What is knowledge and how do we learn it? This master program project discovered the process of how people gain knowledge and explore our learning path from "know-how" to "know-why."
To learn how people gain knowledge, we started by choosing a task that all group members mastered as the learning goal for the participants of this project. With our shared Asian cultural background in this group, we set "how to cook rice" as the project theme to observe how participants gain this knowledge.
It's a group project from a master's degree program. I worked with two other people as a team between March and July 2019. Parts that I led in this project included the final approach design and the documentation.
The entire process was structured by a cycle of doing experiments and reflecting on the process. There's a total of seven designed experiments as learning prototypes to teach the participants how to cook rice. We first conducted literature research to define the research gap to help form the how-to questions precisely as the first experiment's learning goal. Each experiment had a different setting and improved learning goal based on the last one to deliver the knowledge and was followed up by an interview to observe participants reflecting on what they learned. By documenting the whole process, we expected to reveal how knowledge was delivered and received by the participants.
All experiments were designed to guide participants to achieve the learning goal by themselves. To achieve that, we used experiment settings as a design tool to assist participants. The settings changed from two rice cookers without any text guidance to only one rice cooker with more detailed instructions throughout the process.
There were seven stages of prototypes in total. Participants were asked to complete some tasks while testing the prototype and interviewed afterwards. Each prototype had an improved how-to question as the learning goal and different settings after analysing the result of the previous prototype. During each prototype, participants were observed and their behaviours were documented by recording and note-taking. Despite spending a lot of time on the observation and documentation, it eventually paid off to gain many insights from the details and gave us inspiration for the final approach.
In the final prototype, we considered the scenario in reality and decided to use packaging design as a design tool to deliver the knowledge. The instructions were printed on the inside of the packaging and users would be able to have a self-learning guide for cooking rice after opening it. Users could gain knowledge by following the instructions on the package. Eventually, the principle behind how to cook rice would be revealed after they completed all the tasks.
At the end of this project, we reflected on how the knowledge was transferred and transformed. This diagram illustrates the process of how the knowledge is delivered and received during the whole process.
At the end of this project, we reflected on how the knowledge was transferred and transformed. This diagram illustrates the process of how the knowledge is delivered and received during the whole process.
