Here It Is! (Now Market It!)
What's the Point?
- To help young designers look at technology that they use in their everyday lives.
- To explore the kinds of contexts necessary for object functions to be understood.
- To explore issues such as how objects are represented in advertising.
- To have participants begin to prepare presentations that describe and explain their work to others as a designer would.
- To give participants the experience of thinking and organizing information about their invention the way a marketing person might -- to create a buzz and make people interested in trying it out.
What You'll Need:
- Participant sketches / drawings of things (technology) that they use everyday
- Copies of advertisements for products that identify a need and
explain how a certain product fills that need. (You may want to encourage young designers to bring in examples of their own.)
- Participant designs, inventions, Design Notebooks, Design Handbooks, etc.
What to Do:
Everyday Technology
- Have each participant sketch something (a product / technology) that they use everyday. Make sure that they know that they will be sharing their sketches with the rest of the group.
- Have participants share their examples of everyday things by showing their sketches / drawings and describing in precise detail how their example looks. Then ask them to speculate about:
- who the intended audience is for their everyday object
- places that the object might be used
- how the design of their object might have been influenced by its intended purpose.
 Engage participants with Imagination Place! poster -- side 2.
Products In Contexts
- Have the advertisements for products that have been gathered available for participants to peruse.
- After participants have had sufficient time to look over, examine, and talk about the ads, encourage them to speculate about:
- who the intended audience is for advertised product
- places (contexts) where the product might be used
- how the design of advertised product might have been influenced by its intended purpose.
- Help your young designers to identify the message that each ad might be conveying
Market It!
Explain to participants that they will be creating an advertisement and/or commercial for their design / invention.
- Discuss the kind of information designers might include in
presentations of their work: the need the invention fills, the
audience it serves, and, based on those factors, the designer's
rationale for design decisions.
- Give participants time to prepare presentations of their work,
which might incorporate elements from their Design Notebooks
including sketches and schematic drawings, and the Imagination Place! in KAHooTZ projects themselves. Some participants might like to prepare
"commercials" for their inventions; others may be interested in some other focus for their presentation.
 Working with Imagination Place! in KAHooTZ
- Allow participants time to refine their designs / inventions.
- Some young designers may want to create animated
commercials for their designs.
Design Xchange
- Participants visit Market it and develop an advertisment for their invention. Participants download their Xpressions or print them out to guide them in creating their ad.
Word Wave
- Participants visit Chat Invitations and develop an interesting way of inviting others to come talk about their invention.
 KAHooTZ Help / KAHooTZ Tech Tips
- Stash -- Learn how to store your personal collection of KAHooTZ stuff.
- About Text -- Find out about text and options for its use.
- Publish or Send -- Learn how and when to publish and when to send.
- Visible and Invisible -- Understand options for publishing icons and Xpressions.
 Design Notebooks
- Give young designers time to plan an ad and/or commercial for their design, device, or machine. Encourage them to consider information from a variety of sources (e.g., their design notebook, KAHooTZ Xpressions, etc.)
- Ask for volunteers to show their sequence drawings from the previous session. Talk about
what it was like to do this assignment. "How did you organize your ideas?" "What did you have to think about in order to
draw the sequence?"
 Just Between Us
Discussions about the impact of inventions may lead to questions
of ethics, and these are worth exploring with participants. Encourage
them to think about possible applications of their inventions and
their implications for society. For example, what would happen if
an invention fell into the hands of a "bad" person?
 Resources
- The Way Things Work
- Eyewitness Books: Invention
- Marbles, Roller skates, and Doorknobs: Simple Machines
That Are Really Wheels
- Bathtubs, Slides and Roller Coaster Rails: Simple
Machines That Are Really Inclined Planes
- Seesaws, Nutcrackers, and Brooms: Simple Machines
That Are Really Levers
- Mistakes That Worked
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