Client: EdTogether, a non profit empowering youth with disabilities to thrive in learning and life.
Project: Creation of workshop materials for co-design sessions with teens.
In this after school program at the Boys and Girls Club in Leominster, MA, teens engaged in a series of co-design sessions, designing a game that would allow adults to better understand their unique perspectives.
“Adolescence can be a stressful time. Teens are deeply engaged in identity development, while also working to navigate increasingly demanding academic and social experiences. It is, thus, a critical time to support social and emotional skills like gratitude, resilience, persistence and mindfulness. Game Design Studio is a safe, fun and effective space for teens to deeply engage in social and emotional learning in personal and meaningful ways. As teens play, analyze and design games using STEM competencies, we leverage strategies that fundamentally change the adult-teen relationship. Teens are experts of their own experience – Game Design Studio provides teens with the tools and support they need to be the drivers in their own learning. Our approach is Universally Designed for Learning so that everyone can participate in purposeful, resourceful and strategic ways. We are also working to amplify teen voice.
Credit: EdTogether
Teen work products from Game Design Studio can directly inform the development of games that can be scaled to support the social and emotional development of teens all over the world. Game Design Studio can also be used as a supportive context for adults and teens to work collaboratively on school redesign efforts.”
Methodology: In this project I applied principles from Design Thinking, the LUMA Design Toolkit, and ongoing teaching practice to the inform the development of workshop materials.
Work for this project:
- Ongoing meetings to plan after school workshop sessions.
- Design of workshop materials.
- Occasional facilitation of workshop sessions.
- Proof of concept for web platform containing co-design activities and instructions.
Outcomes: Activity toolkit for empathizing, ideating, and prototyping games that facilitate perspective taking. Proof of concept for hosting activities on a Game Design studio website.
