UpStanders
Smart tiles that teach children empathy with fun! . Combining physical play with digital technology
Microsoft Design Expo 2019
About the Project
Design a product, service, or solution that enables/creates empathy across a large and diverse demographic. Demonstrate a creation that is innovative, maps back to a clear need, and leverages current technologies (or those that are feasible in the near-term).
Microsoft Design Expo 2019
Team Archee Gupta, Kiran Govande, Lakshmi K Ajayan, Jignesh Gharat
My Role Primary Research, Interaction Design, Product & Character Animation & Rendering, Prototyping & Testing.
Duration 3 weeks
Process
During brainstorming and discussion, we wondered
‘Is it possible to create a world where everyone is empathetic?
Where everyone has learnt and practised empathy just like math or science?’
The answer lay in training young children for empathy.
Why Children?
Habits developed at a young age have more probability of lasting longer.
With both parents working in many cases, children spend a lot of time alone and miss out on the values otherwise imparted in a household. With no siblings in many cases, children grow up alone to be more pampered self-centered. Children becoming less empathetic with time has led to a worldwide increase in bullying, shaming, narcissism and violence. Teaching empathy to children would make them better individuals, leading to a better society.
58%
increase in narcissism in last 3 decades
40%
reduction in empathy among teens in last 3 decades
37%
of parents admitting that their children have become victims of cyberbullying at least once, which is 15% more than 2016
Source:https://qz.com/india/1435072/37-of-indian-kids-are-bullied-online-new-study-says/ ,Unselfie by Michele Borba
Choosing the appropriate age group
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11
This stage is marked by decreases in egocentrism. While children in the preceding stage of development struggle to take the perspective of others, kids in the concrete stage are able to think about things the way that others see them.
Children can engage in classification, or the ability to group according to features, and serial ordering, or the ability to group according to logical progression. Older children come to understand cause‐and‐effect relationships.
Source - https://www.verywellmind.com/piagets-stages-of-cognitive-development-2795457
Developing empathy in children
The four crucial fundamentals to help children develop empathy:
Emotional Literacy
So they can recognise and understand feelings and needs of themselves and others.
Moral Identity
So they will adopt caring values that guide their integrity and activate empathy to help others.
Perspective taking
So they can step into others’ shoes to understand another person’s feelings, thoughts, and views.
Moral Imagination
So they can use literature, films, and emotionally charged images as a source of inspiration to feel with others.
Focussing on the Feels + Needs formula
Children should be made to understand what other people’s feelings and guess what they might need to change their mood.
Primary Research
In-depth interviews of children & teachers
On daily routine, activities at school and home, curriculum at school, content consumption, technology in their life
Survey in schools of 2 cities
On children’s lifestyle, family structure, activities they engage in, content consumption, technology used, curriculum
Insights
7-11 year olds like to engage in physical games.
Most of them are active YouTube users, especially attracted towards animated videos.
Value education as a subject holds very less importance in their curriculum, presented in an uninteresting format.
They do not own a personal device (mobile phones, laptops). Hence, content consumption is restricted through their parents’ phones and school curriculum, mostly confined to books.
Problem Statement
How might we inculcate empathy in children of age 7-11 years so that they imbibe it as a fundamental human value and grow up to be empathetic individuals?
Design Considerations
Interactive & engaging
Edutainment
Collaborative
Make them practise empathy
Ideation Phase
SEE!
Watch an animation!
Children watch a short animated story which is based on relatable situations in their everyday lives..
FEEL!
Guess the emotion!
During the animation, children guess the emotions of select characters, thus building their emotional vocabulary.
DO!
Take action!
Children make a decision to help the character in need & proceed with a task to act upon it.
Promo Video
Gameplay
Characters & Narrative
We explored multiple illustration styles and narratives. From iterative tests we realised that:
characters and storyline must be relatable for children
Illustrations should be simple & clear with no unnecessary elements
it’s better to have illustrations without text because of the variable reading capabilities of children of this age
Prototyping & Iterative testing 1
4 user-groups; existing storyline of Noddy
Objective
1) To understand the size and form of the tiles
2) The reaction of the kids to the sequence of story-building
3) Intuitiveness in connecting to the bigger story
Observations
They do not intuitively connect the initial sequence to the larger storyboard as they wait for our instructions/command and see it as a task. This might be a possibility of the ambiguous graphic content/ non-digital instructions.
Distribution of tiles was mostly on the basis of calculation (no. of tiles/ no. of players)
Iterative testing 1 video
Prototyping & Iterative testing 2(a)
6 user-groups; 2 simplified illustrations styles of 2 narratives
Objective
The stories were placed back-to-back on the tiles, to compare the differences in reaction of the kids (to the two narratives).
Observations
The kids could relate to the story very easily
Lesser the elements in a frame, better is the comprehension
The highlights in the frame helped to draw their attention to the necessary objects which drives the storyline
Sequence of the scenes having similar background/ elements were confusing for some kids
Prototyping & Iterative testing 2(b)
6 user-groups; 2 simplified illustrations styles of 2 narratives
Objective
The stories were placed back-to-back on the tiles, to compare the differences in reaction of the kids (to the two narratives).
Observations
The kids could relate to the story, understood it was about bullying, but could not get the sequence correct
Introduction of multiple characters created confusion
Although the faces were detailed out with expressions, they had a difficulty in understanding, probably because of multiple characters entering/ leaving in different frames
Iterative testing 2 video
Key insights of iterative test 1:
1) The size of 7cm x 7cm tile seems workable
2) The illustrations should be clear, uncluttered, exaggerated, and have good continuity across
Key insights of iterative test 2:
1) Illustrations to use few characters and highlight key elements
2) Minute differences needs to be exaggerated for similar looking screens
3) Feedback for correct as well as the wrong situation needs to be present
