Kids love science, just not how it’s taught.
It’s in their favorite movies, games, tv-shows and just about everywhere they look, but when it is in a classroom, kids instantly become allergic to the topic. It turns out that the problem isn’t with the kids, but rather the way it’s taught. After talking to them we realized that the kid’s are having a tough time contextualizing the information and putting in a way that is relevant to them. For this problem, we needed to find a way to speak to them in a language they enjoy.
To help inspire a new generation of engineers, Verizon partnered with IDEO to build an immersive mobility lab to help teach underprivileged kids the fundamentals of STEAM.
This interactive bus brings a classroom to Mars where they engineer rovers to traverse Mars' dangerous landscape and find the missing Curiosity rover.
Paper prototyping: Iterating early and often.
Collecting feedback from kids can be challenging so we needed to meet them where they were. To do this we drew comic books, made board games, painted video game posters and built paper prototypes to see what worked and what didn’t. Emoji stickers blanketed every artifact in order to give them a familiar language to guide us.
Building the interface.
Much of our early learnings came from a few play sessions on board games designed by our team. As we learned what worked and what didn’t, we iteratively digitized, consolidated and simplified the experience. Several play tests revealed that kids preferred instructionless experiences that were highly visual, dimensional and designed to mimic their favorite games like Candy Crush and other popular mobile games.
The first digital play test.
It started rather poorly actually. A dozen excited kids in a small room with sugar, pizza and video games. Mostly ignoring instructions and not really bothering with any of the material we provided for feedback. Eventually we gave up and just tossed them the iPads to see what would happen. Remarkably, within 5 minutes we couldn’t hear a sound besides deep engagement with a game that we slaved over for the previous 2 months. This was a small but major victory to say the least.
Making it feel real.
The thing that almost all kids said is that they needed it to feel real in order to want to engage with it. With that in mind we designed the story to feel as real as possible pulling from the traditional hero’s journey. With our partners at Whiskytree I directed this final film complete with a score from a 20 peice orchestra.
Building the bus experience.
Turning a tour bus into a classroom is not for the faint of heart, so we turned to the experts in West Coast Customs (Pimp my ride). We supplied 3d renderings, tech specs, electrical and software engineering while they managed to turn the bus into a truly unique experience.
Impact Stats
Although the bus has been paused due to covid-19, the Mars Explorer Lab is still functioning today and has had over 10k+ kids from hundreds of schools pass through the experience. The bus debuted at Super Bowl 2018 and was featured at GDC 2018.