Great question! We came with a framing of STEM learning because this is an NSF AISL project :) However, we engaged our community partners in a variety of co-design activities like storytelling, madlibs, and crafting to surface community values, goals, and practices. We also followed our community partners lead in regards to choosing locations. We worked together to create criteria for a good location (e.g., places where families frequently wait or spend time or places that capitalize on or leverage existing resources) and then we used those criteria to select sites. Hope this helps and thank you for your interest in our project!    

This is such a great project and your prototypes look so fun! I love the idea of co-designing using storytelling as well as using other activities like mad libs and crafting. Did you start with a storytelling prompt? How did you build trust within the community to support storytelling (for example)? 

Thanks for the question Jessica! We are so lucky to have found a partner organization that has engaged in years of community organizing and trust building which we have greatly benefitted from. But we also put a lot of effort into being good partners, we center our community partners voices throughout every phase of the project, we listen when they expresses concerns or goals for our project, and try to be responsive to what they tell us. Once you've built trust and established some common goals then families are much more willing to share stories and contribute.   

Thank you!

Thanks for these questions! I touched on some of the co-design approaches and decisions for location in a reply to David Haury above. And yes we solicited feedback and iterated throughout the design process. One approach was creating low-fidelity mock ups of our prototypes for families to play test. Families came to a local community center with their children and played with the mock installations and then we did interviewing right after to get their thoughts on what worked and what we might change. We got SO much great feedback from families! Certain designs were very intuitive and families jumped right in, while other designs were less clear and took some nudging and explanation for families to start playing with. 

Great question! Early in our co-design process we got feedback from families that some of the activities were a little too "pie in the sky" and they didn't necessarily understand the connection to our project. From then on we made sure to communicate back to families what we learned from each session and how it was contributing to the project designs. Families time is valuable and they are willing to give their time as long as they see what the impact is!

This is such an important topic! We are indeed spending lots of time engaging with city of Santa Ana to ensure that these designs are not only implemented but also maintained and replicated. We have built relationships with city council, parks and recreation, the school district, public works, and the mayors office. One thing that we have heard consistently and has continued to open doors for us is that it's clear that the community is bought into this work. The advocacy that our co-design partners engage in (e.g., showing up to public forums about new parks in the city) demonstrated to the city that this is what their residents want. And most of the public officials we have worked with feel it is their charge to carry out what their constituents want to see for their community. City of Santa Ana is actually already implementing some of the designs from this project in other locations using city funds!  

Excellent questions! Our installations are designed to foster guided play. This type of play capitalizes on the joys of engaging in play, while incorporating a target learning goal like STEM learning or literacy. Our activities are intentionally designed to encourage playful learning, to spark discussion, and to be iterative. By making activities playful and iterative, we allow the learner to find new challenges in the game and to have fun while doing it.

Great question! We will use multiple methods to evaluate impact. We will be conducting observations of caregiver-child interactions at these spaces pre and post installation to evaluate caregiver-child interaction quality and language use. We also plan to administer surveys to families at these sites pre and post installation to evaluate attitudes about play and learning, STEM self-efficacy, and views on early science learning. In addition, we plan to examine the impact installations have on school readiness by examining whether PLLs result in population-level shifts in teacher-reported assessments of school readiness. Finally, we will measure the impact of these installations on the community by measuring civic engagement, small business impact, and frequency and duration of visits to these sites.

Important question thank you Hui. Our goal is that the City of Santa Ana (and other cities ideally) owns and sustains these installations and adopts these designs each time they build a new park, bus-stop, or community space. We already have a few examples of the city and the local school district implementing some of these designs which is very encouraging because it serves as a model for these organizations to implement these ideas within their existing budgets and processes.

Great question. We are working with a fabrication company to build these installations to meet ADA guidelines for accessibility. Our goal is that the installations are accessible to all children. We are also working on some technology elements that can further enhance accessibility and deepen and extend the learning opportunities.

Thank you!