Yanqianfang Sun
STORYWORLD
Group project
-Yanqianfang Sun
-Chongyu Xie
2021 Jul-Sep
BREIF
Due to the lack of sex education for the last several generations and kindergartens, there is also a lack of sex education for preschool kids in China. We aim to promote sex education for preschool kids from 3 to 6 years old in China.
TARGET USERS
Families who have pre-school kids between 3-6 years old
- Do not know how to teach their children about sex education
- Want to improve their children’s self-cognition
- Want to improve their children’s self-protection
- Want to increase communication with their kids
SOLUTION
STORYWORLD is a DIY storyboard that offers parents a more interesting way to teach their kids about sex education such as self-cognition and self protection through telling them DIY stories. During the story, kids need to build the characters with correct body components and pick up cards with right choices about sex education for the characters in the story, which helps them with their improvement on sex education. And parents could also share their stories and communicate with educators on the affiliated application.
CONTEXT
Nowadays, many cases of sexual abuse ofchildren have come to light.
November 2017 Several young children at Chaoyang District Kindergarten in Beijing had been abused by the kindergarten's elder teacher.
April 2020 A kindergarten teacher in Shanghai sexually assault several young children, and it wasn't discovered until a few months later.
The incidence of child sexual abuse remains high in recent years.
From 2010 to 2013, the national prosecution service received 7,963 cases of child molestation.
From 2015 to 2018, there were 11,519 cases of child molestation concluded by courts in China.
On average, the Prosecution service receives 6 cases of child molestation per day.
A sample shows that the rate of sexual abuse among children from 0 to 17 year old in China was 7%, of which 8% was sexually abused by boys and 6.4% by girls.
Most parents know the importance of sexuality education.
The survey selected the two most representative kindergartens in Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province, China as the survey subjects. A total of 300 questionnaires were handed out, and 273 effective questionnaires were returned.
For parents who are aware of the importance of early childhood sex education, most of them do not understand children's sex education. Many parents believe that sex education is the responsibility of kindergarten.
State: Conflicts between parents and kindergartens
Background Summary
Parents played an irreplaceable role in the preschool sex education process and most of the parents already knew the importance of preschool sex education. What parents truly missed was a better way to educate and a good opportunity to talk with their children about sex.
RESEARCH & LEARNINGS
In China, it is difficult for parents to have sex education with their kids due to various reasons
Some parents seldom talk to children about sex under the influence of traditional culture. Even though some of they can talk about this, the lack of knowledge about sex education and the poor existing education product are still problems.
Time to create a new story scene for children.
Education in role-playing games with picture books can give children more improvement and reduce their antisocial behavior than education by language.
Using picture books for preschool education has become a mainstream education method in China, the study found that almost all kindergartens in China have adopted picture books for preschool education,
Determine the process of the game design
Existing Sex Education Products
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9.1 Mainstream product — board games
Pros- Give an immersive gaming experience while teaching children knowledge.
Cons- The game time is too long with a monotonous game form.
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9.2 Other products
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9.3 Summary
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Less text needs to be used on the product as it imparts enough knowledge.
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The playing method should not be too simple and there should be instruction if the playing method is rich.
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The play time should not be too long as children may lose patience.
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The look of the product should be interesting.
PROBLEM
How might we promote sexual education for parents and their children through a more interesting game mode ?
DEVELOP
How to make it funny, efficient and collaborative？
Brainstorming
Then we generated several ideas through brainstorming. Then we evaluated and filtered them. At last, we decided to use the concept of DIY storyboard as the base of our design and added the ideas of automatic speech and splicing doll.
Final Design Concept
We designed a DIY storyboard with voice feedback function called STORYBOARD. Parents could build DIY stories about sex education by placing the scene modules. Their kids would use splicing characters to act the story based on the voice instruction from the board and answer questions about sex education asked by the board.
Prototyping
They we started to make a demo to test the usability of STORYBOARD.
Adjustment
Coincidentally, we found that letting the parents present the stories instead of using voice speech could enhance their interaction with the children, which improved their curiosity and pleasure. So we just deleted the voice speech and enlarged the role of parents. This was the most valuable discovery we got from our prototype.
SOLUTION
Welcome to STORYWORLD
STORYWORLD is a DIY storyboard that offers parents a more interesting way to teach their kids about sex education such as self cognition and self protection through telling them DIY stories. During the story, kids need to build the characters with correct body components and pick up cards with right choices about sex education for the characters in the story, which helps them with their improvement on sex education. And parents could also share their stories and communicate with educators on the affiliated application.
Storyworld board
Cards
There will be two cards for kids to choose per story. One side of the card is the illustration of the choice and the other side is the explanation of the choice that needs the parents speak to their kids. There are various cards that covered all the key points in sex education, which helps to set the core for DIY stories built by parents.
Application
After parents sign up for the application, they can:
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Check the list of the default stories
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Be recommended stories that are suitable for their kids based on entering the questions that came from their kids
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Share DIY stories with other parents
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Check the articles from educators in different areas
User journey
REFLECTION
A chance to carry out
Fortunately, we got a chance to contact a kindergarten leader in China. In order to get feedback from professional stakeholders and look for an opportunity to carry out, we had a meeting with her. She first thought it was a great product and gave me much helpful feedback.
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It could offer more modules based on different types of families or locations.
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There could be more game mechanics in the whole education process.
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The application could play a larger role such as being part of the game mechanics.
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The look of the product could be cuter.
Then she offered us a chance to carry our idea out. There was an existing preventive education platform for preschoolers introduced by the local government. Preschool kids need to get on the platform with the accounts offered by their kindergartens and watch videos after school, in order to get preventive education. Our product could be the affiliate product of the platform by helping with understanding and consolidating knowledge for the kids. She was very happy to become the bridge between the government and us.
Route to market
