I got to be a part of another session about UX in K-12 tonight.
First time was with UX colleagues in Ohio for Ohio Tech Day.
This time it was with colleagues in New Jersey, with the UXPA NJ chapter: Computer Science Education Week Event: Teaching UX Topics in Grades K-12, December 8, 2021
After Laura, a high school teacher, told stories of how she is teaching UX, I breezed through my explanation of UX as Impressions, Activities, Management, Disciplines, and how we could translate these into concepts to teach at the K-12 level.
- Impressions: help students be aware of their own experiences with technology, and especially that the technology can be designed to manipulate them
- Activities: practice doing iterative design, usability testing, etc.
- Management: how to work in teams and in different roles
- Disciplines: some of the career paths available to them (e.g., study computer science, graphic design, psychology, or English)
Download my slides (as a PDF). Josephine and Lubina presented the results of a survey of K-12 teachers and (limited) resources for teachers.
The best part, as usual, was the discussion after. One interesting idea was about science fair projects applying the scientific method to technology.
Hoping this is just the start of more to come on how to educate K-12 students on key concepts so they will be able to define, design, and deliver great user experiences when they are running the world.
(posted on December 8th, updated December 11th)
