How can materiality enhance the user experience in your own practice?

 As a creative practitioner with a keen interest in education and communication, I have found through my research that materiality and creative thinking can help to create an inclusive and engaging piece of learning material. 

Originally, I set out to answer the question of whether or not physical elements of design can help increase engagement and focus with learning for individuals like myself who have an attention deficit disorder or dyslexia. I wanted to explore the idea of ‘levelling the playing field’ between those who fit into the ideal learning style for school settings and those who do not. As someone who struggled throughout school and was not seen as overly intellectual/intelligent until I reached university, I wanted to look into ways of communicating visually. 

As my research progressed, it became clear that the focus shouldn’t necessarily be on individuals with learning disabilities but rather an inclusive way of educating for all!

Fairly early on I had the idea of a ‘mini scavenger hunt’ that would be composed of a number of different activities all targeted towards the different learning styles. Each activity would communicate a piece of information all of which would come together to form a collaborative presentation of some form to be delivered to the class. I continued to develop this concept throughout the project, strengthening it through research.

There are a number of elements that I have used to conceptualise this piece of learning material - the element of human curiosity, the information gap and active learning. Using the element of human curiosity to gauge initial interest, the information gap to keep interest and allow for independent but accessible learning and active learning for deeper engagement and effective learning.

It is a fairly complicated concept and one that I am still trying to fully understand and put into words but the gist is using materiality to create an inclusive and engaging piece of learning material that is designed to be both visually and intellectually stimulating. The idea stems from the notion of learning through play and allowing choice.