip it upside down, i want to click and see it unfolding of other perspectives, i know that i can but not in a physical space.

www.adobemuseum.com

Panwapa

The website is trying to present basic literacy skills, informations about cultures, through presentations of kids, their lives, communities, stories. The website is really good in delivering those information and skills. However there are some notes that cam make this application much better. What is really good about this website is the use of the graphics, friendly human feedback, interactivity, simple and clear information presentation. As for what is not designed well is the the existence of some dead interactive cues will cause a cognitive overload while providing no benefit, lack of controls while video playing, limited interactivity, poorly designed sign-up tool. The website focus more in the use of question posing, identifying objects and events , note-taking, filtering information, record keeping, scanning for clues.

The the movies are well-produced, the environment were they are presented is not interactive enough. The page lacks certain controls that make the user have control over the presentation of the video while it's playing. Also, controls needed to end the activity before completing it and going back to the previous page not the main page. Though the videos presents a lot of important informations, the questions are not that deep and shed light on those important cues. The game is simply based on recognition skills only. The answer for the questions mostly needs to listen to the video again and identify and click when the answer appear. The rewarding system is based on vocal praise only, it might be better if at least they get scores or indications of their advancement throughout the experience.

www.panwapa.com