February 5, 2018
The Design Challenges takes off with Nathan Hale!
Nathan Hale High School was the first school to enthusiastically sign up for the challenge, and we are so happy to have them onboard! We will be featuring a different school in each blog in the weeks leading up to the Design Challenge Showcase.
Getting started – Brainstorming
In our first meeting, we discussed details of the Design Challenge and an overview of the human centered design process with six students who are interested in the project and Karl Englert, the physics teacher at Nathan Hale. We watched the “Human Centered Design” and “Research” videos that were made by the Project EMAR Directed Research Group last quarter. The students explored what is stressful and what relieves stress, particularly in school. They brainstormed some research questions to think about how they would begin to design a social robot for their high school.
Thought-provoking questions
They asked questions about different materials a robot could be made of and what the face would look like. They questioned whether it would be mobile or stationary. They wondered if heart rate would be a measure for stress reduction. They even asked if the robot could have a tablet for a face! That’s exactly what the Project EMAR team is currently working on with V4.
Second session – User research
For the second meeting, I “joined” remotely through the Google doc and witnessed another great session of brainstorming. The team came up with a survey that they are passing around school to find out what the other students would like.
A sample of the survey
We are still in the beginning stages of the design process and still working on the full team membership list for Nathan Hale High School, but so far we have two very dedicated senior students working on the challenge for their senior project. One of the senior students commented, “Working on the project together has been a joy so far and we haven’t had any major difficulties. Surveying people has been easygoing and results are coming in.”
I can’t wait to join the group this Wednesday to find out what responses they’ve been getting and to pull this data together into an ideation phase brainstorming and sketching session.
