Curious Explorers| Create a Mascot
Awards & Nominations
Curious Explorers has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Create a Mascot
Waio - The Curious Explorer
Summary
Waio, the monkey astronaut, is curious, playful, clever, brave and kind-hearted. It loves to explore and is always going on adventures looking for wonder. Waio's been to space several times but keeps going back because there's so much more left to discover. Waio's favourite expressions to use are "Why?" and "Oh!".
How We Addressed This Challenge
We started with our audience in mind: children aged 5 to 9. We wanted to let them know what NASA does, what astronauts do, and why space exploration is important. We wanted to make it easier for them to understand concepts, such as the scale of things and how to quantify them with the help of the International System of (SI) Units. Ultimately, we want to inspire curiosity, playful exploration, and cooperation.
We were able to send out a survey to children in that age range in India and Australia, and obtained nearly 40 responses. All of the children surveyed were drawn towards space exploration. Many knew facts about the earth and the solar system already, and were hungry for more knowledge. To our delight, many children identified with fictional characters with special abilities or traits, which were often cartoon characters that weren’t human.
For the sake of being inclusive, light-hearted, and whimsical, we decided to choose a non-human mascot.
By default, all space missions rely on robots in one form or another. Robots are increasingly becoming more clever and capable - they are much needed for future explorations, especially to harsh and dangerous environments. However, robots have been featured too much in science fiction and pop-culture. Hence, one of the secondary characters will be a robot, but it will not be the mascot.
Most importantly, we found out that the first living things sent into space were animals, such as primates (chimpanzees and monkeys), dogs, and mice etc.
Most of these animals unfortunately died during the testing of spaceship launches. The causes of their tragic deaths ultimately resulted in the improvement of spaceflights for future human astronauts. These animals are heroes! Without them, human astronauts could not have gone into space. Therefore, we would like to pay homage to those animals and fellow earth citizens.
For our mascot, we have chosen a monkey, with special guest appearances from crew members: a dog and a robot. All three astronauts possess traits that are good for learning, exploring, and working well in teams. We hope to expand upon the dog and robot characters in the future, but for now, we will focus on one mascot.
Monkeys inherently come with stereotypical traits. We decided to use this to our advantage.
Our mascot the monkey, named Waio, is curious, adaptable (especially in foreign environments), agile (quick on its hands and feet), and very clever. Its favourite words are "why" and "oh", which form its name when combined.
We hope children would be inspired by Waio’s curiosity.
How We Developed This Project
Children are natural scientists. They are curious about how the world works, and are constantly seeking answers. We wanted to make this quest as fun and easy as possible. We want to celebrate curiosity and inspire children to become lifelong explorers.
The survey responses also influenced our decision.
We started with the definition of what a mascot is: A mascot is any human, non-human animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity. Mascots are also used as fictional, representative spokespeople for consumer products.
The design of Waio and friends was created from scratch by team leader Nalisha Chouraria, who is a child culture designer and illustrator. She used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Other team members were Sebastian Nilsson (software engineer and demo slide deck lead) and Sarah Li (medical doctor and project lead).
We picked specific scenarios or facts in space that would promote NASA and exemplify Waio’s traits. For instance, could Waio play music in outer space? What would Waio do in the International Space Station (ISS)? How big is the ISS?
The problems we encountered were mostly logistical. Team members were based in different locations and it was hard to coordinate the work online. We could not have met each other in person.
Fortunately we overcame the distance problem with video calls and file sharing solutions. We are happy with the minimal viable product created - our mascot Waio - The Curious Explorer.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
As well as multimedia and image galleries, NASA has a website full of information about everything ranging from the ISS (via virtual tours), spacewalks and spacesuits, and inventions from space.
Our mascot would serve as a fun guide to introduce children to NASA and space exploration, and then encourage them to seek more knowledge from the NASA website and other trusted sources.
In its final form, our mascot and story scenarios could be packaged into a web or mobile application that would complement the NASA website.
Project Demo
Here is our demonstration slide deck.
(Or copy and paste the direct link https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C9tiEfRSLWV2NutgUmYmmuc-BMk-tHFkv3R3l3pOmk0/edit?usp=sharing)
In summary, Waio - The Curious Explorer could be packaged into a web or mobile application that would complement the NASA website, and inspire curiosity, playful exploration, and cooperation in children.
Thank you for your consideration!
Data & Resources
- International System of Units - The Metric Measurement System. https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oce/functions/standards/isu.html
- NASA Animals in Space. https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Animals_in_Space_9-12.html
- NASA Space Monkey Training. https://texasarchive.org/2008_00327
- Laika the dog and first animals in space. https://www.space.com/17764-laika-first-animals-in-space.html
- Mascot (Wikipaedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascot
- Nalisha Chouraria at Studio Oddball. https://studiooddball.com/
- Adobe Products. https://www.adobe.com/products/catalog.html
- Sebastian Nilsson's Website. https://sebastiannilsson.com/
- Sarah Li's Website. https://about.me/sarah.li
- NASA International Space Station. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
- NASA Image and Video Library. https://images.nasa.gov/
- NASA Image Galleries. https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html
- NASA Spacewalk Spacesuits. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/spacewalk-spacesuit-basics/
- 20 things we wouldn't have without space travel. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358
- NASA (homepage). https://www.nasa.gov/