Maze: An embodied classroom experience with AI
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Project Advisors
Kristian Simsarian, Sharon Green, Shalini Sardana, Sara Harrison, Marc O'Brian
Community Partner
Susan Reynolds, Mindhood, Lookup.live
Research Methodologies
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Collective Action Toolkit (David Sherman)
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Cultural Probes (Bill Gaver)
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Focussed interviews: activities with constituents
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Iceberg and Adaptive Leadership
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Journey mapping solutions
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Usability Testing of a technology platform
Team
Teesta Das: Experience Researcher
Priyanka Tyagi: Product Designer
Mahtab Namakian: Researcher, UI/UX
Duration 8 months
PROBLEM
Technical and Adaptive Challenges
Based on Heitfetz's Adaptive Leadership Challenge, we structured our proposal into an Activity Framework of "EFE" (Pronounced as "eef")
Recent studies reveal that young adults spend more than 11hours a day using digital technologies, millennials are discovered to be checking their phones 150 times a day and 73% of young adults suffer from digital eye strain.
However, going deeper to explore classroom experiences that have high-tech ratios, we needed to engage with more teachers. This helped us uncover layers of adaptive challenges in the system, for which every collaboration helped us to learn more about the systemic issues and what is needed for regeneration.
In this project, our attempt is to identify and potentially address both technical and adaptive parts of the system.
In order to address the technical challenges, we iterated to develop a humane platform that addresses taking intentional breaks from technologies around us and helps young adults practice human skills in a tangible way. It has activities that support lowering of anxieties and depressive tendencies for young adults.
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
We started documenting an activity framework of the various exercises, improv games, tools, and techniques shared by the instructors, our community partner, psychologists and mental health counsellors during the MDes Programme during the year 2018-2019. The developed Activity framework is named as a fantasy character "EFE" (Engage-Focus-Energize). We personified a few other characters as well as we started planning demos with teachers.
Cultural Probe
Reading about Bill Gaver's Cultural probes for the elderly, we essentially learned that Cultural probes—packages of maps, postcards, and other materials—are designed to provoke inspirational responses.
The probes are a part of a strategy of pursuing
experimental design in a responsive way.
They address a common dilemma in developing
projects for unfamiliar groups.
Why we made them?
Being an international team, designing for local communities, we wanted to understand the values and activities of the constituents.
How did we deploy them?
We prepared a package with a personal note and several exercises. One about eating habits.
Another exercise was called "write your healthy recipe". The third exercise was a bundle of frames that had labeled hashtags and we wanted them to click the relevant photo with the hashtag and send it to us. Lastly, we had a bundle of pictures that we asked them to give a caption for those that they found relevant for themselves.
Cultural Probes deployed in our neighborhood and amongst students in February 2019
Learnings
We learned that it is difficult for people to relate everyday habits to the impact it has on earth. Our participants are possibly living very instruction-driven lifestyles, so they only do as stated and not explore much, unless they are told to.
A lot of photos that we received were around emergencies, possibly indicating that people worry or care about those situations more. For authentic health information, people naturally turn to use online sources and trust it.
II. Student Interviews
We used the method of Ripple diagramming to map out inter personal relationships and explore deeper motivations for students
From the responses we received from the cultural probes, we decided to reach out to student constituents to go deeper in our systems research and adaptive learnings. Research goals were on communication technologies and information about health.
Conducted 12 in-person student interviews to learn and map out the anxieties of the students.
We were using the Collective Action Toolkit, where the ripple diagramming within the team, we learned that we wanted to impact the student network and their close environment.
But in our interviews, we found out the students and young adults are superficially connected to their environment and need better connections.
At this point, our goal became to become active student support agents that can deepen their relationships with those around them to genuine, meaningful ones.
Some of our insights learned from the student interviews were:
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FAMILY-LIKE RELATIONSHIPS:
Many students struggle with interpersonal dynamics. It’s common for them to feel disconnected from their own families when they live far from them.
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COMPANIONSHIP & LONELINESS:
College life for many young adults is rooted in the belief that no one understands them. They struggle with questioning their purpose in life.
Some said that they like to be “in the zone” and steer towards self-harming relationships easily.
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HEIGHTENED AWARENESS:
Young adults seek to be very aware of what’s happening in the world and have a desire to find purpose and doing something meaningful with their lives.
III. Journal Studies
Deep diving into literature reviews, reading popular media and interviewing leading psychologists, we were pointed to learn more about studies on positive psychology by the Greater Good Science Centre and Dr Rick Hanson. Also read a short exploration of chatbots for mental healthcare here.
We developed a simple gratitude journal and asked our participants to join a 7-day challenge. Here are the highlights of the learnings we had:
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Social Skills & Technology Young adults feel they are able to communicate better through technology and think it understands them.
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Comparison When asked to discover "authenticity", it’s easy to define based on what they gather from in popular social media and emulate that.
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Empathy Given the freedom to engage virtually, young adults have fewer opportunities to interact hands-on with others and find it difficult to concretely practice skills like empathy in their day-to-day.
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Need for a Caring Environment In highly competitive environments, young adults feel outwardly social, but inwardly lonely or empty.
Used Rick Hanson's Model on Resilience. We developed a gratitude journal template that students used to document their day and return to us.
Synthesis of the Student Life
We created an ecosystem map of the students we spoke to and recommended design principles based on the insights we had gathered from the interviews and the ideas that we were beginning to populate.
We started to go through a diagnosis process for the process and developed a map based on the student behaviors as well.
STRATEGY
There is an urgency to engage the "digitally distracted"
"We need to find a way of using technology to take a break from technology"
"We are going through a climate change in the human mind."
So, where is the power?
Journey Mapping and synthesizing the Teacher's preparation for a class
Working with our community partner Susan Reynolds, a Digital Wellness leader, we explored aspects of Adaptive Leadership together.
Engaging further around the issue, as designers we found ourselves entrenched in deeper technical challenges of the ecosystem. Discussions and debates around the ethics in the design of digital technologies, hardware and software systems. Multiple Self-help Apps as well as screen-based solutions that are extractive in nature. (more resources available on this topic here).
While testing it, we are currently looking for more usability feedback and demos as we continue to engage with a variety of classroom instructors.
SOLUTION DESIGN
Maze- An AI-based learning platform
Leadership by Design
Leveraging the power of design, bringing awareness around systemic issues amongst designers
Partnered with
Facilitative Leadership Session deck around the humane issue of Mental Health
Humane Design worksheets
Demo day pitch of our social impact project to a panel of industry experts and advisors: Maria Giudice, Abhijit Thosar and Robert Joyce.
Next Steps...
We have got positive adoption from the teachers we have pitched the idea to and those who have tried the demo of the maze classroom experience.
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Evaluative research Our next steps are to undergo a deep evaluative round of research with parameters of personalized learning expressed by teachers and impact metrics of experts. While Cognitive abilities are in full force, emotional intelligence are what sets humans apart from machines.
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Inclusion and Accessibility We have received specific reactions from the target constituents around the exercises, which helps to ideate further with our experts, deliberating around accessibility while doing the exercise. Can it spark better human-connections?
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Thought Leadership Promote how maze data and use of Machine learning algorithms that support experts in developing the right exercises also simultaneously help our target constituents to become better leaders.
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Promoting Neurodiversity The incidence of autism in the United States is now 1 in 42 among boys and 1 in 189 among girls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many people with spectrum disorders have higher abilities, needed in workplaces. How might we support this through data reported to instructors in Maze?
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Promoting a culture of dialogue How might we explore practicing dialogues in a classroom environment?