SJSU CHAPTER
Official Info
Events Calendar
Student FAQs
Photo Galleries
Students/Alumni

NEWSLETTER
Current Issue
Archive
Policies/Admin

COLUMNS

Coaching Kids and Introducing Them to Ergonomics

by Ruth Loewenhardt

As HF/E students I think we all have a desire to teach what we are just learning to others. This past year I
had the opportunity to coach six middle school students in a toy making competition (toychallenge.com) through Sally Ride Science (sallyride.com). It was a very fullfilling experience for both the students and the coach.

Here's a little background on what this was all about.Sally Ride is the first female american astronaut in space and her main goal currently is to get young girls interested in Math and Science. By middle school many girls have lost interest in these subjects and Sally Ride's goal is to give students something to work for while learning about the design process. In doing this she created a competition (4th year in 2006) where students between 5th and 8th grades would make a toy then compete with other teams for the grand prize. Each team consists of no more than 6 students with at least 50% being girls.

There are three categories for the competition: Games for the Family, Get Out and Play, and Toys That Teach. After choosing a category the team then needed to develop a game within budgetary guidelines of $150. By the end of January a PRE (Preliminary Round Entry) of no more than 6 pages was sent off to San Diego for the preliminary judging by University students and Engineers.  Out of 450 teams that entered the competition PRE  stage only 100 teams were chosen to attend either the West Coast Nationals in San Diego or the East Coast Nationals in Raleigh NC. The teams were then required to make presentation boards to display their game and the design process as well as develop a working prototype and presention for the judges.

As you can imagine my team (Toy Tinker Thinkers: T3) were very excited that they were chosen to attend the National competion in San Diego at the end of April. They worked hard to develop their game into a working prototype and create the presentation including a process book showing all the steps they took to develop their game and a music video for extra credit.

The entire experience was about a six month process and the students really were motivated to create their game. They did research at Toys R Us to make a matrix inventory to discover what was missing in the toy market. They also did some interviews and talked to people about what their interests were to find out a good theme.

Basically their design process is what any research process goes through to develop new ideas.  The students used math to do statistics on their results and it was really fascinating to see them apply their knowledge in a concrete manner rather than text book studies. Many comments were made on how much more interesting math is when its for a specific purpose and for something you're interested in creating.

Another useful aspect of this experience was the opportunity for the students to learn about Human Factors and Ergonomics. They were introduced to the elements of HF/E and soon it became a big part of their vocabulary to talk about reach distances, proper hand sizes for objects like the dice and playing cards. They even had discussions about colors, light and the contrasts needed for better visibility. Since this developed over a number of months it was a wonderful moment when one of the students started talking about special needs for people with disabilites.

My whole experience with coaching this team far exceded any of my expectations. The students were eager to make the game but didn't realize that it was also improving their marks at school: specifically in Science and Math but their overall GPA improved as well. They started thinking of themselves as scientists and having discussions about research and design process development.

Knowing that I had a small role in coaching them towards this change in attitude was very rewarding. There are now six students very familiar with the field of HF/E. They will bring their knowledge with them to whatever profession they decide to pursue after high school. By sewing the seeds early in their young minds they have developed a vocabulary that not a lot of other middle school students are privileged to have the opportunity to learn.

You never know when your actions will make a
difference in the world but seeing first hand a change
in just six students made me believe that we all need
to bring HF/E into the consciousness of our fellow
human beings.

One added note to this newsletter article is the fact
that we were filmed this whole time for a documentary
on the Toy Challenge by a film maker out of New York.
Various film crews followed us around for 6 months on
our field trips and to our meetings. They even got
permission to film at Oracle in Redwood Shores were
the team did a presentation to BAER (Bay Area
Ergonomics Roundtable). Since T3 placed 2nd in their
category of "Games for the Family" in San Diego the
chances are great that T3 will be featured in the
final documentary and that Ergonomics will be featured
too.