A Collaborative Partnership

Partnering with Carbon Design Group, Artefact is sponsoring a project with the Western Washington University Industrial Design Department in Bellingham, WA. Working together, we have been mentoring the students through the user-centered design process and helping them envision concepts for the classroom in 2015.

This project gives the WWU students the opportunity to research and understand the challenges of students and teachers in educational environments. Taking on the role of design consultant, WWU students have been researching and developing educational products to enhance the learning process in the classroom.

A Consultancy Experience

Olen Ronning of Artefact and Joe Sullivan of Carbon, both WWU ID graduates, collaborated with their former professor and industrial design program head, Arunas Oslapas, to put together the project. Having worked on company-sponsored projects while at Western, they understood the value of professional engagements and saw a unique opportunity to provide them with design consultancy perspective and experience.

For the students, we are exposing them to the user-centered design process we employ on real-world projects. This includes project planning, user-centered research, research analysis, collaborative brainstorming, concept value testing, and more. Students assume the role of design Consultants with Carbon+Artefact acting as Client while also providing mentorship through this process.

ID+UI

While the Suits in D.C. figure out how to reform the educational system and administration, we wanted to see what we could do within the realm of product design. We conceived this project as a vision for technology in the classroom – not a beige box running Windows (although nothing wrong with that) – but rather using technology as a means of providing creative, inspirational, and innovative new learning experiences.

Joe and I were very interested in the current trend of physical objects becoming more interactive, and digital interactions becoming more physical. This is enabled by the continued miniaturization and conversely increasing power of processors. This was our catalyst for promoting design students to think about the near future of imaginative and compelling interactions used to help with and inspire learning.

Physical technology-based products in a highly interactive environment (the classroom) was also a great opportunity to explore a hybridized industrial and interaction design process, exposing the students (who study traditional industrial design) to interaction design principles and skills. In addition to bring a great opportunity for the students, it is also a great opportunity for us (Carbon and Artefact) to work side-by-side in developing a ID+UI process and curriculum.

Kick-Off

We kicked-off the project on April 1st here at Artefact’s office in Seattle. Rob Girling did the Artefact dog-and-pony-show and Joe, stepping in for Markus who was on business travels, presented Carbon’s work.

We also had members of the Artefact crew join in to present a little more in detail about our research and design process. Christopher Konrad, always ready to spice things up, took the opportunity to do a little role-playing with the students to show them tips and tricks on how to interview users in the field.

The class of 13 was split into four groups:

1. early (PreK – 3rd)

2. primary (4th – 8th)

3. secondary (9th – 12th)

4. post-secondary education. (college & post-graduate)

Each team was then tasked with visiting, observing, and interviewing classrooms within their educational group – witch they did with great fervor.

We’ll be posting more as the project progresses, so keep an eye on this space!