Client | Brand Strategyhello ruby
We aimed at driving engagement through online play exercises to get more children to know & use Hello Ruby’s book.
Who is Hello Ruby?
Hello Ruby is a Finnish technology company that teaches children about code, computers, and computational thinking through a book. It is also a platform that distributes play material & exercises for kids to practice at school and at home.
Hello Ruby has been translated to 22 languages, got 380,000$ in total funding making the book the most funded children’s book on Kickstarter in 2015.
Challenge
How do we get children to increase interaction with our platform and be excited to buy the book?
The Design Process
1. Playtesting Session / Observation
In the Playtesting session we observe how children play with the existing exercises, record what they say, and see the interaction methods.
2. Diary Study / Cultural Probe Kit
To gain a better understanding and an uninterrupted or influenced research we designed a play kit to take home and fill out that gives us insights into their daily lives and relationship with technology
3. Insight aggregation & Concept Development
After aggregating the results the concept is to create play exercises that speak to the different types of children and their interests.
4. Developing Personas
We developed 6 personas from dreamers to mechanically inspired which guided us in the process of generating new exercises.
Phase 1 - Observation
Playtesting Observation Session
When dealing with children, gaining insight is challenging as they are not able to follow traditional surveys, questionnaires, & interviews and these methods limit the creativity of a child. Moreover, kids’ attention spans are short, their thoughts are jumbled, and they don’t think very linearly. They are often guarded with their responses or in most cases influenced by their peers, teachers, or parents. I needed to design a research kit that they could take home, fill out on their own, at their own pace and own comfort, then give it back in and have fun while doing it.
Phase 2 - Research through design
The Cultural Probe Kit
I designed a cultural probe kit that familiarizes with children’s interests, understands how they perceive technology & coding, and what type of activities they migrate towards. When dealing with children, gaining insight is challenging as they are not able to follow traditional surveys, questionnaires, & interviews and these methods limit the creativity of a child. Moreover, kids’ attention spans are short, their thoughts are jumbled, and they don’t think very linearly. They are often guarded with their responses or in most cases influenced by their peers, teachers, or parents. I needed to design a research kit that they could take home, fill out on their own, at their own pace and own comfort, then give it back in and have fun while doing it.
Exercise 1- Fill in the Blanks
Who are you?
Understand who they are, what they are up to, what or who are they playing with and what were their favourite subjects. Not only was it a good icebreaker to start and build on topics they are familiar with, but it was a great way to be with them while not being with them.
Exercise 2 - Draw -How does a computer work?
What’s inside a computer? To some it is magic, or interconnected lines within a central system, and to others it is very pragmatic. A computer holds your favorite games. This exercise concretizes images and preconceptions that are otherwise hard to verbally explain.
Exercise 3 - Write - What is Technology?
6 Personas
The Linkers - Children interested in how elemented are interconnected.
These are the kids that had drawings that expressed connected parts, components, networks and elements by abstract drawings of wire connections and boxes linked with lines. This shows that a great number of kids know that there are many different elements that work together, with most cases a central element that controls everything. These elements communicate through different connections.
The Gear Gurus - Children into mechanical technology.
Surprisingly, the second most popular of the drawings were that of who we like to call the Gear Gurus. They represented computers as gears interlocking for a mechanical action to be carried out. It was interesting to see this low-tech perspective assigned to a high-tech product, which broke the bias we had while designing this exercise.
The Drafters
These kids with super technical drawings included resistors, wires, motherboards, and everything electronic to show that there exists nothing but elements which a current runs through. To our interpretation of their drawing, a computer is based on logic not magic, on connections not abstract things.
Taken from the draw your face exercise in the probe kit.
What is the Strategy?
Let the children generate unique personal content beyond completing exercises.
Design new prompt games based on the interest of the kids we researched. Their work can then be social media friendly by children from the whole world to build community
Phase 3 - Play Exercises Online
Hundreds of images generated by kids
The content ranged form drawing to writing to explaining making Hello ruby a platform of community exchange and ongoing creative generative content through learning and sharing.
Iterations of explorative play
As lessons get more challenging, or as age groups differ, these exercises can be modified to keep children engaged.
Impact: Engagement Reach From Sydney to Fukuoka
Drawing brings children together to form a global gallery of how kids perceive, learn, and play. While this is a great opportunity for children, it is also for teachers teaching hello ruby in classrooms and parents bonding with their kids over computational thinking. Computers & drawing are universal languages!
