IKO--The Pupil's Best Friend

iko is a diploma project by five CRMA students
enrolled at Gobelins, l'école de l'image (Paris). It culminates a two year graduate course in Interactive Digital Media Design and Development.
The philosophy behind iko is committed to an experimental user-orientated road and our project takes advantage of a favourable context, namely, the advent of digital education in France.
It caters to real demands while at the same time
it is in tune with the practices of your average high school student.(Abstract from Iko's official website)

I had a short,but very profound and educational interview with iko's brilliant members,and hereby i would like to share the interview with all of you,feeling these five young students' passion and ideas!

Where this project (IKO--The Pupil's Best Friend) idea comes from?Is it inspired by your own students' experiences or by observing the pupils' education environment today?

This idea comes from a long process. It’s not an “eureka” idea

At first we decided to make a project about education because we all wanted to make a project useful for a lot of people. And it’s always important to improve the way the children learn.

So at first we had our subject, it’s education. The next step was to define our target group. We chose French junior high school (11-14 year-old) because we inspired by our own experience that it was one of the most difficult parts of our study lives. And social interaction is another issue always bothers a large number of teenagers.

Thanks to this reflection process, we chose 3 main aspects that we wanted to improve for the pupil : Learning, Socialization and Organization.

During all this process, we read books, met people, collected statistics to enrich our knowledge of French present education situation. Then we wondered about the product application mode : an application for smart phones, a new touch-screen device, an application for computer, a website … ? Finally, digital pens came into our minds and after a few weeks thinking about that we chose to use a digital pen and to make a desktop application.

Would you like to introduce me about the basic situation of teenagers' study in France now?Such as how many homework hours per week in generally a pupil is supposed to have?

The teenagers have to be at school around 30 hours per week and they have around 5 hours of homework to do(within one week).


What was original purposes of this project ?

The original purpose was to make the process of doing homework more fun and much easier for pupils. However, we did NOT mean to change the way how pupils study in classroom. It’s why we developed a digital pen.
We wanted to improve their learning process (to have access to all their notes and homework into their computers) their organization (to have immediate access to a digital calendar which will be synchronised with their paper calendar) and the socialization (to provide them with the chance of helping each other).

Targeted in 11-14 years old teenagers,how do you deal with the interface design?Is this project involved some highlights special for this age bracket students?

We wanted an interface more ergonomic than "pretty".
We worked on an interface design optimized because it is important forus to make sure that pupils could access to the information they’re searching for as much quickly as possible.

They are digital natives, they're ease with technology so that we didn't have to make an easier interface. The user tests were decisive.

We let them select some features, kind of shortcuts, and organize them in the interface. This way they have a space personalized according to their needs. It is important at this age that they can appropriate themselves services.

In some european countries,or even over the world,a majority of people still prefer the traditional study method----using pen and paper to make notes and to do homework.Therefore,do you think some digital education approaches like IKO presents us is a future development trend?

I think there will be more and more digital education approaches in the future since when hi-tech are used in a smart way then it can help teachers and students to work much more efficient. And it’s important for students to use technology in daily life because it’s a real essential skill in our technological world today.

How many users are using and how many people aer willing to use this product?May I ask your marketing research results?

This project should be used at least in one classroom, because the teacher has to prepare digital lessons. If an entire middle school would use this device, or several middle schools, it would allow interclass exchange of advices, contents. The device would be used in an optimal way.
In France, each year we have special classes dedicated to try out new technologies, it would be a great opportunity to test our application during an entire year in at least one of those classes.

Do you have any special intention about your next project?Which career field are you focusing on?

I’m trying to focus on projects which can help people to build a better world with digital media. And I’ll always try to do these projects in a fun and original ways. (Developer:Sébastien Bourdu)

(Text contribution and writing by Sébastien Bourdu and Claire Sidoli; Editing by GuanJun Liu; Photos from iko team) Mon Nov 29, 2010

More information about iko project and product,please read iko official website.
iko team members: Arnaud Tanielian Project Manager/Developer; Claire Sidoli Graphic Designer; Sébastien Bourdu Developer; Solène Bellégo Graphic Designer; Jocelyn Lecamus Developer