Thesis
Spring Semester — Week 3
FINDING A THESIS ADVISOR
My thesis project centers around providing fun, analog opportunities for children to develop and practice age-appropriate literacy skills. I thought that it would be imperative to have an advisor with expertise in designing educational products who can help guide me through the process of creating physical products and user testing with kids.
The thesis advisor that I enlisted had been an incisive critic when he participated in my first-year crits. Already, his point of view and feedback has helped me focus down on what I want to achieve with this project.
CHILD-FOCUSED
Creating a project for children has been a bit tricky to wrap my mind around. On one hand, my target user is kids. On the other hand, parents hold the purse strings and make the decisions.
My pain points and value props were focused through the parents’ concerns, not the kids. With all the research that I’ve done to build a solid foundation of knowledge, I had lost sight of the main point: I’m supposed to be creating something that’s fun for kids, something that makes writing less onerous!
But how do kids define fun when it comes to writing practice? How do I create a structure that fits different skill levels and interests? How structured does it have to be?
For creating an MVP, I split my testing into two pieces. First, I would test a school-based approach by creating a step-by-step process that helps kids build their narrative. I wanted to see if kids would follow a structure similar to the Writer’s Workshop Approach or if they would balk? I wanted to get feeling for how this process could be adapted for pre-literate children and by advanced readers and writers.
