For our Austin Children's Museum project, running in conjunction with the Maker Faire from Make magazine, we're focusing on the issue: how do we design the media to appeal to girls as well as boys, drawing them both into the traditionally boy-focused endeavor of making things with technology? Becky Jones at the Museum provided helpful notes drawn from a past issue of ASTC Dimensions:
- Emphasize design/creativity/inventiveness (not just "solving problems")
- Focus on collaborative nature of projects
- Show how design/engineering serves social and environmental benefits, makes the world better
- Provide images of role models; show that the activity is "not just for geeks"
- Provide a "take-away" that participants can show to parents/friends
These all make a lot of sense, and we most likely would design toward these principles even if they weren't articulated directly. But it is helpful to develop screens with these in mind. (I'll post the resulting design in a couple months when it is installed).
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