MAKERplay is a mobile learning platform that brings STEM education to pediatric patients. Children facing lengthy hospital stays end up missing school and the vital social interaction it brings, risking falling behind their peers. MAKERplay offsets the academic and emotional impact of extended hospitalization on pediatric patients by providing fun, engaging STEM-based activities, as well as the tools and resources to complete and share their work with each other. Built in partnership between the Deason Innovation Gym at SMU and Parish Episcopal School, MAKERplay debuted at North Texas children's hospitals in the fall of 2016.
Understand the landscape of learning resources available to children’s hospital patients and explore the design of a hands-on, student-centered, challenge-based activity platform that addresses the gaps and creates social engagement, especially for patients limited by contact isolation.
Timeframe: 2 weeks, January 2016
I served as a student advisor on the project, responsible for providing expertise on rapid prototyping tools and techniques. I was also involved throughout the design process, conducting design research and ideation sessions as well as mapping the program model and building physical prototypes of the test kits and Creation Station.
User Research & Contextual Inquiry
Ideation
Rapid Prototyping
CAD/3D Modeling & Fabrication
Usability Testing
Facilitation
Project Management
There are approximately 1,600 pediatric transplants each year in the United States (UNOS), 13,000 children living with cystic fibrosis (CFF), and 15,780 children diagnosed with cancer annually (ACCO). Treatment for these diseases requires lengthy hospital stays that at minimum may last a few weeks to a couple of months and in some cases a year or more.
Long-term hospital stays uniquely impact young patients. Understandably, the focus is on defeating or managing the illness. Unfortunately, this can translate to the patient falling behind academically, even when the best efforts are made to help the child keep up. Time away from friends and school can compound the emotional isolation caused by the needed physical separation for treatment. As a result, children’s hospitals strive to create welcoming environments for their patients and families. Many have activity rooms, craft carts, libraries, and education services accessible to patients to help provide “normal” experiences for those children enduring extended hospital stays. Even with these efforts, the availability of quality, engaging science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) lessons on par with those available in schools and maker studios around the country is nonexistent.
Our research began by meeting with child life and educational programming specialists at Children's Medical Center Dallas and seeing the playrooms, library, in-house TV/radio station, and other facilities they have dedicated to creating positive experiences during a child's hospital stay. Additionally, we spent some time talking to two patients who have personally experienced extended hospital stays, trying to learn about the different activities they might pursue in their downtime and what they felt during their stays. Lastly, we hosted a group of Cub Scouts and taught them how to make Vibrobots, "bots" that can be crafted using a small vibration motor, a battery, a lollipop stick, and whatever decorative supply you have at your disposal. This exercise provided insight into how to lead a lesson, and how children learn and apply their thoughts through hands-on creation. Our design research revealed the need to create a solution that was mobile, safe, sterile, could be decorated and would create an opportunity to connect hospital patients to the outside world.
Engaging kids in the hospital is about much more than just a cart.
By engaging patients in hands-on learning, we aim to empower these students and give them a sense of control and autonomy when they are otherwise disempowered by the hospital context and their illness.
We should focus on kids in isolation.
Children who can’t leave their rooms are not able to take advantage of all that the hospital already has to offer. Some students choose not to leave their rooms because the activities available to them feel like they are designed for younger children.
Engaging kids in the hospital is about much more than just a cart.
Making and sharing what they make is a natural way for children to connect and collaborate with others, either in the hospital or back at home. Through a website, social media channels, and hashtags, kids can connect to something bigger than themselves. On the website they can also access extension activities and additional resources.
Curriculum should come in the form of single-use kits that can be used without a facilitator.
Single-use kits take care of issues of sterilization and cross-contamination while also allowing the child to keep and reuse whatever comes in the kit. Kids are encouraged to use materials found in their rooms already. Modules build on each other, so that once a kid has finished one module, they can “level up” with the next one.
Parish Episcopal School (our project partner) plays a critical role in implementation.
By engaging patients in hands-on learning, we aim to empower these students and give them a sense of control and autonomy when they are otherwise disempowered by the hospital context and their illness.
The Kits
MAKERplay kits fall into four STEM curriculum modules that we anticipated would have the greatest impact: experimentation, programming, vector/3D modeling, and electronics. Multiple kits exist within each curriculum module, allowing for progression as well as the flexibility to accommodate kids at different skill levels. Each kit is meant for only one patient, which affords the patient a sense of pride once they've completed something that they know is theirs to keep and show off.
The Creation Station
The MakerPlay Creation Station is a rolling storage cart for activity kits combined with shared physical resources, such as a 3D printer that patients can use to turn their designs into real objects, or a vinyl cutter used to make stickers, stencils, and artwork. Computers and tablets with design software and coding resources are available for the kits that require them. Additional electronics supplies and basic arts and crafts supplies are stocked to supplement kits that could be expanded upon by a patient’s imagination.
The Website
The MAKERplay website not only contains additional digital resources for kits, but also provides a social platform for further connection between patients. After completing an activity, patients could then go online and share their work in the MAKERplay gallery, or create and collaborate remotely from their individual hospital rooms with other patients via the online community. It also gave users the ability communicate with student facilitators from Parish, raise concerns, or suggest improvements to the cart and activities.
Rough prototypes of each of these 3 elements were user-tested with 3rd and 4th graders from Parish Episcopal School, giving us vital feedback that we used to help clear up confusing activity instructions, make the packaging more attractive, and clear up how to use the cart in conjunction with activity kits before handing off to the Parish team.
The team at Parish has continued to grow and expand MAKERplay, developing and testing new activities, translating kit instructions into Spanish, and building out the MAKERplay web community to network patients across hospitals. MAKERplay launched two pilot carts with Medical City Children’s Hospital and Children’s Medical Center Dallas in Fall 2016 with plans to expand to more in the future.
