One of my graduate courses required a group project as part of a block about the Learning Design Studio. Our project developed a Google Site for our work. This is a copy of my contributions to the group effort, reformatted for this website. The project starts here.
The context
On this page, we’ve defined the conditions and constraints in which our project is situated.
Personas
Each team member created a page for their persona cards. Personas are models of the types of people who will participate in, be affected by, or have a stake in, our innovation. We create personas to direct our design work and to help us evaluate our design efforts. Click each card to see the persona.
Analysing the context: factors and concerns
Factors are noticeable characteristics of the situation. Concerns are the factors of interest to the actors—the things they want to achieve or avoid.
Material factors are characteristics of the physical space and the tools and objects which the actors have access to.
- Alicia’s physical and virtual spaces are under parental control. Her parents take her places and allow her access to social sites and mobile apps, but she requires her parents’ help and permission.
- Anh prefers virtual museum visits or virtual activities with her daughter. She also has a car, but she does not have much time because she runs a busy restaurant and also takes university classes.
- Hector wants to visit the museum with his daughter. He has custody of her on Wednesday nights and every-other weekend. He does have a car.
Social factors are organisational structure, grouping of and relations between various actors, conventions and norms.
- Hector and Anh are the divorced parents of Alicia.
Intentional factors are beliefs, desires, motivations, expectations, and mental or emotional barriers of individual actors.
- Anh and Hector both want to provide Alicia with a wide range of meaningful educational experiences, believing this is critical to raising a successful and happy child.
Concerns: The Nguyen and Gonzales family wants to have fun and meaningful learning experiences at the museum. They do not want to experience barriers to their participation:
- Alicia wants material that is appropriate to her current level of knowledge and attention span.
- Hector wants to feel comfortable with any mobile technology even though he does not spend much time with mobile devices and computers.
- Anh wants to get “the most bang for her buck,” a full experience that does not take large blocks of time.
Next: The challenge