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Practice Quiz Development

7/24/2019

 
By Emily Chan, Summer 2019 NSF REU
One of my main projects this summer was designing a practice game that leveraged our large collection of high resolution images for volunteers to practice identifying macroinvertebrates.

BACKGROUND 


A tool for practicing macroinvertebrate ID has been one of the most requested features by volunteers and educators alike. Before getting started developing a game, we took a look at the current resources available online. While there are an abundance of identification-based practice games on the internet (though hardly any for macroinvertebrates specifically), many of these games have similar designs that use low resolution images or generic illustrations, have little possibility for user visual interaction, and use a handful of example specimens that never change, meaning users can usually only play the game once or twice before being able to memorize the answers. In addition, usually only four choices of answers are provided, multiple choice style. Examples below:
In contrast, when conducting ID activities in authentic citizen science practice, volunteers need to be able to identify a large number of macroinvertebrates that may be sampled from a stream, to work around variations in size, shape, and color, and to be able to choose the right identifier from a large list of choices.
Our goal in creating this game was to simulate authentic practice, so our design for this practice game was informed by the identification process for water quality monitoring, and the biotic indices used by volunteers to classify macroinvertebrates. ​
PAPER PROTOTYPE

One of my goals was to keep the game as similar to the actual website as possible, so that it’d be easy for Chris to actually implement. Therefore, my first prototype mimicked the panel design developed by Alice. Every mystery specimen would be a genus-level page, with the text in the panel replaced by a question panel. The key ideas in the paper prototype were: the game goes on indefinitely until you choose to stop (in order to take advantage of our large collection); after you finish, it compares the water quality rating you would have calculated based on your identifications with the actual water quality rating; it uses the diagnostic characters as hints; when you get an answer wrong, it provides information about the differences between the answer you chose and the correct answer; and it has all the same zooming and changing view functionality as the regular site.

Though every single practice game I looked at provided four choices you could choose from, it seemed that this might not make sense for our game--if the choices were randomly selected, we might end up in a situation where the user is asked to identify a mayfly, and the choices are clam, leech, beetle, and mayfly. Having choices that don't actually look similar to the specimen isn't particularly helpful for the user's learning, but if we wanted to only show visually similar choices, someone would have to manually create the choices available for each specimen, which seemed excessive. In addition, in the actual scenario, volunteers need to choose the right identifier from a very large number of choices. Therefore, I sketched a multiple choice version as well as a version with a dropdown menu.
XD PROTOTYPE 1
We collected feedback on this first XD prototype at the Macroinvertebrates.org site launch event, allowing educators and trainers to play around with the mockup and asking them about their thoughts. Their main concern was whether the game would be leveled--suggestions included student, volunteer, and expert levels. Who the target audience is turned out to be a central question that the game still struggles to fully address. We chose to focus on volunteers, and get a  working version of the game for that audience first. I also considered whether it'd be useful to separate by region or ecosystem (like the Cornell Bird Quiz does), but I didn't have enough information about who'd be using the game and what they'd want from it to make a judgement about that. We made some additional minor changes to the design based on suggestions, such as bringing the diagnostic characters back on the correct/incorrect page, including an illustration of the wrong answer as well (i.e. a small illustration of stoneflies next to "This is not a stonefly"), and trying alternatives to "incorrect" (e.g. "try again", "sorry", etc.).
XD PROTOTYPE 2

After getting feedback on the first XD prototype at the Macroinvertebrates.org site launch event, we made the following changes:
​
XD PROTOTYPE 4
For the next prototype, we decided to make use of the annotated illustrations that we had available (with the text enlarged) to replace or complement the informational text. 
XD PROTOTYPE 5
After consulting with Chris, our developer, we shifted towards a tab-panel design, to maintain consistency with the genus level pages and to make developing the game easier. The hints were shifted to the second tab, similar to the genus-level page, and the third tab would either be an "About this Game" tab, or a score-keeping tab. 
SPLASH SCREEN
Chris also informed us that the instructions and results would have to be shown on a splash screen. Below are examples of splash screens we considered:
XD PROTOTYPE 7
After getting more feedback from Tara, we decided to add a list of the ones you'd gotten incorrect in the third tab, with pictures of the specimen and the correct identifier. She also advised us to shift away from having the game be a simulated stream dump (i.e. calculating a water quality rating at the end), and rather focus simply on identification, since there were so many different systems and standards used to measure water quality. 
ICONS
 Examples of different icons we considered for the tabs:
Picture

FINAL PROTOTYPE
Minor changes for the final prototype included simplified icons and adjustment of the correct/incorrect screen.
FEEDBACK + RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE CHANGES

As it stands, the current game live on the site still needs to have the list and images of the incorrect specimens added, as well as small changes such as adjusting the category names (i.e. "Net-Spinning Caddisfly Larva" to "Caddisfly Larva (Net Spinning) "), swapping in illustrations with larger text, etc. Another major challenge is finding a more elegant way of dealing with the "None of the Above" category. User said that they enjoyed the challenge of identifying uncommon specimens, so I don't think that omitting specimens that would fall into that category is the solution. Since most of the "None of the Above" specimens were either true bugs or fly larva, one user suggested a "True Bugs" category. If future changes are to be made, I would recommend adding a "True Bugs" and a "Fly Larva (Other)"  category. Other user suggestions included adding scientific names, since many who used the game were more familiar with scientific names over common names.

However, the majority of user feedback centered around the lack of levelling in the practice game. Since the users were recruited from a broad base of experience levels, many wished that there was an expert version for identifing to family or genus; while others noted that they hadn’t been taught the distinction between particular taxa levels of macroinvertebrates, and felt such categories could be confusing. Future work includes producing a “student” (order-level) and an “expert" (genus) level game.

Users praised the custom-written informational text and illustrations on the correct/incorrect screen as well as the zoom and hint functionality. In our sample, no users expressed issues with the tab structure, start screen instructions, or the indefinite nature of the game, which were design choices we sought to validate. 

​
EXAMPLE EXPERT-LEVEL PROTOTYPE

Macroinvertebrate Popup Kit Design

7/21/2019

 
by Emily Chan, 2019 NSF REU

Goals
One of the projects me and the other students working on Macroinvertebrates.org had this summer was to leverage the resources we had available to us to create a pop-up/tabling kit for educators to use. Digital resources we had access to included the website, with its information and high resolution zoomable images, and physical resources we had included lucite specimen blocks from Powdermill, specimens in liquid, magnifying lenses, flashlights, various field guides, and Voshell cards.
Interviews
As part of our initial research, we interviewed educators Pat, Jessica, Lauren, Taiji, Steven, and Nayja. We learned that there are a variety of settings educators work in, and our kit would depend on what setting we wanted to design for. Possibilities included a classroom kit (used standalone or as part of a rotational activity, engagement time of 45 min max), a tabling kit (around 5min), a stream dump field kit (around 20 min), or a living room kit (indefinite). We choose to focus on designing for the living room (pictures below), a space in the Frick Environmental Center with benches, chairs, shelves, and a TV, since it seemed to offer the most interesting possibilities. 

The educators articulated two fundamental learning goals: 1) to generate awareness of the bugs existence, and appreciation of their intrinsic value, which includes learning about their life history and their structure/function; 2) to promote understanding of macroinvertebrates' role in the ecosystem, and how they reflect the condition of the environment.​ I was more interested in the first goal, while another student on our team was more interested in the second one. We ended up creating two kits, one inspired by each learning goal. 
Concept Development
Concepts that we presented and got feedback on at the macro website launch event. Educators seemed most intrigued by the "Balance-the-Stream Game". 
However, before jumping into developing one concept, we realized we still didn't have much information on who our audience was and how they would engage with our kit (what kind of questions would they ask about the bugs? How would they interact with the blocks? Which aspects of the bugs would they be most interested in and want to know more about?), and so we decided to go to the Frick Environmental Center to do some observation.
Weekend Observation at the Frick Environmental Center
We observed two main demographics at the Environmental Center on the weekend: older folks quietly browsing books near the bookshelf on their own, and parents with one to three kids, most under the age of 6, taking a break inside before or after a hike to cool down on a hot day. The older people who were just browsing usually only staying for a few minutes, but the parents with kids often stayed for 10-30 minutes. The parents seemed to use the living room as a space where they could step back from paying attention to their kids and instead sit in a corner and relax or use their phones while their kids amused themselves with the various toys in the room.


When it came to interacting with the kit, many of the kids were very enthusiastic, but not necessarily in the way we’d like. Since the kids were much younger than we expected, they completely ignored any instructions, spoken or written, and required constant direction from their parents to be able to focus on engaging in any of the activities we’d prepared. Their preferred ways of interacting with our materials included moving the blocks from one box to the other, pouring the blocks onto the table, shaking the blocks, stacking them to build towers, using them as props or characters in make-believe stories, organizing the cards, etc. A few of the kids did engage in looking activities: one kid, who was shown how to look at blocks using the macro lens and flashlight, ran around looking at things in the room with the flashlight, and tried looking at each of the blocks under the macrolens, but only for a second or two each; another child expressed wonder, saying “wow” and making the observations “They kinda look scary but then they’re actually not”, “This one is like a giant house centipede”, and “It’s a stick bug”, as well as telling other kids “If you wanna look at bugs, you can”. Some older kids also tried to help younger ones interact with the exhibit correctly (“Here, use this” and “No Maisy, I’ll show you how to do it--you put it under here, and then you can see it better”). However, even those that did seem to understand the exhibit or expressed excitement or wonder (“Ooh bug!” or “Woah”) lost interest very quickly.

Questions asked by the children included: “What is this bug?” “What are these for?” “What happens if you take them out?” In addition, multiple kids from different families said that they weren’t allowed to use the computer due to shabbat, which may be a complicating factor. 

Parents occasionally showed interest in the exhibit--one child brought a block over to her mother, who asked “What kind of bug is this?” Another parent came over to facilitate the exhibit for his son, giving directions like “Can you show me the legs?”, “Try this one, try the black one”, “What is this”, “Can you match this block?“ “you can see it larger” “Find me something like this”, “Are they the same? Are you sure?”, “Let’s try something else. What letter is this?”. When interviewed about what motivated him to facilitate, he simply said: “I just want to see what they understand.” However, for the most part, parents were indifferent to the exhibit.  

Insights: 
  1. We need something to draw people to our exhibit. Kids simply ignore the signs, and adults aren’t drawn by the small signs, perhaps because they are small, or perhaps because they filter out everything that looks like it might be for kids, since everything else in the room is for kids to play with. Large images projected onto the wall could serve this purpose, or simply having a larger, more visual exhibit.
  2. We need to decide who our exhibit is for. If it’s for young kids, we’d need some way to draw parents in to help facilitate it for their kids, as well as keep their kids from destroying the exhibit (leaving the blocks scattered across the room, etc.)
  3. We need to find out if people simply aren’t interested in our high res images, or if there’s a better way to show off the images that avoids the awkwardness around having/using a computer in the exhibit.
  4. Goals for our second observation: seeing how teenagers from summer camps interact with the components of the exhibit (are they more interested in the blocks, the images, or the info); observing how people interact with a projector and whether it makes people more attracted to the images, etc. ​
Weekday Observation 
We went back to the Environmental Center on a weekday around 2pm, and stayed until 5. There were far fewer people there than we'd anticipated--it seems that most of the students doing summer programs didn't wait for pickup inside the center. We talked to staff at the center, who recommended that if we wanted to do a living room kit, we should find some way to secure all the pieces of the kit, since everything that isn't nailed down would be easily lost and broken, and there's no one to supervise or chaperone. There were one or two older kids around who had naturalist training, and had the observational skills to engage properly with the matching activity. They seemed to enjoy the activity, and their only suggestion was making sure that all the blocks had matching cards. 

Insights: 
  1. Even on weekdays, the Frick is still mostly frequented by young kids, so it's most likely not the right space for us, especially since our lucite blocks might be easily lost, and technology could be easily broken by young kids. Therefore, we should shift our focus to making a more generalizable kit for educators that would be set up and used under adult supervision.
  2. Even with the projector, the people didn't really engage with the digital images, possibly in part because the projector wasn't bright enough to project a very high quality image. It seems like without investing substantial resources into refining the projector setup, projection doesn't add much to the kit. If we want to incorporate the images, having them directly on a screen may be best.

Final Prototype
Based on our observation at the Environmental Center, we realized that the living room was probably not the most suitable place for our kit. Therefore, we focused on creating something flexible, that could set up somewhere and used in a variety of settings. Since the kids seemed to like the matching and sorting activities, we decided to create a box that unfolded into a stream-themed board that could be used for either activity. Since the specimens we had were representative of what one would find at Powdermill, we decided to use a photo of Powdermill on the inside of the box, so that the box would be like an ecological vignette of that particular location. As an alternative to the clunky and fragile computer/projector setup, we built simple lettered stands for the blocks that had NFC tags  linked to that specimen's webpage on the bottom, so that the tags wouldn't be directly on the blocks (which would prevent users from being able to look at the insects from any angle), and got a small NFC enabled tablet to go with them. In addition to lucite blocks, NFC tagged stands, and a tablet, the box also contains a macro lens and a flashlight. 
We presented our final ideas to museum educators Pat and Jen, who gave us feedback. They said that they could see themselves using the kit and didn't think there was much they would change about it. 
Next steps:
If work on the kit continues, I'd like to see one more iteration using a sturdier material, such as gatorboard, with the lining printed on vinyl or a similar waterproof material.  It could also incorporate magnets along the edges, so the box snaps together. In addition, it would be nice to see some way of making the cards detachable/creating other activities for the board that could be swapped in and out. Most importantly, I think there would be a lot of educational value in creating an additional 
box for Frick Park using an image of a stream in Frick park as the background in order to highlight the way that the diversity of the insects found reflect the ecology and pollution of a site, to tie in the other learning goal that educators had. 

Second Round User Test

7/18/2019

 
By Wei Gong
After our first round of user testing, we gained insights, refined our original concepts and came up with new ideas. We decided to project with zoomable images with the projector, and designed two activities with which the audience can play. With these ideas, we plan to do a second round user test. We will go on weekday this time to test the concepts with different audience. The testing plan is as follow: 


Goals
  1. Understand the audience profile
    1. Will there be teenage audiences during weekdays in the living room? 
    2. Why they come here? What do they expect to see in the living room?
  2. ​Understand the attractive elements
    1. What can attract the audience to the exhibit? (Signages, Projector, Blocks, etc.)
    2. Is there any difference between kids, teenagers, and adults?
  3. Understand the audience’s behaviors
    1. ​​How will the audience interact with the exhibit and do the activity?
    2. Are they attracted to the activities? 
    3. Whether they need facilitation or not?
  4. Assess the visitor engagement and the exhibit with the framework and gain insights on how we can improve our exhibit 

Materials
  • Macroinvertebrate observation kit
  1. specimen blocks
  2. flashlight
  3. magnifying glass.
  4. other 
  • Signages
  1. Instruction for viewing Gigapan pictures with the projector
  2. Prompts/questions
  3. Instruction for doing the first activity(matching the blocks with the cards)​​​​
  4. Instruction for doing the second activity(sorting the blocks by certain features)
  • Computer & Projector
    • To show the Images corresponding with the blocks

Activity Preparation
  • Matching activity: ​
    • Fix the cards on the cardboard and guide the audience to match the cube with the cards with signages
  • ​Sifting activity:
    • Sort out the insects with no legs
    • Sort out the insects with more than 6 legs
    • Sort out the insects with 3 tails

Observation Template 
  1. Age group
  2. ​Gender
  3. Attention: What attracts the audience to our exhibit
    1. Facilitators
    2. Signages
    3. projection
    4. blocks
    5. other
  4. Behaviors
    1. Initiation Behaviors
    2. Transition Behaviors
    3. Breakthrough Behaviors
  5. Activity: What guides him to interact with the kit and do the activity
    1. Facilitators
    2. Signages
    3. Projection
    4. By themselves
    5. other
  6. Length of interaction: How long he/she spends with the exhibit kit
    1. 1 to 5 minutes
    2. 5 to 10 minutes
    3. 10-20 minutes
    4. more

Interview Question to Audiences:
  1. Why do you come to Frick Park today? 
  2. Why do you come to the living room? What do you want to do or see here?
  3. Do you like to see the big projection? Why?
  4. Do you like to do the activities? Why? 
  5. What do you want to know about these insects?

Interview Question to staff in the living room:
  1. What do you expect audiences to do here in the living room?
  2. What do you want the audience to take away interacting with the macroinvertebrate kit in the living room? 

Next Step
  • Things to buy
  1. NFC reader
  2. Card Board
  3. Big Box to contain all the stuff

Contextual Inquiry & 1st Round Test

7/18/2019

 
By Wei Gong
With some general concepts like guiding the visitors with some questions so that they can explore the exhibit on their own, and attracting the visitors with zoomable images on the screen, we did our first round user test in the living room of Frick Environmental Center. Actually, this is a combination of discovery research, generative research and user test, since we aimed to discover design opportunities, gain insights on design solutions, and test our concept at the same time. Before the test, we wrote a proposal for the test plan.  

User Test Proposal

Goal
  1. Understand the general profile of the audiences 
    1. Age range? Mostly kids or adults? 
    2. What are the audiences doing in the living room?
    3. Why they come here? What do they expect to see in the living room?
  2. What kind of experience do the stakeholders want people to have in the living room?
  3. How audiences interact with the kit in the living room? What engages them?Which of the artifacts they feel more attractive?
    1. blocks? Images? Video stories?
    2. What will the audience do after seeing images/videos on the computer?
    3. What other audiences do when one is interacting with the computer
  4. What do the audiences want to know about the insects when playing with the kit?
  5. Video/images on the big screen?

Materials 
  • Macroinvertebrate observation kit
  1. specimen blocks
  2. flashlight
  3. magnifying glass.
  4. other 
  • Signages
  1. Instruction for viewing Gigapan pictures and vidoes
    1. Do you want to see a big picture of the specimens? Check them on the computer
    2. Do you want to learn life stories of these unique organisms? See their stories on the iPad
    3. See whether you can match the blocks with the cards?
  2. Prompts/questions
    1. Do you know which of these insects can survive in Frick Park?
    2. Do you want to learn more about dragonfly’s life story?
  • Computer iPad: 
    • To show the Imagescorresponding with the blocks
  • iPad: 
    • To show Videos corresponding to the blocks telling stories. 

Observation Note Template
  1. Alone or in group
    1. If alone: age (child, teenager, young adult, parentage, senior)
    2. If in group: 
      1. with family: how many family members, profile
      2. with peers: how many, profile
  2. Behavior: What he is doing/looking/talking about in the living room before he comes to our exhibit
  3. Attention: What attracts the audience to our exhibit
    1. Facilitators
    2. Signages,
    3. images on the big screen
    4. blocks
    5. computer/iPad
    6. other
  4. Guidance: What guides him to interact with the blocks/computer/iPad
    1.  Facilitators
    2. Signages
    3. images on the big screen
    4. other
  5. Engagement: At what moment he is engaged and says words like “wow” 
  6. Questions: Which question attracts them most
  7. Preference: which of the resources attract them more
    1. blocks
    2. Images
    3. Videos
    4. cards
  8. Interaction:
    1. Does the audience talk to each other when they are interacting with the exhibit?
    2. What they talk about?
  9. Length of interaction: How long he/she spends with the exhibit kit
    1. Less than 1 minute
    2. 1 to 5 minutes
    3. 5 to 10 minutes
    4. 10-20 minutes
    5. more

Interview Question to Audiences:
  1. Why do you come to Frick Park today? 
  2. Why do you come to the living room? What do you want to do or see here?
  3. Among all of theses resources here, which one do you prefer and feel most attracting? 
  4. What do you want to know about these insects?

Interview Question to staff in the living room:
  1. What do you expect audiences to do here in the living room?
  2. What do you want the audience to take away interacting with the macroinvertebrate kit in the living room? 
​
Findings
We spent around 2 hours in the living room doing contextual inquiry and testing the concepts, from which we gained a lot of information. The key findings are shown below. 
Audience: 
  1. During weekend, most of the visitors come to the living room of Frick Environmental Center with their family, usually a parent with 1-3 children under 6 years old.
  2. Children are more attracted to the exhibit than adults. Usually, parents will just sit on the seat or read books.
  3. One of the parents came to facilitate the children when he found they were very interested in the exhibit.
Attention: 
  1. Among all the materials (signages, computer, cards, blocks, flashlight, magnifying lenses), blocks caught children’s attention most and attracted them to the exhibit.
  2. The next attractive elements are magnifying lenses and flashlights. Children will play the blocks with these two things. 
Interaction with the kit: 
  • Children will start to play with the blocks on their own without reading the questions on the signages. Some younger children just treated the blocks as toys.
          Quotes

                “I want to make a tower with these blocks”
                “They are so pretty”
                “How does it feel to taste bugs”
  • Children will explore the blocks by putting them under the magnifying glass or checking them with the flashlight.
          Quotes
                 “So Cool” ---- After putting them down the magnifying glass.
  • Some children start to match the blocks with the images on the cards under the facilitation of their parents.
Interaction with each other: 
  • Sometimes children talk to each other when interacting with the kit
          Quotes
                 “I’ll show you how to play with the blocks, put your magnifying lenses above the blocks.”
  • Parents facilitate children when they notice they are interested in the kit
          Quotes
                 “You want to zoom in and out?”
                 “Let’s try another one”
                 “Can you match them(the block and the card)
                 “Do you want to see the legs?”
                 “I just noticed they are interested in it. I want to know whether they really understand it.” 
  • Parents don’t allow children to touch the computer
          Quotes
                  “Don’t touch the computer”
Length: 
Most children who are attracted to the exhibit can play with the kit as long as they can until their parents require them to leave, usually more than 20 minutes. 
​

Reflection
After the test, I think we need to design some activities that the audience can really interact with, either by themselves or facilitated. In the user test, although the kids had fun with the materials, they didn't really interact with it and got information from it.  Most of them simply played treated them as toys. 

Several ideas I have in mind: 
  1. Matching activity: Paste the cards on the table and guide the audience to match the cubes with the cards.
  2. Sifting Activity: Guide the audience to sift the cubes with certain features.
Next step: Observing how the audience behaves doing the activities, whether they are interested in doing the activity, whether they need facilitation, etc.

Initial Research Findings & Synthesis

7/16/2019

 
By Wei Gong

During this summer, our team aims to design an educator kit for the educators to engage kids in macroinvertebrate education.  Our first step was to do research to understand the problem and identify design opportunities. Before doing field research, we generated driving questions that we wanted to answer by the end of the research phase. 


Driving questions:
  1. What are the learning goals for the students in the water quality and macroinvertebrate education?
  2. What elements form a successful and engaging macroinvertebrate educating activity?
  3. What pain points do educators have for water quality and macroinvertebrate education?
  4. What resources do educators use right now for the water quality biomonitoring activities and macroinvertebrate education? Among the resources, what works well and what doesn’t?
  5. How can technology play a role in macroinvertebrate education and what are the technological constraints in the context?

With the driving questions in mind, we conducted semi-structured interviews for the following interviewees: 
  • PatMcShea, naturalist educator in Carnegie Museum of Natural History
  • Lauren Horner, Senior Environmental Educator & Naturalist at Powdermill Nature Reserve
  • Taiji Nelsen, naturalist educator in  Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy
  • Jessica Robert, a learning scientist working on developing training tools for water quality biomonitoring activities.

After the interviews, we consolidated the data into several categories and answered the driving questions as follow: 

Question1: What are the learning goals for the students in the water quality and macroinvertebrate education? 
Based on  data we got from all the interviews, we concluded three major learning goals for the students in macroinvertebrate education as follow: 
​
​1. Learners will explore the connection between the insects and the ecosystem and have a basic awareness of
  1. The existence of insects in the stream
  2. How the insects in the stream can indicate the health of the stream
  3. How the health of the stream is affecting the insects
Quotes: 
  • Some people see stream just as water, get them to recognize stream more than just waterfall, it’s an entire ecosystem -- Taiji
  • What we want the kids to learn from the activities are: the connection between the stream’s health and the insects; ways to analyze the health of the stream; why insects are important to steam health; -- Lauren
  • Tell the kids the insects in the stream is a good thing -- Pat
2. Learners will have a basic understanding of the structure of the insects 
Quotes: 
  • We also teach kids to identify the organisms  -- Lauren
  • A supplement is to help the students notice that organisms have structures -- Taiji
3. Learners will be able to notice and explore the intrinsic value of the insects
Quotes: 
  • We want the kids to notice the intrinsic value of them, how unique each organism is -- Taiji



Question2: What elements form a successful and engaging macroinvertebrate education?
Probing into the engaging elements in the macroinvertebarete education, we got 3 insights in how to create a successful exhibit kit as follow: 
1.  Create a live experience for the learners in which they can touch, feel, and observe.
Quotes: 
  • Every kid wants to be in the water and feel it -- Taiji
  • The tactile ability is one of the key factors to engage the kid. They like being able to touch the stuff -- Lauren
  • Catching the bugs and identifying what they caught itself is exciting for the kids -- Lauren
  • We need tools with which kids will really be able to observe the insects, and really see them well -- Taiji
2.  Provide cool facts and stories about the bugs
Quotes: 
  • Kids like to learn life histories, and cool facts about the bugs -- Taiji
  • The key is to hook the students with a story -- Taiji
3.  Bring up leading questions when students are interacting with the kit ( In a facilitated exhibit)
​
Quotes: 
  • Asking  leading questions when students are interacting with the kit like “what do you think about ...etc” can help the kids engage in the activity -- Lauren


Question 3: What pain points do educators have for water quality and macroinvertebrate education?
Although under different contexts, the educators similar challenges and painpoints in the macroinvertebrate education, which we concluded as follow: 
1.  Difficulty in creating a real experience where students can touch, feel and observe clearly.
Quotes: 
  • Real things are always more captivating than images on the screens, but we don't have all the stuff in the stream. —— Taiji 
  • The images on the resources are so small and it's difficult for the students to observe. —— Taiji
2.  Difficulty in motivate students who are not interested.
Quotes: 
  • Sometimes it's difficult to engage the kids who are not interested in the bugs —— Taiji 
  • Some kids just try to identify the bugs, and when they encounter difficulties, they'll just give up. —— Lauren

Question 4: What resources do educators use right now for the water quality biomonitoring activities and macroinvertebrate education? Among the resources, what works well and what doesn’t?
Currently, educators use the resources below in macroinvertebrate education:
  • Resin & live specimen
  • Hand lens
  • Video microscope
  • Printout sheet
  • key to the orders
  • Tubs, plastics, etc for activity in a field trip

Question 5: How can technology play a role in macroinvertebrate education and what are the technological constraints in the context?
We investigated how technology is applied in macroinvertebrate education now and the potential opportunities in the future. Key findings are as follow: 

1.  Educators have concerns on students using their individual phones in camps, field trips or other similar activities.
Quotes: 
  • Cellphone is a distraction for the kids in camps. Plus, we don't always have cell serve. —— Lauren
  • Sometimes kids take pictures with their phones on field trip, but I will remind them to not break their phone. —— Lauren
  • Kids are not allowed to bring phones to the field trip. —— Taiji
2.  Usually, the camps have iPads, but several students need to share one with each other.
Quotes: 
  • Sometimes the kids work together in group to identify the insects. They usually share one ipad in in small groups —— Lauren
3.  Educators see the potential opportunities of the application of innovative technology including NFC and AR, but they are concerned about the contextual constraints like wifi and devices..

Concept Generation & Fleshout (ongoing)

7/1/2019

 
By Wei Gong, Emily Chan, Alice Fang

After the initial research, we decided to focus our design scope on an unfacilitated exhibit that can be placed in the living room, museum, classroom, or any other open space. 


Brainstorm
Based on the research findings, we generated the initial HMWs and conducted a brainstorming session, after which we sorted our initial ideas into several categories.
Picture
HMW: 
  • How might we engage the kids to interact with the bugs in a tactile experience?
  • How might we show the kids the intrinsic value of macroinvertebrates through storytelling?
  • How might we leverage the resources we have now?
  • How might we motivate kids in difficulties?
  • How might we apply the technology in the design with the contextual constraints in mind?


Concept Boards
After the brainstorming session, we generated 6 design concepts in total and collected feedback at the macroinvertebrate.org launching event with the educators.
​Among our 6 ideas, Jigsaw and Balance the stream are the most popular and received some helpful feedback

Jigsaw:
  • Can see the potential of collaboration among kids, they can do a group activity, which is fun.
  • Suggestion 1: Simulated Pokemon Go
    • Every time they complete find an insect, they can get one point
    • Collect all the insects for more points
    • End: show a video
  • Suggestion 2: jigsaw for parts of the insect — wing, foot, tails, etc.
  • Puzzle game: pollutant and healthy streams, locate insects in different places

Balance the Stream:
  • Compare two streams: one is healthy and one is unhealthy, show different insects distributed in these two streams
  • Compare different parts of the stream: fast vs. slow, deep vs. shallow, and show different insects distributed in these parts
  • Add a factory or pollution: remove or add some insects (see how the pollution is affecting the insects)
  • Stay away from the right answer and the wrong answer, make kids explore the difference


​Design Challenges

With the concepts and feedbacks from the educators, we consulted Jessica and Marti for feedbacks and suggestions on next steps. We consolidated their feedbacks into several design challenges:
  1. How to make the experience design cater to the learning objects?
  2. How to break the general learning objective into small pieces and break down what builds the story?
  3. How to provide a breakthrough conversation between the audience and the exhibit?
  4. How to hook the audience through interaction?
These questions helped us flesh out the current ideas we have, generate new elements, clarify the design direction, and narrow down the scope.

​


On going...

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    ​of entomologists, learning scientists, software engineers and designers collaborating to improve macroinvertebrate identification training and technologies with volunteer biomonitoring organizations.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #1623969.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF. ​​

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