Mustafa Majid  Design Thinking - Assignment  Learning Launch       Challenge and Selection     I am a graphic designer at my work and also do some industrial design and conduct  experiments often to help bring new products to market. My team and I were challenged to  develop a Construction toy to sell along with our existing starter kit. The toy is geared for kids  ages 5 and up and consists of flat base pieces or blocks that can interconnect and gears that  can be pegged into the multiple holes in the base pieces. It has holes on top and bottom of the  base piece and they're like puzzle pieces that fit together and make a larger base. The gears  can mesh together so they can be turned by a battery operated motor.  My team and I were  challenged to create an advanced kit to sell along with our existing starter kit. The advanced kit  will include more pieces to build bigger models and also include instructions booklets to build  special theme characters to develop lateral thinking and planning skills. We went through  market research, competitor analysis and idea generation to develop some themes for the  advanced kit. We wanted to test the different themes and see which ones are marketable, fun  and challenging.     Application     Out team built models/themes: a car, dinosaur, train and many others that my company  researched and created instructions booklets on how to make the models. We set up  experiments with groups of five kids. I gave them basic instructions. I handed them printed  instruction booklets of different themes. It has a visual of the themes toy on the cover to identify  the instructions booklet.  We asked towards the end which toy they liked best, the least, which  ones were easy or too hard.     Insight     We learned that building sets were a bit more challenging, the problem is that the base pieces  has multiple peg holes and can be confusing when building one of the character/themes for the  MoGee Advanced Kit sets. A few kids placed the gear peg in the wrong hole and gave up and  did their own modification. Also, the younger kids couldn't identify the top of the base from the  bottom since they look similar so they get confused on following directions on placing the base  piece in the right orientation and connecting two base pieces with the right sides. The younger  kids were not as persistent when following through with directions and overcoming challenges  so they become more creative and designed it their own way. The older kids were more  persistent and see it as a challenge to overcome.

For the second learning launch we made two different instructions. One booklet includes  beginners instructions for ages 5 and up were the gears didn't have to be in the right peg hole  and the base pieces didn’t have to be in place in a certain orientation.  It has step by step  instructions with 3d views of the model, highlighting the current part that needs to be connected,  a blown up view of the base piece with the highlighted peg hole and instructing to count from the  top left hole to find the correct position. This builds their skills for following directions and  attention to detail, so these instructions are geared for advanced builder. We also made the  instructions more engaging, more colorful and used readable typefaces for the beginners  instructions. Our assumptions were correct for the improvement on the instructions, kids were  more engaged and excited in building the different sets. We chose the favorite themes kids  enjoyed and made the set a 5 in 1 with instructions.     Approach     Our company learned a lot from the learning launches. There are few things we do differently for  a third learning launch. We would differentiate the top and bottom base piece by naming it "T"  for top and "B" for bottom or giving the peg holes a different color. Also, invest some time in  creating a video with step by step instructions that would be placed on the website or a phone  app that can somehow track the children's creations and have a reward system. Also they can  interact with other kids and challenge each other.

