Choosing a Mascot |Epic

This market research is intended to help develop the best avatar or mascot for youth 

Team:

To MARS and Beyond

Agency:

NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2020 

NASA, CSA, CNES, JAXA, and ESA

Challenge:

Universal Event | Create a Mascot

Youth Challenge  

Youth are less involved now in the concept of the exploration of space as compared to the Space Age boo, of the 1950-60’s. This is due, in part, to the way the media communicated our space program issues. After the catastrophe with the Space Shuttle Challenger, students were more afraid of space exploration due to the highly hazardous components. The launch failure was not only broadcast in many countries, but it affected each person in a different way. Some were motivated to improve the safety and create solutions to prevent 0-ring failures, and some were not motivated at all because they saw it was a failing industry. Youth were not encouraged to do many science events and projects related to outer space again until recently after the development of Space X program. 

The Concept | Create a way back

We are challenged to entice the youth to return to space exploration as we ramp up our interests in traveling to MARS to begin a colony. 

We are also commercializing Space and preparing for the ISS to host non-science persons to experience outer space and complete projects. The Space Agencies from around the world are working today to restore the trust and faith in the space program. 

“In 2014, NASA-CNES moved Forward with Global Water and Ocean Surface Mission”. (1)

  “In 2015, The “Open Innovation Hub for Expanding Humanosphere and Domain of Activity through Solar System Frontier Development” of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was selected for the innovation hub construction support, an operation conducted by the Japan Science and Technology agency (JST)”. (2)

“The Canadian Space Agency established in 1989, is responsible for coordinating all government-funded space activities in Canada. Some of the CSA's more high-profile projects include its robotics, most famously the Canadarm and Canadarm2.” (3)

As we understand the changes, we must also address the way that our youth receive this information. As the trend continues, social media is the platform of communication from ages 9-17. Youth younger than that are involved in public television and internet television for their sources of information. As the public television has sponsorships, the audience content is relatively wholesome and entertaining. The private or internet subscription television is more enticing and sometimes not appropriate for young audiences. For this report, we will focus on public television for marketing research and reformat it for social media. 

Marketing Researching “Likes”

How a Physicist and a robotics engineer created an Avatar

In an article from the Periodical Fast Company, a PBS Kids series (4) was evaluated to understand the trend towards bringing youth back into the curiosity stage about space. As we completed our research, we established that biomimicry would engage interactions in children and make it more understandable. That premise is our goal in this project. “Biomimicry is basically taking things that you learn in nature and in the outdoors and in the natural world, and using them for inventions and for innovation science,” (4).

Age Appropriate Connection

In the previous reference on Public Television, the cartoon, “Elinor Wonders Why” is a STEM-based cartoon series created by Daniel Whiteson. He is a physicist and astronomer. The lead cartoonist /robotics engineer is Jorge Cham. Both are parents of small children ages 3 - 6, however, their research is an excellent path to begin our journey into age appropriateness and likeability of a visible actor. “Even if you’re a science expert, you also need to work with a person who is an expert on the teaching of science to younger kids.” (4). With that in mind, we looked for more information from sources that are popular to an older audience, figures who have personality that captivates a youth or is “trending” in the community of social media. 

Popular Physicist and Audience Reception

• A new study by The Geena Davis Institute On Gender In Media and The Jel Sert Company called ”Mascots Matter”(7) examines how women and people of color are represented in the marketing mascots of top selling products, and the results are about what you might expect. The study surveyed the 500 best-selling consumer product categories, identifying 1,096 products with mascot character representation
• The categories of mascots included humans (celebrities), humanoids (like talking fruits), animals (like Tony the Tiger), or other characters that can be classified as a “being” (6) 
• The marketing research identified that male mascots outnumbered female mascots by 35%. Male mascots were shown to be more humorous than females by 15.8%. Finally, Female mascots were half as likely to be shown as commanding.

Initially, we were going to just create an avatar from popular or historical figures in space exploration. Famous Astronomers and Physicists like Dr. Carl Sagan, PhD, and Dr. Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, PhD came to mind. Then we wanted to tie in the theme of MARS, and researched historical figures such as Wilhelm Beer who prepared and published maps of MARS and Dr. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, PhD, who was the first person to be awarded a PhD in astronomy at Radcliffe College, at the time the women’s branch of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (5). Although she is not directly tied to MARS, she was a female who made discoveries when it was not popular for her gender to do so. In todays’ language she would be termed a “disruptor” and that is also a basis for our chosen avatar. Payne downplayed her discoveries because she was criticized, and another physicist, her supervisor, Henry Norris Russell was later credited with the discovery, having reached the same result by different means. Payne’s role stayed hidden from the wider scientific consciousness for several decades. (Fabbiano, 2020). Now that we have human options, we learned that as of 2018, brand mascots were found guilty of gender and racial bias. We needed to dive deeper into our ideation of non-binary subjects.

Choosing Non-Binary AI option

Gender and Subtypes

As of 2019, Gender issues have become everyday conversations. There are divisions on the subject, but the consensus is that it is going to stay in the forefront of social media and convention of family dynamics. Gender is associated with how a person feels inside and our audience is taught gender fluidity as early as pre-school 

How to maintain the trend

{Popularity} needs to be relevant and relatable. Our avatar should be neutral and aligned to it sole mission, communicate data to the end user in a non-threatening manner that is easily received. I have chosen an AI robot.

Our team has different paths in research so our data will be combined, and the solution will be displayed in our final product. (ItsRocketScience06) 

How The Brain plays a major part in our decision.

The research of the brain from our youth was conducted to understand the cognitive capacity children learn at. Craig Ramey from University of Alabama had created a study for children as young as 6 weeks. He tested them in an enriched environment that had playmates and opportunities for learning and playing. Over the 12 year period he had found that the children displayed to have higher IQs and brain-imaging revealed their brain was using more energy. What we can realize is that a child needs a social environment in order for it to be considered enriched. There was another study in Greenough on rats before previously studying the children. These rats that were tested in the same scenario and this was the result, “Rats do better when they interact with others rats and solve problem together. Humans are social creatures, and learning is a social activity. We must take care when we work with others to help them in their quest for learning.”(What we can learn From These studies.14.) This information concludes that the brain is sensitive to its environment o an enriched environment can make a successful impact on the child. This is only one example of evidence. 

What can we do with this information?

We are going to incorporate a mascot and his teammate to communicate with the children through a website. We want to use the information that is already out there but use a our mascots teammates as a filter for the information to be attained easily by the children. [This was done on  by Porust and Squid The Story and Science of the reading Brain]  This information has brought my team and I to focus on a video or some kind of interactive program to help with carrying over the information when clicked upon. (Chante Sneed)

When creating our researched we had used a majority of the data given to us. The information helped us move forward with idea and how to incorporate a real life product for the future. You can see the use of data we had sourced on the website as well as the the research page.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRdDyOELrpzpmVGrFyXg7uzB0w4c3C430VWAZghe-MKNAoNhqV6VJQKDv0Eep4vCg/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=3000

We used Amazon web account

We use GoDaddy Registry Domainname

We used the Miro account 

We used CNES, CSA, and NASA's open source data...