The World Science Festival is a public science education program that gathers the greatest minds in science and the arts around the world to discuss the latest scientific findings and controversial value issues each year in NYC. As a first timer attending this festival, I enthusiastically signed up 8 sessions (each session is 90-minute long):

Topics I had little background knowledge:
CRISPR in context: the new world of human genetic engineering
We will be Martians
Revealing the mind: the promise of psychedelics
Can we “cure” deafness and blindness? Should we?

Topics I was interested to know more:
Making room for machines: getting ready for AGI
Rethinking thinking: How intelligent are other animals
The reality of reality: a tale of five senses
Cool Jobs

Learning Focus #1: How to deliver science-heavy content effectively to general public

90 minutes is a lot to ask from audience when it comes to panel discussion session, especially when it comes to unfamiliar science topics. However, WSF did an amazing job to plan these panel discussions into “science show”, that provides the perfect intro class for general public. I think there are three factors that qualify these sessions not “lectures” but “shows”. 

Intriguing composition of the panel

We have to admit that scientists are not really like celebrities in general public’s mind. The academic experience and science awards under their belts might be helpful to convey credibilities, but having 4 professors from the same domain might risk to make the discussion intimidating rather than intriguing. To cover both the hard science and the social implications, the panelists represent different but related fields. For example, the session about psychedelics, we had an addiction psychiatrist talking about the latest research findings and application, a neuroscientist talking about the mechanics, a psychologist focusing on children’s learning providing different angel to understand the impact on brain, and an anthropologist sharing the role of psychedelics in the Amazonian culture.

Captivating Opening and Engaging Storyline

Instead of introducing all the panelists at the beginning like most of the formal panel discussion, the WSF sessions use audience-centered openings. The focus is not who the panelists are, but helping the audience frame a couple of compelling anchor questions. As for the storyline, take “We will be Martians” session as an example. The moderator organized the discussion into a three-part story: “Launch – Voyage – Home”, with a mix of technological, physiological, and psychological challenges discussed under each part.

Plain language explanation with to-the-point visual aids

Although it was quite obvious that panelists’ response were scripted, the benefit is they are better at using plain language to explain complex concepts. For example, the Luna Gateway is analogized to a “slingshot” and launching mechanic to “throw a ball”; the distance to Mars was described as “2,000 times of the distance to moon”, because the absolute number is too big to internalize. When a panelist using words like “auditory sensor”, the moderators will rephrase it to “hearing”.  I also loved how the moderator framed her question: “What have we learned about… ?”

On a different note, if you are relatively familiar to the topics, you probably won’t find these discussions very helpful in learning new things. Next year, I will definitely go to more sessions that I am not familiar with.

Learning Focus #2: The relationship between Technology and Society

Although sharing scientific factual information is fun, the discussions struck a chord with the audiences when it talked about how technology isn’t just changing society – it’s changing what it means to be human. Why do we care so much EMOTIONALLY about AI beat human in Go? CRISPR allows human to change the biology process that nature has been taking charge for millions of years – is there a bottom line we should draw as a society? If our senses are not meant to reflect the reality of the world but to help us with survival, how should we interact with the world? It was a humbling experience for the audience to see our limitation as an individual and as a society.

Learning Focus #3: New Concepts For Me

CRISPR

FUN FACT 1: CRISPR is basically a technology that allows people to edit the DNA of any organism in a simple and affordable way. Think it as editing a document with the shortcut of “find – cut – paste”. The Cmd+F is a single-guide RNA, which can accurately locate the part of genome we want to edit; the Cmd+X is a type of enzyme called CAS9, which cuts the DNA strand so that a segment could be add, delete or replaced with a customized DNA sequence.

FUN FACT 2: What makes CRISPR amazing is that it’s so precise: The CAS9 enzyme mostly goes wherever you tell it to. And it’s incredibly cheap and easy: In the past, it might have cost thousands of dollars and weeks or months of fiddling to alter a gene. Now it might cost just $75 and only take a few hours. You can even buy a kit on Amazon to CRISPR a bacterium right at home for $159. And this technique is so versatile that has worked on every organism it’s been tried on.

FUN FACT 3: It is also important to understand that depending on which type of gene cell is edited, somatic or germline, the changes could impact the individual only, or become inheritable. Therefore, the applications could be revolutionary – from editing crops to be more nutritious to fight world hunger, to do a gene drive on mosquitoes to end malaria, to stop genetic diseases like Sickle cell among humans, and to cure cancer and create designer babies. According to Prof. Jennifer Doudna, the co-discoverer of this technology, all these applications could be realized within our lifetime (in the next 20-50 years) except the designer babies part, as currently scientists are still mapping out what function each genes serve.

As scary as it sounds, this is the first time we are changing the biology process, which nature has been taking charge for millions of years. Therefore, the real discussion at this panel is more about how can we as a society take necessary caution considering the intended/unintended potential consequence driven by this technology. Prof. Jennifer Doudna shared a dream she had: Hitler, looking like been CRISPR-ed already, was asking her more questions about this technology. The Chinese physicist JK He’s research on human embryo is at the center of discussion: Why the Chinese researcher took the step and what he could do differently? If he didn’t do this, how long would it take till some else take this step? What is the bottom line we, as a society, should draw?

I am very skeptical about WHO could come up feasible regulation in time and effectively restricting the usage of this new technology on a global scale. There have been plenty of failed examples, from ozone layer protection to nuclear weapon… The economic drivers behind individuals and countries to push the boundaries are as enormous as the other revolutionary technologies, why we think this time we can regulate it better? At the same time, I am very optimistic on the progress the technology could make during the next 20 years. CRISPR is almost like an open-source technology, that is available to all NFP and research institutes. I think this discussion boils down to how we collectively perceive human as a species and whether we believe our value system should remain as it is today. However, is human really that different from other animals? Is it possible we have a universal and lasting value system? With negative answer for both questions, I think all the things we are worry about today would become true, it is just a matter of time.

MARTIANS

FUN FACT 1: NASA’s video 7 Minutes of Terror provides a great intro of the technical difficulty of landing on Mars. BTW, 3D printing for spare parts were mentioned a lot – Hey, time to create some fun K12 Maker Spaces curriculum?

FUN FACT 2: There is too little space in the spaceship! (Pun intended) – 6 people cramp within 1,000 square feet cabin for over 10 months. To keep astronaut sane, NASA conducts simulations in Hawaii to study the group living skills and has revealed some desired astronaut psychology: Thick skin, Long fuse, Resilient to conflict, Easily entertained, and Optimistic. Might be a helpful reference when looking for roommates?

FUN FACT 3: Scientists are currently exploring three ways of avoiding excessive radiation on Mars: 1) create “Water aquarium” around cabin; 2) remodel the existing underground lava tube; 3) preserve stem cell.

PSYCHEDELICS

FUN FACT 1: Psyche means mind and delics means manifest. Psychedelics is not about hallucination, but about dissolving ego and revealing the capacity of our mind. The story about how LSD was discovered and then had today’s cultural connotation was fascinating. Long story short, the banning of psychedelics had no medical or scientific foundation.  

FUN FACT 2: Amazonian shamans use mushroom with Psychedelic effects on themselves rather than patients when they try to provide treatment. 

FUN FACT 3: The current renewal research on psychedelics could be a game-changer for Psychiatry. Depression is a $210 billion/year market in US and Psychedelics have shown amazing result on treating psychological pain from end of life/cancer, addiction/alcohol, PTSD etc.

The 4-day ISTE 2018 Conference & Expo attracts 18,000+ attendees from around the world, the majority of whom are leaders and key influencers for EdTech purchases. It was a great crash course for me to keep pace with the latest trends, topics and products/practices in the K12 EdTech space.

Image Source: ISTE website – Audience Profile

Learning Focus #1: Data Interoperability

Interoperability is a challenge for districts and vendors all over the country. Connecting data seamlessly between EdTech platforms and systems is crucial for understanding a student’s journey, personalizing their education, gleaning important insights on a macro and micro scale, and saving teachers time.

In this session organized by Project Unicorn (an advocacy initiative aiming to improve data interoperability within K-12 education), educators, district leaders and vendors had round table discussions regarding the basic concepts about interoperability, the best practices and lessons learned for strategic planning and implementation, and practical tools for the roadmap planning, prioritization and strengthening privacy controls.

This is usually a topic outside the working scope of a product designer. However, wearing my product owner hat, it is part of the system design that should be considered at the beginning of the product development cycle. This is because the decision on data interoperability impacts the conceptualization of user flow and user scenarios, the setup of data structure, and eventually the customer buy-in and implementation. I found the Project Unicorn Interoperability Rubric provides handy guidance to structure the discussion among engineers, designers and product managers.

Image Source: Project Unicorn Interoperability Rubric

Learning Focus #2: Experience Design for Product Demo

After I stumbled across one session hosted by Apple featuring their education product suite (Classroom, Schoolwork, Clips, etc.), I decided to attend three other Apple sessions to learn more about their superb experience design for product demos.

Product Trinity: Hardware + Software + Content

It is true that Chromebooks currently represents about 60 percent of mobile device shipments into U.S. K-12 schools; it is also true that most teachers have already understood and love Google Classroom, in addition to multiple cross-platform classroom management softwares. However, when Apple combined its hardware, software and content, the product demo became so powerful that made me want to be an advocate for their products. This is like when you were only planning to buy a shirt, some fashionable customer next to you effortlessly suggested an entire outfit for you. All of a sudden, you felt you need to buy all the pieces, from the matching blazer to the shoes.

The hardware they provided during the sessions are iPad and Apple pencil; the software they touched upon included newer ones like Classroom, Schoolwork and Clips, as well as long existing ones like Pages, Numbers, Keynotes and Garage Band etc. The content is a newly released free curriculum, Everyone Can Create, which comes handy for teachers to integrate drawing, music, filmmaking or photography into their existing lesson plans for any subject.

For companies/ product teams that only focus on one element of the “product trinity,” I think it is important to think about the affordance of other two elements to create a cohesive experience, even they are not part of our offering. This ties back to our understanding of the persona and use case. After all, we are offering solutions, which is more an experience than product specs.

Show, don’t tell

Often, we tend to walk through our audience the amazing features we have developed. But if we don’t know how to help users to learn about our product, how can we convince them our product is an effective learning tool for the end users? Apple’s approach is a great example of “show, don’t tell.” One of the most powerful moment during the session was when the presenter locked everyone’s iPad to draw our attention back to him. Everyone was impressed by how simple and effective the classroom management tool is, because they experienced what could happen in their own classroom.

Why is more persuasive than What and How

Creating the context of using the products helps potential users to envision how they will use it in their own life. And to do so, we need to have a deep understanding on why users what to perform that task in the first place and communicate this intention explicitly. One example is about the app Clips, a mobile video editing tool. How would you explain why users should use a video editing app in their classroom?

The presenter uses Poetry class as an example. Poems are mostly text-based, which means it is a one-way communication from the writer to the reader. However, when students study a poem, they need to interpret the tone and mood between the lines, based on their own understandings. And what could be the most effective way to let students express their own interpretation? Make their own poem reciting videos! From their reading tone, to their facial expression, to the background music they choose, they can express their interpretations through multi-dimensions. The presenter also set the stage by stating that 1) valuable time should be spent on creating content instead of formatting; 2) A simple creation process encourages iterations; more iterations promotes learning. These two goals are something educators could easily agree upon. With everyone nodding their heads, it becomes much easier to introduce the video editing tool into the classroom learning environment.  

	Instead of BYOD, every participant gets pre-configured devices – more control for the presenter, less distraction for the audience.
The  impeccable audience experience is ensured by a team of on-site tech support. This could be a great opportunity for the design/development team to get more insights from the user directly!
	All the sessions are delivered by Apple Distinguished Educators – having formal educators as the face for product demo made the session a more convincing sharing experience.
Every session mimics the classroom environment: presenter shows the  teacher’s view and audience see the student view – Providing the right context help communicate the product value.

Learning Focus #3: Develop heuristic through informational interviews at the Expo

To develop heuristic on product design, we need to be a sponge of experiences and apply analogical thinking to practices. I found that having informational interviews with company exhibitors at the Expo is a very effective way to stimulate my brain. Thanks to the problem-driven mentality my program at NYU has instilled in me, I usually start the conversation with “what problem you are trying to solve” instead of “what is your product about”, which made the conversation flow easily. In addition, I asked them about the competition landscape in their sections, the customer feedback they got from the conference participants, and the biggest challenges they are facing etc. Below are some products that solve problems I wasn’t aware of before this conference, which I found very thought provoking and would like to share with you.

	Incredibox is a music app for creating your own music with the help of a merry band of beatboxers. Part game, part tool, Incredibox is above all an audio and visual experience that introduces kids and adults to notions of rhythm and melody. Because it makes learning fun and entertaining, Incredibox is now used by teachers at schools all over the world.
	Mrs Wordsmith is a research-backed word learning kit. Hilariously illustrated by the Emmy award-winning artists behind Madagascar. It helps young children (aged 3–6) develop deeper social and emotional intelligence with the right vocabulary, as well as provides children aged 7–11 with the building blocks of storytelling, and boost reading and writing age.
	Symbaloo is a popular online tool for educators to save, manage and share their online favorites.
	Flipgrid is the leading video discussion platform used by millions of students and educators around the world. Create a grid for your classroom or community to spark a discussion.
	FieldTripZoom connects educators and homeschoolers with educational experience and service providers through curated live streaming educational events.
	FightSong App empowers students to take back their life by anonymously reporting bullying incidents to counselors and administrators using our management platform for mobile and web.
	Frontline Education provides web-based solutions for the K-12 education industry, primarily focusing on human capital management. The product they debuted at ISTE is enabled by AWS and Amazon Alexa devices. Education leaders can interact with data to manage day-to-day operations like absences and substitute teacher fill rates.