In total, we playtested with 8 students in 2 groups. During the playtesting session, we focused on observing the students as they went through the activity. We also asked questions about the content and asked for feedback throughout. See our evaluation plan for more details about our evaluation questions, observation plans etc.

All of our observations and notes can be found on this document. Below we’ve created a visual summary of our feedback and planned design changes.

Positive Feedback & Observations

Overall, the students enjoyed the cyanotype-making activity and seemed to understand the connection between cyanotypes and UV light.

Negative Feedback & Observations

Most of the negative feedback involved the postcards - the students were not interested in them at all. They also weren’t that interested in using sunscreen as a medium, partially because we didn’t push them towards it that much.

Iterating on the design

Iterating on the activity

Overall, we kept the UV box and activity flow the same. We tweaked some things to streamline the process - for example, we decided to add a tray to make transferring the designs to the UV box more easily. This would stop the design from shifting as much, which some of the students were disappointed with during playtesting.

Some other changes in response to student feedback include:

• Getting rid of the postcards. Students weren’t interested in actually sending postcards; they mostly wanted to create new designs.
• Using larger sunprint paper. Students wanted the freedom to create larger designs, and the postcard-sized papers we provided felt constraining.
• Providing more materials. A lot of the materials we provided were standard arts-and-crafts materials. Some students said that they would find the design more fun if there was a greater variety of items.
• Allowing students to bring personal materials. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. If students could bring personalized materials, this could help them identify with the design more and increase engagement.

Iterating on the learning design

There were two main changes to the learning design itself.

• Removing the public health learning objectives (from this session specifically). We talked a bit about sun protection in our slides but the kids weren’t that interested in it. They were more interested in making cyanotypes designed around a theme. In our final learning activity, we decided to remove this learning objective, partially because of our playtesting observations, but also because we didn’t want to overwhelm this session with too much content. We imagine that our learning design would fit into a larger curriculum, where one session is focused on design and learning the cyanotype process, while other lessons could incorporate sunscreen and public health objectives as the main focus.