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Bouwkeet

Duration

13 weeks

Team

6 People

Bouwkeet

Student team Project

Year

2025

Duration

13 weeks

Overview

Children and families in Rotterdam West, many from low socio-economic backgrounds, lack accessible opportunities to build both hard (technical/practical) and soft (creative, collaborative, problem-solving) skills. Although Bouwkeet’s free after-school programs provide these opportunities, three challenges remain:
Bouwkeet struggles to track and communicate the progress of individual children.
Parents, often facing language and literacy barriers, find it difficult to understand why the programs are beneficial.
Children themselves are often unaware of what they are learning and how they are progressing. As a result, the personal growth and achievements of participants remain largely invisible, reducing children’s motivation, limiting family engagement, and making it harder for Bouwkeet to demonstrate its impact.

My roles

This project was developed in a team of six using Scrum, which allowed me to contribute across all stages of the project. I was involved in user research, where we explored user needs to guide our direction. I also participated in ideation and prototyping, helping to generate concepts and bring them to life through design. Through usability testing, I gathered feedback and refined solutions to improve the overall experience. In addition, I contributed to building a physical installation, translating our ideas into a tangible, interactive outcome.

Background & User Needs:

  • Bouwkeet, a makerspace in Rotterdam West, offers free after-school programs aimed at children (8-15) from low-income neighborhoods.
  • Parents face language and literacy barriers, making it hard for them to understand or see their child's development and the program's value.
  • Staff/facilitators struggle to effectively track, document, and communicate children’s progress.
  • The programs are highly valued, popular, and demonstrate steady skill development.
  • Firsthand experience (e.g., school visits & field trips) is most effective in attracting new children.
  • Communication with parents is challenging due to language barriers, requiring more visual and accessible methods.
  • These programs develop both hard skills (woodworking, electronics, digital fabrication) and soft skills (creativity, teamwork, problem-solving).
  • Children are often unaware of their own learning progress and personal growth.
  • The core issue is invisibility of growth, which impacts motivation, family engagement, and the ability to showcase impact.

Key Issues & Focus

Bouwkeet gives kids a safe and fun place to make things, explore ideas, and build real skills.The kids learn a lot, both practical stuff like using tools and creative thinking, and personalthings like teamwork, confidence, and problem-solving. But most of this growth happens behindthe scenes. Parents don’t really get to see what their kids are learning, and many only see thefinal result during the end show. Because of that, it’s hard for them to understand the real valueof the program.

Our focus is on finding ways to show and communicate that value better, to make the kids’learning and development trackable, visible and understandable. We want to highlight both thecreative and personal skills kids gain at Bouwkeet, and show how much impact the experiencereally has.

Design direction

How might we make kids’ learning and growth at Bouwkeet visible, meaningful, and fun for them to explore and share?

Final product

An interactive installation that contains three essential parts:
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● An interactive screen
● Arduino + NFC technology + puck
● Main body
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Main body:

The main body of the installation is made out of styro foam that was later painted and decorated with grass/plant resembling decorations. Additionally, a tree made out of modelling clay. The installation is mostly inspired by the UI of the main interaction. Since the UI contained floating islands we tried our best to make the installation also look like an island to promote continuity. The installation is to be placed inside the workshop. Each workshop would have its own installation with differing styles/aesthetics in different workshops. The installation that we made is for the wood working workshop..

Arduino + NFC technology

The vision is that each kid has their personal puck that allows them to access their personal development. The puck would be placed in a dedicated area on the installation that would grant the individual access to see their development. The puck contains an nfc chip that could be read by an nfc reader in the installation. The nfc reader is powered by an arduino that's located at the back of the installation. Additionally, activating the puck technology initiates additional lights on the installation to give the user a confirmation that it is working.

Interactive screen


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