Whitman Students Bring Human-Centered Design to Life in Puzzle Room Project

Last October, Whitman College and Lincoln High School students came together in a unique collaboration to create an interactive world of fairy tales, mystery and fun for local families to celebrate Halloween. Grimm’s Dark Realm featured a cast of fairy tale characters (played by students and faculty) who challenged visitors to find the lost endings to their fragmented fairy tales in a series of puzzle rooms scattered throughout the three-story Lincoln High building. 

What guests probably couldn’t fathom was the behind-the-scenes creative work by Whitman’s Introduction to Human-Centered Design (HCD-101) class that went into creating the interactive experience. Students learning about Human-Centered Design had the chance to put the skills and tools they learned in class into practice in a community project with real users and real stakes.

The Seed of Inspiration

The partnership began last year when several Lincoln High faculty visited Whitman’s HCD classroom, and Lincoln High teacher April Sorensen proposed a multi-floor, fairy-tale–themed puzzle event. 

Sharon Alker, the Mary A. Denny Professor of English and General Studies and Co-Director of the HCD Program, was immediately enthralled by the potential collaboration with an institution known for its compassionate and student-centered teaching, as well as by the project’s thrilling interdisciplinarity. “As an English professor, I delight in stories,” she says, “and this project sits right at the intersection of literary studies and Human-Centered Design.” 

According to Alker, “Human-Centered Design is a collection of methods that lead designers through an effective design process that is centered on feedback from actual potential users so that it more productively meets their needs.” 

Because of this user-driven approach, Alker believes HCD techniques are widely applicable, from landscape and interior design to education to computer science and beyond. The design techniques equip students with skills in creative thinking—valuable assets in any industry. 

“Keep in mind this is a first-year HCD course,” she says. “Yet the students already applied their skills to a complex, large-scale project. It shows that these tools work, and that they can use them anywhere.”

Designing With, Not For, Users

Alker’s class was tasked with designing four of nine total vignettes for the event, including their sets, costumes, scripts and puzzles. But before writing a word or sewing a stitch, the HCD students started with the first step in any human-centered design process—discovering what users need.

The HCD class split into groups, each of which appointed a student liaison to travel to Lincoln High to interview students and gather their input on the project. 

“We’d sit with the students for an hour, talk through our ideas, and listen to theirs,” explains Micah Powch ’28, a sophomore from Portland, Oregon. “They’d say things like, ‘I want this!’ or ‘Can you add that?’ One student wanted a swan in the story, so we put in a swan.” 

These messy, enthusiastic and exploratory conversations made the backbone of Grimm’s Dark Realm.

Design, Review, Repeat

After their first visit, each Whitman team created a cardboard prototype: a rough visual of their vignette and puzzle. Then the liaisons brought these back to Lincoln High students, gathered feedback, and returned to class to refine their ideas. This process of iteration—a continuous loop of designing, prototyping, testing and refining—is another skill students learn in HCD-101.

For the second prototype, Professor of Theater Daniel Schindler taught the class how to build physical models of a set, turning their blueprints into 3D shoebox models.

The HCD teams split responsibilities based on each individual’s strengths and weaknesses. This was a wonderful learning experience for Powch in teamwork and task delegation. On Powch’s  team, for example, he drew on his computer science background to focus on designing the puzzles, while others took the lead on costumes and scale models, drawing on their design and theater experience. 

Bringing Ideas to Life

By early October, the prototypes were polished and handed off to Lincoln High students to implement. As Powch describes it, the result was mesmerizing: “Every floor was heavily decorated with its own theme. The first floor was forest-themed with trees everywhere; the second floor was castle-themed with a big dining table and bookshelves; and the top floor was themed around clouds, with paper clouds stuffed with wool hanging everywhere.” 

Some of the Whitman HCD students even acted in the event: Powch and a classmate, Parker Clary ’28 (also from Portland, Oregon), shared the role of an aged prince guiding families through a story. Even Alker appeared onstage, performing as the librarian in the “Library of Whispering Pages.”

More than 270 people—over 70 puzzle-solving teams—came through the building over the weekend. But for Professor Alker, the best measure of the project’s success was how much fun the participants had. “I particularly enjoyed seeing the many children who attended, revelling in the stories and the abundance of activities,” she says.

For Powch, the hands-on experience did more than reinforce the concepts he learned in class. It confirmed his decision to veer away from Computer Science, his high school passion, to a major in Politics with a concentration in Human-Centered Design. 

In Whitman’s HCD program, he’s found the perfect niche for his desire to make sure “computers and systems genuinely meet people’s needs,” he says. “People often say they hate their phones or feel like technology isn’t designed with their best interests in mind. Human-Centered Design pairs theory with listening and empathy and focuses on designing for people rather than against them.”