NASA & Adobe XD Creative Jam Event

During my time in UX boot camp at General Assembly, NASA and Adobe XD held an event called UX Design Bootcamp Creative Jam. To participate I had to join or create a team and I joined a friend named Theo C Nguyen and we set out to work, we attend the debrief and learned what was out challenge


Space is a subject that engages children and encourages them to ask questions about the world around them. Through learning about our Solar System, children can apply and build on concepts they have already learned and develop an understanding of the vast world beyond our planet.

Your challenge is to help kids learn more about space exploration by teaching about a single or multiple NASA JPL missions. Design a third-party (not NASA JPL branded) Android tablet or Apple iPad app that provides an engaging way for kids to learn and share space stories, facts, and topics.

Spacecraft developed at JPL have flown to every planet in the solar system and the Sun, and beyond. JPL topics that may be covered are: Solar System, Mars, Earth, Climate Change, Stars and Galaxies, Exoplanets, and Technology Development. This app experience, to be designed for kids between 11 to 13 years old (grades 6 to 8), may include gaming, gallery, educational content, or any combination of functions that you feel would help them learn more about the latest science, robotics, and spacecraft.


Having in this mind we set out to find the best way to approach this problem. First of all we started by creating survey questions that would be suitable for children between 11 to 13 years and would give us an insight of how to create this project to their preferences.
We asked several questions such as

How would you travel around the galaxy?
Before you visit a planet, what would you like to know about it?
What are some items you will bring along in your travels?

With these questions we are able to understand what type of UI and designs we should use. We started gathering data from the surveys, we had 66 responses from a local middle school, we used affinity and topic mapping to find trends among the various responses.
We found the the major trends were the fear of the unknown, adventure, the need for family
Having all this data we headed down to Miro for brainstorming sessions, we brainstormed various ideas and options and designs on how our product should look like. After all the brainstorming, we created a user flow of how we expect our users to use our product and what they should expect.
We moved into the process of designing, we used Adobe XD for this project and we started with various templates and layouts, we iterated upon some and changed and redesigned some features. We agreed upon a space travel journey with the option of choosing your spaceship and the technology that comes with it, this gives kids an idea of what the NASA JPL level is in terms of technology. You will be asked to choose a companion who is an astronaut and gain recognition for an act will accompany you in your journey, a short description about your companion will be given, after that you will be prompted to choose a planet within the milky way, a dialogue box describing the planet and its features. Upon arrival you are given a task to solve leading to a small minigame, complete all tasks given and you will be given an award for fully exploring the planet, explore all the planets and another award will be given as an astronaut explorer and unlock other solar systems for more exploring.
After one week had gone we started iterating various UI components and made the animations smoother and faster. We reviewed our work and made sure we had dotted our I’s and crossed our T’s and moved on to the essay. We were required to write an essay of what we all had done within 150 words. It was difficult because we had done so many things so making a list of priorities was important, but we handled it and here is the essay


Today kids are amazed by what we humans have discovered in the vast universe. We went to a local middle school to find out what kids think about space and created a solution to address their needs in an intriguing manner
Our project carries our user on a mission to discover new planets and solve issues on those planets. Along the way they learn new things about the space frontier hence solving the issues of creating awareness of various space programs and alleviating the fears of space
The UI is simple and easy to understand, with simple actions with familiar icons that helps users to understand their objective
Our design is creative with unique designs and artwork that will warm our users' hearts. Our designs are appropriate and suitable for our targeted users which will enhance the learning process faster and in a fun way that our users will enjoy



We submitted our work hoping it gets into the top 10, sadly it didn't but it was an honourable mention and we won an Amazon gift card of $50