Designing Digital Badges With and for Users: A Collaborative Design Approach

• In Event: Democratizing Learning Through Digital Badges: Theoretical and Analytical Frameworks to Advance Design and Research

Abstract

Purpose
This poster presents data on a series of participatory design sessions for the creation of a digital badge system that recognizes the skills and achievements students gain by participating in an afterschool science education program. By documenting the design process, we offer insights into best practices associated with engaging learners and program providers directly in the design of new technology-based learning environments.

Theoretical Framework
Our work is theoretically informed by figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998), in which individuals work together within frameworks of socially constructed rules and norms to create meaning and shape each other’s practice. We are guided by the recognition that strong designs take into account and integrate into the existing social structures of the contexts in which they are to be used. At the same time, introducing new artifacts like digital badges into a setting inevitably shape the practices in it in new ways. It is therefore important to give careful consideration during the design process to existing norms and values because they are likely to be influenced by the introduction of a new artifact.

Data and Methods
We employed collaborative design techniques to engage students and program coordinators of an afterschool science education program in the design of a digital badge system (Walsh, Foss, Yip, & Druin, 2013). Consisting of two program coordinators, three students, and two researchers, the design team met eight times over the course of two months. Each session employed a particular collaborative design technique (e.g., Bags of Stuff, Storyboarding, Layered Elaboration) suited to the particular design task at hand.

Data include video recordings and photographs of the design sessions, artifacts produced during the sessions, and researchers’ field notes. Using a grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1998), we identified emergent themes from the design sessions related to students’ and program providers’ design goals. Two researchers coded the data independently to ensure codes were applied consistently and accurately. We shared our interpretations of the coded data with design session participants as member checks.

Results
We identified four primary design goals held by students and program providers: (1) make life easier: Program providers underscored the importance of integrating the badge system into their everyday practices in a way that supports the coordination of program logistics; (2) support social life: Students wanted to see a social component of the online badge platform, for instance, the ability to leave encouraging messages on each other’s profiles; (3) make sharing easy: Students wanted control over where and with whom to share their badges outside the program; and (4) ensure validity: Program providers and students wanted to ensure that the metadata associated with each badge were clear and robust enough to be meaningful to external stakeholders like college admissions officers.

Significance
This research informs our understanding of how the perspectives and values of key stakeholders—namely, students and program providers—affect the design of digital badge systems. Further research is needed to understand how involving these stakeholders in the design process ultimately impacts student engagement and learning.

Authors

• Katie Davis, University of Washington

• Adam Bell, University of Washington - Seattle