Most school supply learning products and classroom décor are produced with little attention paid to good information design, color usage or visual design best practices. My M.F.A. thesis research focused on potential benefits of applying good design principles to learning materials and classroom design. After presenting findings to the Eastern Education Research Association in 2010, I refined five product concepts inspired by the research and assembled a business launch plan and brand. I took the line, under the name Classroom of the Clouds, to market at the 2011 National School Supply Association's trade show, winning Best New Exhibitor and earning industry buyer attention.
Human and business goals
I created Classroom of the Clouds with the goal of introducing a new vision of design quality into the K-5 school supply market. The brand’s point of view is that design matters in learning materials: conscious use of color, typography, and graphic restraint can produce modern, clean, readable learning products; easier on the eyes means faster, more effective learning. My objective was to take an initial line of modern learning products to market and prove their effectiveness over competitor materials through simplicity and design-conscious innovation.
Challenges
My biggest challenge was overcoming barriers to market entry. The school supply market is seasonal and thrives on very slight margins; my most exciting product, the Interactive Word Wall, earned industry attention from several buyers, but was only tightly profitable at scale, even after negotiating with overseas manufacturers. Ultimately, my experience deficit in raising and converting capital led to the denouement of the venture, despite demonstrated demand for the line and wholesaler interest, and winning the award of Best New Exhibitor at the NSSEA tradeshow.
Role + team
I originated all product design, packaging design, business planning and tradeshow booth design. I partnered with an elementary school teacher for my M.F.A. research, and also worked with financial, legal, supply, and startup advisors for go-to-market efforts.
The project began with my M.F.A. thesis research topic, which examined the potential benefits of applied design to elementary school classrooms and learning materials. I noticed while helping my sister, a fourth-grade teacher, set up her classroom that typical public school classrooms are a hodgepodge of colors, graphic styles, posters, decorations and shapes. Most teachers create or re-use informational posters to fill the walls in their classrooms, purchase posters that are non-uniform in style, and use many bright colors to back bulletin boards. The overall effect is very visually active. What if classrooms were designed with conscious application of color, poster usage and visual style? Could that result in better, faster learning?
My M.F.A. paper collated several studies of psychology-of-perception research performed in learning and working environments, including color studies, stimulus studies and other findings. I also interviewed elementary school teachers on their techniques and needs, identifying gaps in the design of many of their teaching resources.
Insights from both written and field research inspired several innovative product ideas. I sketched out several concepts, then selected five of the top ideas to prototype for new business. After testing the products in teacher focus groups, I moved on to market research and completed the concepts by building a business plan.
The first step in launching a new-market concept is creating a unique brand. In doing so, I developed a brand mission, vision and promise, and created a logo and visual system that could be applied across packaging design, marketing materials and tradeshow booth concepts.
Classroom of the Clouds’ initial product launch included five new classroom learning products. Designing the products themselves involved several rounds of materials prototyping, along with elementary school teacher focus groups and in-room testing.
The Interactive Word Wall was the first product in the line, originally inspired by a teacher’s bulletin board with words in plastic sleeves. Inserting the word cards into sleeves was too cumbersome for students, so no one ever played with her word board station. I knew better design could fix the situation. So, I concepted a set of color-coded words that originally involved applying strips of Velcro to a bulletin board, then sticking the words on them to compose sentences and poetry. The word tiles were printed on foamcore at first; however, as I worked with overseas suppliers, I opted for a magnetic solution for cost and ease of manufacture.
The Interactive Word Wall is a set of 375 magnetic word tiles color-coded by part of speech, based on the Dolch sight word list. The product is intended for use as a major visual design element in the classroom, covering more than 16 square feet of wall space when fully set up. Tiles can be placed on pre-existing magnetic surfaces in the classroom such as a whiteboard, or installed onto open wall space using included specially produced adhesive magnet stripping. The large number and variety of word tiles cover a broad language base, allowing sentences to be built and words to be grouped with ease.
Benefits
• Beautiful, functional, meaningful classroom décor
• Endless classroom design possibilities
• Fun, colorful, visual and interactive
• Boosts kids’ physical activity levels
• Facilitates spontaneity and creativity
• Customizable and expandable
• Great for spatial and visual learners
• Versatile teaching tool
Classroom applications
• Formal language lessons: Can be used to teach parts of speech, sentence structure, clauses and phrases, poetry, punctuation, sight words and more.
• Informal learning and spontaneous play: Impromptu sentence building and poetry.
• Useful for graphic organizers such as word webs, T-charts, Venn diagrams, concept clouds and many more.
• Group or individual learning: Useful as a learning station for groups or individuals.
• Playrooms, bedrooms and more: Use for home-schooling and in libraries or community centers.
Vacation Cards are a unique behavior tool for teachers, designed to offer flexible, targeted small rewards for students on an as-needed basis. Cards contain instructions for a short activity or exercise. The set includes 100 cards: Four categories of 25 cards each, along with a built-in dispenser. Vacations offer different kinds of stimulation, from encouraging (Beach) to relaxing (Spa), to energizing (Mountain) or mentally challenging (Space).
Benefits
• Keeps students’ energy and attention levels stable throughout the school day by providing targeted releases when needed
• Helps to prevent disruptions by channelling students’ excess energy into a positive outlet, before it burns over into a problem
• Rewarding, constructive and fun for kids, who love to turn over a mystery card
• Quick and simple for teachers
The inspiration for this product came directly from a fourth grade teacher, who expressed a wish to have some kind of product that could allow a very brief release or reward for students without giving out candy or stickers.
The Social Grid is a system of personal foamboard tiles that allow students to build a sense of classroom community and express their individual identities. Each student populates his or her own space with notes, photos, art and other ephemera, and may also interact with others’ spaces by posting notes or stickers.
The product was inspired by teacher and parent insights related to preparing students for social media later in their development, and preventing cyberbullying by practicing pro-social interactions.
Classroom applications
• Character education: Teachers can use the Social Grid for lessons on respecting others’ spaces, giving compliments, writing thank-you notes and interacting with good manners.
• Classroom management: The system can be effective for issuing reminders, ‘see me’ notes, handing back papers and communicating with students. Students may also post badges indicating chores or other duties.
• Rewards and recognition: Teachers can post exceptional work to students’ tiles as a spotlight, post awards or stickers, or highlight a student of the week.
Benefits
• Helps kids practice respect and learn to be part of a community in an easily monitored setting, before they enter the world of online social media
• Fosters free, open-ended creative expression and personal identity development
• A multipurpose, meaningful, living classroom feature that can be used for formal and informal or spontaneous functions
• Fun, visual and creative
• Flexible and customizable as a major classroom wall installation
Pop-up Shelves are foldable paperboard tiles that can be stapled to bulletins to form displays of small items, artwork or lightweight books. Each 8.5” x 11” shelf board comes pre-cut and scored in such a way that they form a level shelf when folded.
Classroom applications
• Recommended reading boards: Shelves can support childrens’ books, magazines or other reading material to form 3D recommended reading boards
• Teaching displays: Teachers can load shelves with items such as number tiles or art media and post instructions nearby for learning stations
• Galleries and other displays: Shelves can display small sculptures, projects, journals, artwork and other items
After negotiating with manufacturers, I assembled product sell sheets with wholesale pricing information, shipping logistics (products per box and pallet), product dimensions and other descriptions.
The school supply industry is a seasonal one and typically hosts its major tradeshow in the spring in advance of the summer and fall back-to-school buying period. As I finished up product concepting in the fall of 2011, I signed up to attend the National School Supply Association’s annual tradeshow, Ed Expo. I had worked with 3D and booth designs before as part of a 3D studio in my M.F.A. program, and came up with a 10x20 space featuring a dramatic branded backdrop, a seating area and product displays.
Out of more than 180 first-time exhibitors, Classroom of the Clouds was awarded the honor of Best New Exhibitor.
Starting up Classroom of the Clouds was a tremendous experience. After Ed Expo 2012, I negotiated most notably with California-based chain Lakeshore Learning, who wished to test-market the Interactive Word Wall. Ultimately, however, I couldn’t manufacture the sets at a small scale for Lakeshore without taking on six-figure risk, which led to the denouement of the venture.
Over the eighteen months spent passionately developing the concepts and business models, I learned a great deal about supply logistics, financials, risk, legal issues in business, scalability, and other concepts. The experience set me up with sharp business sensibilities in my design career, and it’s provided an advantage in relating with my product partners in that regard.
“The only thing worse than starting something and failing... is not starting something." — Seth Godin, founder of Squidoo, author, blogger