The GIANT Room partners with Sesame Workshop to co-design a suite of games with preschoolers and their families

The GIANT Room partners with Sesame Workshop to bring children’s insights into interactive games.

The GIANT Room, an innovation hub for children and their families, is pleased to announce their partnership with Sesame Workshop to bring together diverse groups of children and their families with researchers and children media designers to put learning, wellbeing, and DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) at the center of product development for children. Families with children ages 3 to 5 years old are invited to apply to participate in the program. Families who are accepted will receive a $50 honorarium for their participation.

Participation entails at least one child and one parent joining one free in-person session (about one hour in length), during the week of April 15th, at Sesame Workshop offices in New York City. Children will be invited to playtest and co-design a new suite of interactive digital games. Families who have multiple children are invited and encouraged (but not required) to bring up to three children to the session. Kids who join will have a chance to learn and practice the art of giving and receiving feedback and then to join a prototyping exercise with industry innovators and researchers. These sessions will be facilitated by The GIANT Room.

Central to The GIANT Room’s mission is the notion that all children should have access to quality creative STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) tools and learning experiences to build the world they like to live in. “We believe the best learning experiences are the ones that are designed with children’s point of view in mind, and even better, those that are designed with children involved in the design process,” said Dr. Azi Jamalian, founder of The GIANT Room. “Kids have wonderful ideas to share. If given the opportunity, they design the most magical tools, toys, and games that can enlighten millions of other kids.”

Over the past couple of years, The GIANT Room has been honored to connect its community with industry innovators including LEGO Education, Duolingo ABC, Scratch Foundation, Mrs. Wordsmith, and Brainpop, and provide opportunities for GIANT kids to co-design and build prototypes, provide invaluable feedback, and contribute to development of real learning products. The GIANT Room is truly excited to expand its program through a partnership with Sesame Workshop. “One by one, we’ll bring kids' voices and ideas into the design process of products to be used by millions of kids around the world,” said Dr. Azi Jamalian. “First is to give them a seat at the table. Next, we try to genuinely incorporate their ideas into the products.”

“Giving and receiving feedback is a crucial step in any design and innovation process,” said Dr. Jessica Mezei, co-founder of The GIANT Room. “Surprisingly though, we rarely learn how to constructively give feedback or apply feedback in our creative process. Many of us first encounter critiques or “proposal-defense” in college or grad school, which may be too late. It’s better for children to grow up developing a growth mindset and believing that feedback is a necessary part of their growth.”

This program is completely free for children to participate and all participating families will receive $50 compensation for their time. Learnings from this initiative will inform designing a framework of best practices to include youth as co-designers in developing real products. We are accepting a limited number of children in New York City to participate in the program. Families with children ages 3 to 5 years old are invited to apply.

For more information about GIANT STEAM programs and a full list of their workshops, class series, and events, please visit The GIANT Room’s website.

To learn more about Sesame Workshop, visit Sesame.org, and follow Sesame Workshop on Instagram, X, Facebook, and TikTok.