Context

Due to strong gender stereotypes, many girls in Latin America don't identify with STEM subjects. This makes it more difficult for them to select careers in these fields in the future. This becomes a factor that increases the gap in gender equality and economic growth, especially in more vulnerable communities. Luci Lab is an exploration to address this challenge.

Concept

Luci Lab is a mixed reality experience for girls (8 -10 years) that seeks to spark curiosity in STEM-related topics through interactive storytelling. By building physical prototypes and interacting with voice-driven AR characters, girls can explore in a fun way and work on their self-confidence with the help of the main storyteller Luci. The experience is expressed by telling engaging stories, stimulating physical-digital play, encouraging exploration, and empowering young girls. The two main components are the Luci Lab App where girls can select different stories and the Luci Lab Booklet where they can find cardboard templates to build with based on the selected story in the app.

Process

For the research process, interviews were conducted with public and private schools in Costa Rica, technology programs for kids (Costa Rica- Italy), designers in the toy industry (Denmark- US), parents, and girls between 7 and 12 years old with varying experience in technical skills. The prototype process involved co-creation sessions and tests with girls, designers in the toy industry, and technology educators.

Due to COVID-19 and digital learning, in 2020 many of the girls that were interviewed had the opportunity to have tablets, cell phones or computers at home for the first time. MR was a fun way to introduce them to the new technology, while blurring the line between the physical and the digital space.
The idea of building an MR experience was made in collaboration with some of the girls during the interviews and co-creation sessions.

Luci Lab is my 8 weeks final project at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design -IDP 2020-. It had one of the Honors recognition 2021 at CIID.

Context

Due to strong gender stereotypes, many girls in Latin America don't identify with STEM subjects. This makes it more difficult for them to select careers in these fields in the future. This becomes a factor that increases the gap in gender equality and economic growth, especially in more vulnerable communities.

For the past six years, I had the opportunity to be a teacher and to coordinate a career in a technical field in the Center of Technology and Visual Arts: a Ministry of Culture and Youth of Costa Rica. (Program that looks for social inclusion through culture, technology, and arts). In general women were alway a minority, and on multiple occasions were also more insecure about their work, regardless of whether they were terrific! I became interested in understanding this phenomenon and came across several articles about these issues. I realized that sometimes due to gender stereotypes among other things, their family, classmates or teachers can generate psychological pressure on girls, making them feel insecure as they have been led to believe that these topics (STEM) are related to masculine abilities; so these issues can even affect their academic performance.

One extra factor that inspired me to work in this topic was a personal experience. When the first digital animation career opened in Costa Rica -U Veritas-, I was one of the few women studying this career compared to the number of guys. At that time I remember being a bit of a weirdo among a lot of guys, and people from other careers always telling me things like: "I thought this career was just for nerd guys"... I was the first woman to graduate from digital animation in the country and remember that feeling of "loneliness". If it was possible, I needed to do something about it.

Concept

Luci Lab is a mixed reality experience for girls (8 -10 years) that seeks to spark curiosity in STEM-related topics through interactive storytelling. By building physical prototypes and interacting with voice-driven AR characters, girls can explore in a fun way and work on their self-confidence with the help of the main storyteller Luci.

The experience is expressed by telling engaging stories, stimulating physical-digital play, encouraging exploration, and empowering young girls. The two main components are the Luci Lab App where girls can select different stories and the Luci Lab Booklet where they can find cardboard templates to build with based on the selected story in the app.

Process

For the research process, In-depth interviews were conducted with public and private schools in Costa Rica, technology programs for kids (Costa Rica- Italy), designers in the toy industry (Denmark- US), parents, and girls between 7 and 12 years old with varying experience in technical skills. Desk research and observation were part of the process as well. I came with some important insights.

Insight #1: Gender Stereotypes are everywhere. After visiting some toy stores in Costa Rica, I found that a great percentage of toys for girls in Christmas were mainly about beauty, make up, and how to be a little mom (baby dolls with little kitchens, etc). The same happened in digital apps for girls where the main topics were makeup, fashion, cooking and pets.

Insight #2 Girls feel less confident than boys in technology and engineering matters as they don't feel identified. Teachers of computing and robotics workshops for kids, explained how they had to change their methodologies and even the name of some workshops to attract more girls, because of the way they were teaching them, most of those enrolled were only boys. For example they explained that in Robotics class they used to do competitions with cars built with LEGOs, and girls felt that these toys were boy's toys, so even if the electronic part was new for boys and girls, girls felt that boys were the experts.

Insight #3 Girls care about meaningful experiences. When playing, girls really care about what they are doing, why, or with whom. Girls work better supporting each other, not competing. Sisterhood is important.

So I came with this question: How might we create an experience for girls that invites and empowers them in STEM topics in a fun and meaningful way?

Prototyping

The prototyping process involved co-creation sessions and tests with girls, designers in the toy industry, and technology educators.

Due to COVID-19 and digital learning, in 2020 most of the girls that were interviewed had the opportunity to have tablets, cell phones or computers at home for the very first time. I felt it was a good opportunity to make them feel confident with this "new" technology. The idea was to use technology and screens with a meaning, and for sure with the supervision of their parents.

My intention was to mix digital and physical explorations.

In the first co-creation session with girls we explored different materials, we had the chance to build some cardboard models and co-create a simple 3d character triggered by a card in AR, as one of the girls suggested. Some of the insights from 1st co-creation sessions were:

-AR is a fun way to introduce them to the new technology while blurring the line between the physical and the digital space.

- Crafts and Storytelling are a good way to engage girls in a task. After building some cardboard models they invented a story behind it.

-Talking is a natural way to communicate with the character.

After the first session, I did some mid fidelity prototypes and had a couple of validation sessions with experts (play-learning). The main factor that I was challenging was how could I add more interactions with their surroundings so it didn't become just a screen base board game. Also I had the opportunity to speak with a scriptwriter and then decided to have a main character telling the story and asking for collaboration to accomplish a task, as I remembered girls care about what and why they were doing something.

I tested the new prototypes, a simple 3D character with some voice playback, I planned some Open challenges related to the cardboard models to see if it could help with the physical exploration. Some of the insights from this second session were:

- Voice interaction made the experience more immersive and engaging. And in addition helped them keep interacting with the 3d character, while building with their hands.

- Adding some open challenges related to the cardboard templates, encourages an "exploration mode" and the use of their physical space.

With this information I did a higher fidelity prototype of the experience.

Building the app and Cardboard templates

AR and voice interactions were built and programmed in Unity, using Speech to Text to trigger the animations. To make the conversations work, it was necessary to have a kind of script that girls can follow in the app, so the AR character knows when they need to trigger the next animation. 3D characters were co-design with the help of a couple of girls, then modeled and animated in Maya and Mixamo. The cardboard templates were 3D modeled and saved as a cardboard template with Unfolder.

Impact

After testing with the girls, they start using another kind of language (Luci's language) to refer to themselves. They were talking about feeling "creative" and "smart'' and "using their imagination and creativity to solve problems" to help Luci accomplish her goal. It's important that girls feel empowered and confident to accomplish whatever they propose.

Some posible next steps:

-Explore the possibility of playing the stories in solo mode / more kids

- Possibility to incorporate a 3D modeling tool in the app, so they can create their own characters and cardboard models.

- Using storytelling and AR as a tool for learning difficult topics in schools (Latin American / Spanish)

*Luci Lab is my 8 weeks final project at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design -IDP 2020-, and it had the Honors recognition 2021 at CIID.