133 Days with Jasmine
-
Research through design of knowledge learning
Intro
This is a student group project. We addressed the topic of what knowledge is and how we acquire it. We observed people's behaviours by designed experiments and gain insights from interviews afterwards. Eventually, we delivered an approach aiming to make users acquire the knowledge from "know how" to "know why".
Objective
Since group members are all Asians, cooking rice is the expertise we all master. Therefore, we decided to take teaching people how to cook rice as our experiment objective.
Approach
The entire process was structured by a cycle of learning and reflecting. Firstly, we did the literature research to define the research gap. Later we formed the How-to questions to design the corresponding experiment as a learning prototype to guide the participants. The results would later used to improve the next prototype. Various tools were used in the experiment for delivering the knowledge. For instance, the design of the setting, process, and reflective quiz.
Challenge
Through the process, we figured that human behaviours were much more unpredictable and surprisingly interesting which intrigued us to make our approaches more inclusive for people from various backgrounds.
Experiment Setting
The initial experiment setting was designed for participants to observe and mimic the actions of the demonstrator to learn how to cook rice. After analyzing the experiment results, the set design of the final prototype was developed into a rice cooker packaging with instructions inside for users to follow without a demonstrator.
Experiments
Each prototype started with asking a "How-to question" as the experiment's learning goal for participants, and we had to design every experiment's settings according to the learning goal. Participants were being observed and documented during the experiment and did a reflective interview at the end of the process.
Final Prototypes
We've adjusted our previous prototypes and designed the final version of it. Users would get a rice cooker with this packaging and lay it out to see the instructions inside. And by doing the experiment and self-reflection as instructed on the map, they could understand the principle behind rice cooking.
[This diagram illustrates the process of knowledge being delivered and received in this project.]
