Hi everyone! We are Dreameow, a team of 6 ETC students working to create a new experience for Give Kids The World Village, a resort for children with critical illnesses in Kissimmee Florida. We will specifically be designing a new experience that utilizes one of the existing platforms in the WonderLab, a space within the resort which seeks to introduce kids to STEAM concepts in a fun and engaging way. The ETC and Give Kids The World have frequently collaborated over the past 20 years, and we are excited to contribute to that legacy!
Team Meetings
We kicked off the week with our first team meeting, where we each introduced ourselves and our skill sets. We started setting up our project room, selected our producers and decided our core hours for the semester.
On Tuesday, we had a meeting with Heather Kelley, our project advisor, and Brenda Harger, a faculty member who is very familiar with Give Kids The World and the their past collaborations with the ETC. After learning more about this incredible organization, the team is determined to create a fun and engaging experience that can last for years to come.
We initially planned to have our first meeting with our client on Wednesday, but due to a change in his schedule, we need to move the meeting to Friday. In the meantime, we connected with Angie Mendenhall, an ETC alum who previously interned at Give Kids The World and helped build several of the current attractions in the WonderLab, and Kayla Smith, a current intern who is in charge of all the volunteers at the resort. Each of them gave virtual tours of the space and offered valuable insight into how children currently interact with the platforms and the types of
Client Meeting
On Friday, we had a meeting with Ian Cole, the Chief Innovation Officer at Give Kids The World, to learn more about his expectations for the project, as well as gain more information about the capabilities of each of the platforms.
Option #1: The Brilliance Bottler
The Brilliance Bottler is the workstation for the wonderbots, the three mascots of the WonderLab. This is one of the first attractions people see when entering the WonderLab, featuring 3 Alcorn touchscreens, 3 LCD panels and an assortment of knobs and buttons to create unique interactions with.
The idea behind the Bottler is that children can use the stations to help the wonderbots complete tasks and generate brilliance, liquid energy that powers the entire village.
Currently, there is only one game that can played on the bottler – a Simon-style memory game in which guests hit buttons in the order that they light up
Option #2: The Puzzle Portal
Right across from the bottler is the puzzle portal, a circular room which features a number of wall-mounted steel panels. In the center of the room is a toy bin which houses magnetic track pieces that kids can use to play Marble Run. Kids can rearrange the magnetic track pieces on the wall to create their own courses which they can drop plastic balls through. Based on our initial research, we thought there might be the possibility of installing either projectors or screens in this room, however Ian expressed that either task would be difficult and unlikely unless we were really able to sell him on the idea. As our team’s skills are more digital rather than physical, lack of technology makes designing for the portal a little more difficult.
During the meeting we identified the top criteria which any experience we design should meet:
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- The experience should be cooperative, not competitive. It should encourage kids to interact and explore.
- The experience should not feel like a video game.
- It should not require facilitation or any extra attention from volunteers. Children should be able to pick up the experience intuitively.
- The target age range should be slightly older kids, around 9-13 years.
Finally, we got the exciting news from Heather that we were approved to take a trip to Florida next weekend in order to visit the village! Seeing both platforms in person early in the semester will be really helpful in allowing us to make well-informed design decisions.
Items For Next Week:
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- Each member of the team will complete research and brainstorm individually. We will all bring at least 3 ideas to our next team meeting on Tuesday.
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We will set up time with Ian over the weekend so that he can gives us a more in-depth tech demo for the Bottler, which will help us with decide which platform we want to focus on.
- Collectively come up with a list of at least 10 ideas, which we will share with Ian when we visit in person next week.