To understand if you have achieved your design goal you need to test it and evaluate its effectiveness. Have you built a community awareness design that protects Codium fragile and the intertidal ocean environment in which it lives?
Testing your community awareness design
This can be done in many different ways depending on your design. Equally there are many different tools and techniques you can use to assess whether you have met your design goal. The most important thing to remember is don’t be scared to FAIL!
This is simply your First Attempt In Learning and it happens to all the best designers! If your prototype doesn’t meet your design goal then it is time to reflect, record and redesign following the design process again to make a better, stronger, more powerful design!
Testing Testing…. Here a few of the ways you can test your community awareness design
- School Assembly Presentation
- Newsletters
- Zoom presentations to parents
- Web pages linked to the school website
- Story time with the Kindies
- Displays in shopping malls or public places
- # Hashtags on Social Media
Inside the Tide at The Calyx
If you have chosen to make Codium fragile at the Royal Botanic Garden STEM day or follow Guy Fredericks design suggestions, your designs will be tested in the "Inside the Tide" exhibition at the Calyx.
Take a look at this Virtual Tour of inBLOOM at The Calyx to see how your Codium installation may be displayed!
Evaluating and getting feedback on your design
Evaluation can also be done in many ways and it’s important to think about who you want your feedback from. Who will you learn the most from?
Designers can use multiple methods, for example Erth measure;
- Number of people engaging with their social media
- Number of visitors to their exhibitions
- Return bookings
- Reviews in newspapers and other entertainment publications
They also have conversations with their team about what they think about the design this is called Peer Feedback.
Having a peer review your work can provide a set of fresh eyes to your project. Here are a few ways to do this;
- The feedback carousel : students move around the room with sticky notes and post anonymous feedback on the prototype
- The 3-2-1 structure: Students provide three strengths, two areas of improvement and one question that they have.
- 2 Stars and a Wish: Students share 2 things they love about your design and 1 way they wish you would improve it.
Conduct a User Test
User testing allows you to see whether your prototype reaches your desired outcome when given to a user. When user testing consider:
- Who the user is and how much they might already know
- Show, don’t tell. Try to avoid overexplaining the prototype so you can see how they interact with it
- Make sure you capture feedback – what questions are you going to ask to understand if your prototype had the desired outcome
Pre and Post Surveys
As you are measuring the level of community awareness you have achieved it is useful to have a benchmark figure of how much people new before they engaged with your design.
To do this you might invite people to;
- Scan a QR Code to access an online survey (we are pretty good at this now)
- Join in a daily mentimeter before entering the exhibition
- Answer a question when buying their tickets online
You would then ask them to re- survey after engaging with your design which will allow you to measure your design effectiveness!
REMEMBER: Negative feedback is not bad, it is a way of helping us improve.
Let’s try this process now!
1. Click on this link to access the survey before people see your design
a) ask someone from your family to complete the survey
b) ask someone from school to complete the survey
c) ask everyone in your class to repeat this process
2. Now share your design with the same people and ask them to complete the post survey.
Compare the results from before your project and after its completion.
Here are the results from a quick pre 'Inside the Tide' survey we have done with staff at the Royal Botanic Garden!
Personal reflection
The process of reflection helps us to develop our understanding more deeply. It provides the opportunity to step back and take a look at what our work means to us and our communities. 
Use your STEM Journal to reflect on your design process and what you have learnt about this seaweed superhero, Codium fragile!
Use an online generator like this to make a fun Wordle you can display in the classroom to share what you’ve learnt with others!