To support Lenovo’s work of encouraging more diversity among the students considering STEAM careers, Lenovo partnered with SCAD to create an educational experience targeted towards young children to inspire them to pursue STEAM. Our personal goal is to spark their interest in related career paths, with the hope that it will encourage greater diversity in the industry.
How can we create a device to spark every child’s interest in STEAM and build skills through a fun, educational, interactive physical experience, no matter their background?
An educational toy that introduces children to STEAM through play. Using a combination of an interactive tray and smart blocks, children's imaginations are turned into reality through a digital experience.
Lenovo Play empowers children’s imagination and creativity. Lenovo Play teaches through dynamic learning that constantly shifts depending on what the child is creating. The blocks could resemble wood and steel for them to construct a bridge for a car to pass over. Or maybe they are pieces of a rocket ship they create themselves that can launch into space through trial and error of design, or even pieces of a computer that they build to see come to life before their eyes.
Lenovo Play is a system of different physical and digital inputs all working together to create an enriching experience for any and every child. PlayScreen offers visual output to the different combined PlayBlocks placed upon the PlayTray. Together they are the foundation to a multitude of experiences and discovery.
We created an intertwined narrative to guide the Learner and add a dash of personality to the experience. This narrative took the form of a player-built hub world that grew in size and complexity as the Learner spent more time and completed more complex activities with the Play system. Additionally, the ability to build their city hub out of custom-made buildings, structures, and other elements was created to give the Learner the freedom to express themselves and their personality through their own style.
The companion app is designed to help parents and teachers engage with their learners and understand the value that Lenovo Play brings to their education. Teachers can find and assign activities from the game catalog and view each student’s progress to easily identify which students need more assistance. Parents and guardians can view what activities their children are doing, how they are doing with these activities and how they benefit their learning in and outside of the classroom.
We started off our project researching journals and articles all about STEAM, education, and child development. After we felt we had an understanding of the area, we started developing a research plan. We were able to schedule two classroom visits throughout the 10 weeks. We conducted interviews with students in 6th through 8th grade as well as teachers. We also were able to stay and observe them learning. After conducting all the interviews, we recapped them to get the team on the same page and created an affinity map to find themes. We took these themes and created a design framework.
One of the most interesting things we learned is how big the difference between a 6th grader and an 8th grader is when it comes to education. By 8th grade, kids tend to already have strong opinions on what they are and aren't interested in. All of our research pointed to younger kids being more open to learning, so we made the push to change Lenovo’s target audience from 12- to 14-year-olds to 8- to 12-year-olds.
We created a series of around 30 prompt questions that related directly to our research findings. Everyone in the room created a concept for each prompt question, which gave us around 240 concepts from the initial workshop. The most successful ideas were taken through a rubric that scored whether they were age-appropriate, had a wow factor, were achievable in 1–5 years, were modular or buildable, were inclusive, and were captivating and educational. From this we refined and combined features from high-scoring designs to create 9 different initial concepts. This was done with Lenovo executives to get their feedback as well.
Lenovo Play allows for dynamic learning that constantly shifts depending on what the child is creating. The blocks could resemble wood and steel for them to construct a bridge for a car to pass over. Or maybe they are pieces of a rocket ship they create themselves that can launch into space through trial and error of design, or even pieces of a computer that they build to see come to life before their eyes.
This is a blank slate powered by endless possibilities through the imagination of the user.
Lenovo SCADpro was the class where I grew the most as a designer while at SCAD. It was my first time working with a real client, with a large collection of majors, and with a team this large. It is the class that prepared me the most for my professional career. The most important takeaway for me was learning how to keep a group this large on the same page, all working together toward the same goal. There were definitely bumps and learning curves along the way, but it played a pivotal role in shaping me into the designer I am today.
