by Armaghan Zhand -

COLLABORATIVE CRITICAL PRACTICE: DESIGNING A CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOK WITH RESETTLED REFUGEES

About the Thesis

  • Kelsey A. Johnson, B.A.
    Texas State University
    Master of Fine Arts
    with a Major in Communication Design
    May 2020

Level of design

It seems that the layout is not the same on all pages and the lines are not justified, the indent is too high, the distance between paragraphs and the topics are varies throughout the thesis, this inconsistency is confusing for the reader and makes the reading process complicated and time-consuming.

They used some small fonts in a context that are hard to read, some pictures are so small.

For evaluating the picture book designed by the authors, I will say they did a great job using painted pictures and nice fonts related to the story.

Degree of innovation

I think the other books for or about refugees even ones who told by the refugees don’t talk much about the cultural gaps which exist between refugees/immigrants and the local people, but in this case, they had a questionnaire, a great survey in existing data and books and held different workshops getting help from the refugee children, and that resulted in addressing many of the mentioned issues so I will consider this thesis innovative.

Independence

It is a very good example of how a study can be carried out independently and not get directed by the partners along the way.

Outline and structure

The outline is so well structured and it is very clear and easy to follow, the abstract is understandable even for the readers who are not familiar with the topic, also the readers will find what should they expect from this thesis.

The table of context is in detail but a little long, I think I will do mine in a shorter version, they have a storyboard and the rest of it is really well done.

Degree of communication

They managed to have a clear and understandable glossary which made the text easy to read.

Scope of the work

The authors worked a lot on reviewing and analyzing the exciting book, the gaps which children face as a refugee and immigrants, and the history of the books written in this field and also engaged children in their project so in my opinion they did a great job and made a lot of efforts.

Orthography and accuracy

I am not an expert in this field but I didn’t see any problem while reading.

Literature

Although the style and method they had used is so innovative but they managed to use and cite a lot of directed sources and the bibliography.

by Armaghan Zhand -

Refugees and local people in host countries

I started my thesis research on the refugee’s problem and tried to go with designing an educational platform that can facilitate their educational challenges but when I went further with this idea I found it needs professional skills in psychology and educating, so I changed my way to work on the communicating problems so I did researches and also meet with refugees and a guy who was responsible for the young center which offered free programs and snacks to youngsters including refugees during the summer, I came to a conclusion of what I did till now so I found that there is a big gap between these two groups of people,

and what I want to do as an interaction designer is to bridge these gaps.

At this point, one of my colleagues and I decide to do the project together but with divided tasks, she will do the practical and technological part and I will do the theoretical part and do the researches, as the start point we did some brainstorming about what the gaps might be and did the short questionnaire, in this questionnaire, we categorized the gaps caused to cultural, lingual, … .

We will analyze the data in this step and I will plan to do some interviews with the refugees.

by Armaghan Zhand -

Games and Education

My target group is Immigrant/refugee children in the age of primary school and my goal is to design an interactive education system.

I thought the best approach will be using games and education in conjunction.

During my research I found that these children facing different challenges such as Lack of efficient Communication, Bilingual, Multicultural problems and …, until they get adopted to the new atmosphere and system.

Designers can facilitate the path for every user to gain their goals as in the education system designing new methods based on games.

by Armaghan Zhand -

DESIGN AN EDUCATION SYSTEM BASED ON GAMIFICATION.

Statement of the problem

I was born and raised during the IRAN_IRAQ war that’s why I care more about children, as I think children have missed their childhood in countries suffering from war and as an Iranian woman who has a history of working with marginalized and immigrant children in Iran, I think that one of the most important problems of recently immigrated children is the lack of effective and appropriate communication with local children, as well as unfamiliarity with the new rules, culture, and environment, which can cause much bigger problems in the long term.

In most cases even the language of these children is different, so teaching will be a difficult task for them, one of the methods that have been effective in my work experience is teaching through games and doing group art, so designing an educational method based on gamification for immigrant and refugee children can be on of the topics which I am interested into search and develop for my master thesis.