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 spike every child’s interest in STEAM and build skills through a fun, educational, interactive physical experience, no matter their background?
An educational toy targeted to introduce children into STEAM through play. Using a combination of an interactive tray and smart blocks, children's imagination are turned into a reality through an 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 rocketship they create themselves that can launch into space through trial and error of design. 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 theLearner and add a dash of personality to the experience. This narrative took theform of the player-built hub world that grew in size and complexity as the Learnerspent more time and completed more complex activities with the Play system.Additionally, the ability of the Learner to build their city hub out of custom madebuildings, structures, and other elements was created to give the Learner thefreedom to express themselves and their personality through their own style.
The companion app is designed to help parents andteachers engage with their learners and understandthe value that Lenovo Play brings to their education. Teachers can find and assign activities from the game catalogueand view each student’s progress to easily identify which students need moreassistance. Parents and guardians can view what activities theirchildren are doing, how they are doing with these activities and how they benefittheir 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 from 6-8th grade as well as teachers. We also were able to stay and observe them learning. After conducting all the interviews we recaped all of our interviews 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 that 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 optionons on what they are interested in and not interested in. All of our research has pointed to younger kids being more open to learning. We made the push to change Lenovo’s target audience from 12-14 to 8-12 year olds.
A series of around 30 prompt questions that related directly to our research findings were created. Everyone in the room created a concept for each prompt question, which rendered us with around 240 concepts from the initial workshop. The most successful ideas were all taken through a rubric that quantified if it was age appropriate, had a wow factor, if it was achievable in 1-5 years, if it is modular or buildable, level of inclusivity, and if it is captivating andeducational. From this we refined and combined features from high scoringdesigns 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 arve pieces of a rocketship they create themselves that can launch into space through trial and error of design. 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.
The Lenovo SCADpro was the class 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 a class that has 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, and all working together for the same goal. There were definitely bumps a learning curves on the way, but it played a pivitol role while shaping me into the designer I am today.
Click the button below to see the complete process book from the 10 weeks including all research, ideation, branding, and final designs. If you dont want to see the full process book for this project, feel free to check out more of my projects!
Process Book