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Intended audience: ages 4-10

Primary purpose: Play! Adventure with Polly and friends (no educational agenda)

Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Polly-Pocket-Wall-Party-Treehouse/dp/B0094FZO4E/ref=sr_1_1?s=kids&ie=UTF8&qid=1453977146&sr=1-1&keywords=polly+pocket

When I was six year old, one of my most cherished possessions was my Polly Pocket doll. A small, petite, blond plastic toy, Polly evoked my creativity as I conjured up imaginary worlds and adventures. The subject of our play, however, was limited in scope to all things deemed stereotypically “girly.”

Inspired by my past parasocial relationship with Polly and its implicit influence on my own development, I have chosen to evaluate a new Polly Pocket set available on Amazon (Polly Pocket Wall Party Treehouse). My evaluation is guided by Wartella’s framework for creating new media. Specifically, I have honed in on diversity and value for my redesign.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The Polly Pocket Wall Party Treehouse is a multiple level play set for the iconic Polly Pocket doll. It includes removable pieces so children can customize their Polly Pocket adventure— interacting with a slide, zip line, basket, Polly doll, and her pet, kitty.

DIVERSITY

Review:

At first glance, this gendered product portrays limited diversity. Polly, herself, is a blond, thin, attractive female. While the toy does not “exploit” stereotypes, it does not provide a variety of diverse dolls to interact with the play set. There is no option to choose a different format of the doll. Attempts at diversity are limited to including graphic representation of Polly’s friends on the cover of the box. However, such inclusions of clearly fake, diverse, friends are juxtaposed by the image of the included blond Polly doll. This Polly doll is not a graphic drawing, but rather, a real component. I believe that the clear distinction is an interesting design choice!

Redesign:

Polly Pocket has a large gap to fill in terms of creating an appealing product for children from a variety of racial backgrounds. I believe that one approach to sparking more meaningful para-social relationships for a larger audience is to create dolls that resemble different races. If affordability is a problem for some families, Polly Pocket might also redesign the product to include a base model and various ‘add-on’ features for those who can afford it. This way, socioeconomic status will not be a large deterrent for children to play with the toy.

INTERACTIVITY/ EDUCATION

Review:

This Polly Pocket set has received glowing reviews on Amazon. The toy is not meant to be educational, but rather for play. I believe that its format succeeds in achieving this goal— children are able to safely play and modify the set. As many other doll toys, Polly Pocket does not offer many simulations for “real life choices” or a large exposure to new and interesting ideas. It does, however, foster a sense of community by providing children the opportunity to join a social network connecting Polly Pocket doll users.

VALUE

Review:

Clearly, this toy is very fun for children of the appropriate age and gender demographic. The content and format of the toy is valuable as it promotes play and creativity. Furthermore, it promotes gender diversity by creating a product in which girls are not limited to explore topics with clearly feminine stereotypes, such as the fashion set I grew up with. Rather, it portrays Polly as an adventurous “maker.” She has the capabilities of thriving in the outdoors, and building her own fun moments.

Redesign:

I think the message of subtle female empowerment in this toy can be strengthened. Because the hands-on features resemble engineering toys for boys, I believe it could be an incredible stepping stone to increase female exposure to STEM at a young age. To incorporate this new vision, inspirational quotes and messages regarding the power of females would be added to the box. For example, phrases such as “Build the future with me” or “I can do anything” or “Learn how engineering is awesome” might spark a sense of self-confidence in girls.

ARTISTRY

Review:

The general aesthetic of the toy is very appealing. With bright colors, removable pieces, and wall-mounted features, Polly Pocket supports its play value. The various pieces are engaging. However, it is difficult to confirm this remotely through the internet.

SAFETY

Review:

On Amazon, there were no negative reviews re: safety. Explicit instructions for safely engaging with the toy were provided in multiple locations on the product description.

The website’s focus is to teach the fundamentals of programming and computer science to students aged 4 – 18 (I focused on the 4-6 year old activities).

Review

Aside from teaching younger students the fundamentals of coding and computer science, studio.code.org also exposes them to the idea that coders can be of any background whether it be female, black, hispanic, or athletic. The front page of the website is covered with a myriad of coding activities that a student can click on, ranging from coding fundamentals to coding games with characters from Frozen/Star Wars. This gives users a lot to choose from, but at the same time, the choices are all appealing. I played a Star Wars coding game and did a few coding fundamentals.

For the coding fundamentals, the course started with a video that introduced pair programming – the idea of coding with a partner. This video was interesting as it did two things. One it was presented by two little girls, with one being caucasian and one being black. Two it also talked about how to treat your partner with respect and not fight over the mouse. It also encouraged the pair to communicate and talk with each other. I thought this was really nice because it exposed users – especially young ones – to the idea that demographics that are usually underrepresented in tech can code. After the video it had me go through a few mouse clicking and drag and drop exercises. I think this is useful because it not only gets young users familiar with how the mechanics of course’s lessons but also dragging and dropping objects on the computer in general. Once these drag and drop exercises were completed the next thing the course had me do were basic block code problems involving Angry Birds characters. It had me drag and drop blocks that directed the bird to go in certain directions. My job was to guide the bird to the pigs. Presenting code in the form of simple blocks is a method used at UC Berkeley and Harvard and is a very common way for teaching coding. Doing it this way helps users develop the intuition behind functions or methods, which are essentially blocks of code meant to perform a certain purpose. After a lesson on blocks, the course moves onto a basic look over algorithms. Before starting to code, a fun video about making chocolate is shown and algorithms are presented as instructions on how to do something, which is a basic but great way of doing so. The algorithm activities were filling in steps and directions. From the fundamentals I decided to play the Star Wars coding game, which involved similar mechanics as the lessons, but were less directed. I was left to solve the problems on my own. It was fun to see how they utilized the droids from Star Wars as characters.

Overall, it was a really great way of presenting and teaching 4-6 year olds how to code. The games and lessons were fun and interactive. The inclusion of characters from popular culture was really nice as well. In addition, the videos that were shown added a great dimension to the whole experience. They touched on subjects such as perseverance, respect, and communication. The videos also does a great job at focusing on people who are underrepresented in tech. Throughout the video I saw girls and boys who were black and hispanic. I think this is valuable for development because this would essentially be telling young users that anyone can code.

Redesign

The biggest thing that I would redesign about the site is who it focuses on. As of now a lot of the games show “All Ages” or even “4 – 18.” While the games and lessons can be play by people in middle school or high school, they wouldn’t be very fun or too educational. On top of that, almost all the videos had children who were introducing the topics. Overall, I it felt like it was trying to appeal to too many ages. This can be summed up by a look of the front page:

To me the front page can be redesigned to represent what age group the lessons are focusing on. For example it can look like this:

To me the front page can be redesigned to represent what age group the lessons are focusing on. For example it can look like this:

Here there are dedicated tabs at the top for each age group. By selecting an age group at the top users would be brought to a different web page that is dedicated for just users of those ages. That way, each age group web page could be decorated differently to reflect users. Ages 4 – 6, for example, could have the background filled with Star Wars or Frozen characters. Similarly, ages 14 – 18 can have a more sleek and modern design that is more mature.