GoldieBlox Explaining the influence of social groups in the diffusion of GoldieBlox in the premise of child education
Chatsuree Isariyasereekul
Priyanka Bhansali
Marcela Milla Rivas
MFA Design Management
MA Design Management
MA Design Management
DMGT 702: History and Interpretation of Innovation | Prof. Sara Jo Johnson | Fall 2014
1. Introduction 2. Framing the work 3. Targeting your constituents 4. Introduce new thinking 5. Expanding the conversation
GoldieBlox
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1. Introduction
Secondary Research Using the 5W’s and H (Who,What,Where,When,Why and How), we tried to understand the thought process behing the invention of GoldieBlox. Resources used were the official GoldieBlox website, newspaper and magazine articles, marketing videos and advertisements and a Ted Talk given by the founder Debbie Sterling.
5W’s and H model WHO
WHERE
WHY
DEBBIE STERLING Degree in Mechanical Engineering/Product Design from Stanford
KICKSTARTER Debbie is from San Francisco, but Goldieblox started with crowd funding through kickstarter
Became obsessed with the notion of "disrupting the pink aisle" with a toy that would introduce girls to the joy of engineering at a young age
WHAT
WHEN
HOW
GOLDIEBLOX A toy that would introduce girls to the joy of engineering at a young age
2012 Obtained crowd funding on kickstarter within 5 days
Giving young girls oppurtunities the tools to build and develop spatial skills in confluence with their verbal skills
Brainstorming and Mind Mapping Creating a mind map by listing down all the key players involved in the development, manufacturing and distribution of Goldieblox to understand their connections and influences.
Key Players The key players we identified as users were the kids who the toy was built for, parents who were buying the toys and teachers. The players that assessed GoldieBlox as an innovation were Educators, Politicians who implemented education plans, professors conducting research in child education, feminists, gay/lesbian/transgender community, toy companies, marketing strategists and the founder of the company.The reviews of GoldieBlox as a toy were polemic. On the one hand educators and parents were ecstatic about it as someone finally understoofd the need in the industry to encourage girls to play with toys beyond dolls, and on the other hand feminists believe it is just a tool for marketing since it is not promoting gender neutrality and is still targeting girls.
The New Yorker, Elizabeth Weiss, December 12,2013
The XX Factor, Katy Waldman, November 26, 2013
Modern Mom, Amy Pearson
Systems Map Analysing all the data points collected by secondary research, we creates a systems map consisting of four rings. The first ring consisted of the users (kids, parents, teachers), the next of ‘influencers’ or social groups and the outer two rings were divided into the positive and negative beleifs of the socials groups towards the innovation. This mode helped us reach conclusions about how each social group plays a part to educate a child and led us to use social constructivism as a lens to analyse our work.
Initial Concept We used ‘Crazy 8s’ to explore different presentation ideas and techniques. One idea was to create a
1. Defining our scope - Secondary research on current innovations - Team discussion and selection of the innovation - Revisit lenses and select one that is appropriate and related to our innovation.
3. Analyzing -Create systems maps to have a broader perspective on the users and social groups beliefs and rives
5. Getting ready - Preparing artifacts for presentation - Designing presentation
2. Immersing in context - Study the 5W and H of the innovation and how it was conceived - Secondary research to learn which are social groups and the rate of adoption of the innovation - Primary research to understand the players and interact with the artifact
4. Conceptualizing -Brainstorming for interactive experiences -Activity concept -Create activity guidelines
6. Execution - Presenting the final video and explain GoldieBlox - Make class fo the “What Influences You?’ exercise - Make the class build a fort after explaining concept
2. Framing the Work
GoldieBlox
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“I like to build”
-Drew Johnson
As we present prior to this section, we created a user journey map to better understand the GoldieBlox user’s perspective. Drew Johnson, our 5 year old user, marveled us with her thought: “I like to build”. Her words immediately created a bridge between our innovation and our lense of Social Constructivism to more easily understand how humans’ drivers and beliefs are a result of their own decision making but also, partially, of their experiences with social groups that BUILD opinions and influence their decision making.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISIM BUILDS US This is why we decided to look at GoldieBlox’s influencing social groups, those who create opinions and that may alter the user’s adoption or rejection. Educators, genderologists and marketers as we have named them, are the INFLUENCERS that have created divided opinions on whether or not it is a brilliant solution to integrate girls in engineering.
3. Targeting your constituents
GoldieBlox
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User Journey Map To understand how kids use GoldieBlox, we created a user journey map with Drew Johnson(Five and a half years old), a proud owner of two GoldieBlox sets. She explained to us which games were her favorites and why. We first played Madeline which included moving across stones and turning cards and remembering them. We left the game incompete and shifted to GoldieBlox and the Spinning Maching followed by GoldieBlox and the Dunk Tank. We built the GoldieBlox sets by reading the instruction storybook given.
Drew’s Fort
Furniture Blocks + House Toy (she didn’t like much but her friends did)
Drew and Us
Trying to attach the ribbon in Turning the ribbon around Goldieblox Spinning machine different spinning wheels
Adult help required to manuver the ribbon correctly within the spinning set
Referring to the instruction book after unsuccessful attempts
Trying to understand the instructions before getting building
Collecting different parts and interlocking them
Finally building the dunk tank and using it
Eating dinner and interacting with Drew
A pinball-ish game gifted by her dad on christmas
Madeline : A memory game of stepping stones and flipping cards
Studying Competition To understand the different target groups within children’s toys we studied the conventional products sold. Ideally girls’ toys are categorized in the ‘pink aisle’ and boys’ toys in the ‘blue aisle.’. This is done by toy developers and marketing companies to create two different markets for the same products by only changing the color and therby getting higher profit margins. Toys for girls are usually focused on honing verbal and nurturing skills, whereby toys for boys focus on logic and spatial skills. Almost all toys that are considered unisex are marketed as ‘masculine and neutral toys’.
Targeting Parents After understanding the current market situation, we analysed GoldieBlox through a marketing perspective. GoldieBlox is targeted towards adults as well as children. It proposes a fun, new and interesting toy for girls because it involves storytelling as well as creating a space. But more importantly, it provides adults an alternative to dolls and understands the peer pressure in convincing a girl to move beyond the pink aisle. It also helps parents encourage girls to gain interest in maths and maybe engineering fields in the future.
4. Introducing new thinking
Class Activity The aim of this activity is explain social constructivism through social groups. Each classmate will be asked to write down a characteristic that influences who they are (honesty, religion, travel etc). These characteristics can be used to divide the class into social groups. These social groups are then required to use the material provided to them to create a space that represents them. Building a fort is a gender neutral activity that kids enjoy and associate memories with. It also facilitates spatial and logical thinking. It also works as a metaphor on social constructivism as it focuses on ‘building’ a system collaboratively using perspectives and beliefs. Since we are all brought up differently, we each have our set of belief and insights, the activity demonstrates how these beliefs shape how we imagine things and therefore imagine a space.
Materials
Instructions
- blankets - bedsheets - cardboards - pillows - ropes/ strings - tape - scissor/ cutter - rubber band - clips
1. Write down what influences you 2. Create social groups based on others classmate common interests 3. Name the social group and create a common goal 4. Share the goal with other social groups 5. Build a fort that supports all of your benefits
Cultural Probe A short cultural probe was conducted as a pre-activity throughout the class, to draw and describe your fondest childhood toy. By doing this we could understand if and how childhood toys potentially influence our character and to also introduce the class to our topic.
5. Expanding the conversation
Execution The activity was performed and the class naturally divided itself into groups, which we originally intended for them to do. It was interesting to see how the largest 2 groups were divided into female and male, the chinese students paired together and some others individually built their own forts. This clearly reinforced our viewpoint on how we naturally fall into creating social groups by relating with those who have similar interests and approached the building process in the same way.
References
Thank You