Because the target audience is not only kids or adults but the whole family, it was important to talk to them in groups. They sat together and finished the questions that I had for them.
-10 Family’s were asked to participate.
-11 Adults and 21 kids in total.
-There were 2 fathers and 9 mothers involved.
-The ages of the children varied between 1 and 11 years old.
The survey contained questions about possible subjects and titles for the exhibition. For example: “which words pop into your head when you think of the deep ocean?”. To answer this question, the parents read the answers (dark, mysterious, creepy) out loud and the children gave them a thumb up or down whenever they felt like the answer spoke to them. It was a really good experience for me to see how effective it is for research to have the parents and kids working together.
Family’s were also encouraged trough the survey to think about threats for the deep oceans: “Do we, humans, effect the deep ocean?” And also: “Should we care about the deep oceans? and why?”
The parents actually explained their kids what was meant by these questions, as a lot of them were too young to really understand. As the topic was discussed, they again came to an answer together. Beautiful!
The question about the possible title of the exhibition was the most fun. Children are deadly honest and they will yell right away whether they like it or not. Most families came to the conclusion that “Deep Oceans: The mysteries below” would be the best exhibition title. The following reasons were given:
-Because it is still a mystery
-Because the deep ocean is interesting
-Because ‘mysteries’ sounds like we will learn all sorts of things we didn’t know.
We already did some front end evaluation on this topic, the out comings were actually similar to the family survey out comings. Go here for more!