This design project aimed at designing a classroom for the 1st year elementary school students employing ‘Participatory Design’ methodology, which invited users to the actual design process and communication with designers.
Methodology:
Participatory Design Workshop, Survey, In-depth Interview, Qualitative Analysis, On-site Observation
DESIGN PROCESS
Students and teaching methods are new, but classrooms are old – How can we design classrooms to help users(both students and teachers) enjoy their school life? To find their needs and the problems, our primary design methodology was ‘Participatory Design.’
1. Context Research: Field observation, interview with teachers, literature/demographic data review
2. Participatory Design Workshop: With teachers and 1st grade students
3. Ideation: Sketches based on the results of PD workshop
4. Final Prototyping: 3D modeling and concept movie
PARTICIPATORY DESIGN WORKSHOP
We performed PD workshop in total four sessions. The first session was the survey on the general school life. For this, we asked teachers to run a ‘raise-your-hand’ time. In the second session, students chose three images they like among 18 pictures of classrooms, then told us the reason why they liked them.
Five 1st grade students paricipated in the third session, where we stimulated them to imagine their dream classroom with ‘Generative Toolkit.’ We desinged game-like toolkits so that easily-distracted 6 yeare old students can be immersed in the session. The last session was in-deapth interview with teachers, and we talked about the final output of previous session.
FINDINGS & CONCEPT IDEATION
From the workshop, we found that the most important furniture is desk. It should have sufficient space to deal with school materials. And the pack of desks should be organized variously for the 4- or 6- people group study. Users also wanted to maximize their limited space and make it more safe for the active children. Finally, they needed easy access to other classrooms and public facilities such as restroom.
