visual advocacy: developing our system

Here's the system that Michael and I have been working on, to hopefully facilitate a learning environment at home that's fun and educational for kids, as well as convenient for a parent's schedule. Though we imagine it isn't perfect yet, hopefully we're beginning to tackle some of the issues we uncovered through our research.

For starters, we wanted to avoid overloading parents with too much information at once, so we decided to bring the message into the shopping environment in small ways. We thought that this could be done by including a small tip on everyday items that are purchased: cooking pans, laundry baskets, hangers, and the like. The activities on each item would be related to things that one could do with that object. That way the activities are already a part of "everyday tasks" and not outside of anyone's schedule.

These activities could be as simple as initiating conversation while cooking together or eating over the dinner table,





creating an educational activity while putting away the laundry,



or creating crafts and games out of things they already have around the home.




These initial activities would lead these parents to a website, which would be advertised at the bottom of the sticker if they chose to follow it. The website would be setup in a simple fashion that is easy for both kids and parents to understand and look at together. It would feature one activity a day, similar to any of the ideas above. The activity would be illustrated in a step-by-step process, with an animation between each step to show how things are done.





At the end of each video, it will also tell parents why the activity was beneficial to their child, and specific skills they may have gleaned from participating in it!



Our hope is that the "one activity a day" aspect of the website would bring parents and their children back to it again and again, and hopefully provide them with fun ideas to do together daily.