IXD301 Elements Project : Initial Concept

Kids or Undergrads?

After this week’s briefing on our next project which is to design a product about the periodic table of elements for either 10 year old or undergraduates. I have a few friends who are chemistry undergraduates so it would make sense for me to go with that since I can easily communicate with my intended users. That said… I really want to design an app for kids. Designing for kids will allow me to be more playful and fun with design whereas designing a product intended as a resource for college student would be more serious. Granted I could totally design and I love a challenge but when given the choice I will always choose the option that I am most passionate about. With that I’ve decided on a tablet/ipad app for kids.

Women in STEM

For a few days I’ve been feeling stuck trying to find inspiration for an idea of what the premise of my app will be. I started to think of what games I enjoyed when I was 10 and thought a lot about the flash dress up games I would play non stop on the computer for hours as a kid among many other types of games on different platforms. As I was think about dress up games, I started to think about the serious problem of a lack of women in stem in our society. I kept doing research on why this might be and the general gist is that there is a lack of societal. encouragement towards girls to pursue and explore science. Yes it has gotten better over the decades but still girls are affected by social biases and a lack of role models to aspire to.  Here is one of the resources I found.

Concept

So with that I have decided that my app will be targeted towards young girls to try and get them to take more interest in science. I’ve got dress up game in my mind now but I don’t know just yet how to tie elements in with that.

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