Iteration 1

For our first iteration we tested the two main components that would help us achieve our goal - making the experience inviting for the learners, and support mental model building by supporting the connections learners make with the experience to their personal life to future goals.

making it inviting

To achieve the inviting nature of the activity we conducted interviews with our population to learn about what motivates them to join activities at school. We also turned to literature in sustainability and motivation. We were interested by Papert’s work on constructionism and based the design of the activity on it. Read more in "Research" section.

Besides making the experience fun, we needed to concentrate on our main objective - learning about sustainability. We created scaffolding that would facilitate discussions make sure that connections are made throughout the way and students connect the process of making, interacting with sustainable ingredients to learning more about sustainability and developing dispositions towards a more zero-waste lifestyle.

supporting mental model building

After designing the first version of the workshop, we tested with our cohort members to see whether we were successful in addressing our two main goals for the first iteration. During the iteration, we saw that learners were getting impatient after making the third product and the discussions and connections about the sustainability should be moved forward instead of connecting it with the packaging phase of the workshop. We also observed that students felt that the experience was inviting and they were motivated to join and engage.

Iteration 2

With the findings of the first iteration we started working on the second one; We were going to test with our population - the graduate students this time. For this iteration we refined the learning component of the workshop combining all the scaffolding materials into a booklet and embedding the structure on the first page. We took this chance to see whether the new structure and content of the booklet would be more successful in supporting mental model building on sustainability. This time we went a step forward and wanted to see whether students would develop dispositions towards being more sustainable due to the experience.

  • We designed a self-care journal and iterated several time to make sure there is sufficient information, concrete examples and needed scaffolding for learners to be comfortable integrated what they learned in future as well

  • We designed several components in the app to make sure learners see the difference they make by making their own self-care products; it included a financial component, their plastic footprint and the impact they will have by simply making their own self-care products

  • As our population is still learning about sustainability, we shifted the perspective and framed the whole experience as a positive self-care experience that benefits you and the planet

  • We made sure to limit the amount of information and steps and view the issue from a positive perspective so students do not face with choice overload and environmental paralysis