The topic of the LAPASSION project in Uruguay was the "Improvement of the quality of life of children". Under this global topic, there was three areas to study: Food & Health, Leisure & Free Time, and Education. 25 participants were divided into 5 work teams; 3 members from Uruguay and 2 members from one of the other participating countries: Brazil, Chile, Spain and Portugal.
IMMERSION
My team chose leisure and free time as a work area. We analyse the theme during the second and third week of the project calendar. First, we draw a map of the sector to understand the general panorama of childhood in the field of leisure. Secondly, we went out to the street and did interviews in schools, parks and institutions. We talk with teachers, psychologists, mothers, fathers and children. From there, we realised a series of problems related to the free time of the children and began to ask which ones would be more interesting to address.Wwe find as recurrent issues:
abuse of technology
child hardly interacts with other peers
insecurity in many areas of the city and waste of time on bus trips to other areas
the design of the city without taking into account the childhood
lack of adult's time to play with the child
desire of the adult to share more time with the child
Out of all of them, there were 3 that they was more interesting for us: interaction, time and technology.
IDEAS AND HYPOTHESIS
Finally, we decided to address the boring bus trip of adults and children in the city of Montevideo. In this way, we focus on a specific aspect of daily routines.
In the fourth week, we generated a series of alternatives to resolve the selected problem. For this we use different creative techniques. Then, we chose one solution and we began to develop hypotheses about their viability.
So, we made several bus routes, in different lines and in schedules of children's activity such as school entrances and exits. We analyzed how they traveled: accompanied, alone, standing, sitting, playing, looking out the window, talking, for how long ... From this observation we concluded that they normally traveled accompanied by an adult and they didn't interact too much. All were sitting and mostly looking around or playing with the phone.
Our proposal was the design of a mobile app to use during the bus trip and in interaction with the context. First time, the app requests the creation of a profile where the child's age has to be indicated in order to personalize the level of difficulty. Users must always introduce the place of departure and the destination and the number of the seat in which they're travelling. Likewise, it must be indicated the companions: mom, dad, sister, friend ... With this data, the app will shows levels for the different profiles.
We had the idea, we had its development, it was time to give it a name.
PROTOTYPING AND VALIDATION
In terms of prototyping, we created a poster that we pasted at multiple bus stops in the city of Montevideo. We also broadcast its digital version in Social Networks. In this poster, a QR code and a web address were included.
Thanks to this poster, you get access to a web page where we host a form with questions. From this questionnaire, we extracted several conclusions related to the behavior of our target during bus trips. For example, it was important to include the proximity alert to the destination.
On the other hand, we design several games. For example, we include the Veo Veo, so that players recognize the streets and the locations they go through. Entertainment is based on observation, identification, counting and other related skills.
We went back to the buses and we accompanied a child who tried to solve the challenge. As learnings we extracted:
the interest of the child to know what was the building on which the game was applied
the need to insert a proximity alert to the place included in the game
After the validation of the prototypes, we developed our service more in detail. We are ready to launch the proposal as the final result of our participation in the LAPASSION project. In Demo-Day we will show the full potential of this tool designed for children to interact with the world around them.