Description:

Siouxsie the Science Superhero is my creative response to COVID-19. During the media response to COVID in 2020, I was struck by how often coronavirus was described as unprecedented. This led me to research precedents such as the 1918 Spanish Influenza. One very influential woman from this period was Dr Margaret Cruickshank, New Zealand’s first female doctor.
A contemporary of Dr Cruickshank can be found in Dr Siouxsie Wiles. Both women have defied society’s expectations of what women are capable of. In 100 years, women in New Zealand have gained ground from barely being able to be doctors, to becoming leading voices in our pandemic response.
During this project, I had the opportunity to meet to talk to Dr Wiles about her experiences during COVID-19. Through this, I learned that during the March 2020 lockdown she liked to ride her bike along the Auckland waterfront and that she favours her ‘stop the spread’ campaign over her ‘flatten the curve’ campaign. Based on these insights, I made changes to the story.
The target audience for my project is primary school-aged children. For this reason, the level of information I chose to present was basic. The book incorporates simple facts about Zoom, bubbles, and social distancing. The challenge for me was how to make this factual information engaging for children. This led me to explore pop-up books.
To measure how engaging something education is for children I used the concept of gamification. A 2019 study done on New Zealand children found that the three main elements that keep children engaged in educational computer games are feedback graphics and challenge (1). The reader receives both visual and haptic feedback from the book as they see and feel elements move as they manipulate the pages. Challenging aspects can include features like the slide dissolve. To understand how this works you have to read the tabs and engage with the mechanism. This can be a challenging moment of discovery and delight. Graphic elements were naturally incorporated into the book through my watercolour and pencil illustrations.
My project has its roots in women’s history and grew from an interest in designing for children. Combined with my passion for illustration and craft, this made it a project that truly reflects me as a designer. Going forward with this project I would like to complete the book that I drafted about Margaret Cruikshank. This would allow me to create a comparison between the two women as originally intended.

1. Nand, Kalpana, and Nulifar Baghaei. “Engaging Children with Educational Content via Gamification.” Smart Learning Environments, vol. 6, no. 6, 2019. Springer Open, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-019-0085-2.