Figural Analogies App: Redesign Reflection

When I applied for the Digital Media Design for Learning program at NYU, I was teaching young children and was part of a system of education which I did not think was very effective, so I often assumed that once I entered the program I would work on interventions aimed at preschool and kindergarten age children.  This project, redesigning a response strengthening app, was maybe the first that fulfilled that vision.  Our team focused on the Bright Kids Figural Analogy iPad app.  The original design was very simple and provided a series of figural analogy puzzles similar to those found on the test used by the New York City Gifted and Talented program to screen applicants.  Our project focused largely on redesigning the interactions and feedback to make an application which was easier than the original for children to use and understand.  We also proposed some ideas for future developments to add educationally relevant, but playful activities, and a narrative driven section of the application to motivate learners to come back to the app.

The biggest takeaway from this project was the importance of explicitly connecting our user research to the features and redesigns we proposed.  In many ways it was refreshing to have some actual users and real observations to base our design decisions on; something that is often missing from more open-ended assignments.  While our time for the project was of course limited, just as projects outside of school are, it would have been nice to do more tests on the initial application, in addition to testing our prototype.  This is a skill which I think is important and that I would like to develop in the future.  Although my internship at the American Museum of Natural History also involves user testing and evaluation of applications,  more practice is always better.

Up until now, many of the projects I have done for school have not had closely defined content, or I was already quite familiar with the content, skills, and strategies associated with that content.  While I do have some experience working with children in the target age range, all of my experience was in a very different culture and context.  In addition, I am terrible at figural analogies.  Thus, this project was an introduction to the idea of working on a project in which I cannot play the role of subject matter expert.  This illustrates the reality of lots of the work instructional designers do every day.  In order to design well, it seems that the two options are to either become a subject matter expert or work closely with one.  Luckily Elana could play that role in our group.  In addition, as she has extensive experience teaching figural analogies to the target audience both using traditional and app based methods, she could quickly see components of our design which would be issues in implementation.  This emphasized the importance of working closely with whomever will implement our creations or who has extensive experience and expertise on the subject matter.

Overall, this project did give me some hope for the future because I could look at existing applications and see lots of room for improvement, meaning someone may want to hire me to help them fix an existing intervention or develop new and better ones.  But, at the same time, I wonder how many of the weaker products, which are easy to criticize in an academic environment, were created by expert designers who either made mistakes (as I do now and undoubtedly will in the future) or were undermined by other factors in the design and development process.