Students will launch their human-centered puppet design project by conducting real user research with elementary students, documenting insights in structured empathy maps grounded in direct quotes. They will practice active listening, surface assumptions about community issues and audience needs, and gather evidence that will anchor their problem definition and later engineering and artistic design decisions.

Students will synthesize their elementary user interviews and empathy maps into clear, evidence-based problem definitions that guide the design of their community issue puppet shows, ensuring their engineering and artistic decisions respond directly to real user needs.

Students will generate a wide range of puppet show and mechanism ideas grounded in their team "How Might We" statements, then evaluate and narrow their concepts based on real user needs before creating annotated concept sketches that will guide prototyping.

Students will build and refine testable cardboard puppet prototypes using chompsaw-cut templates, document user feedback, and iterate their designs to better address elementary students’ needs and clearly communicate a community issue through performance.

Students will conduct a final validation test of their refined cardboard puppets and community issue puppet show with an authentic elementary audience, document feedback, make last-minute evidence-based adjustments, and present their full design journey at Puppet Palooza—clearly connecting engineering and art decisions to real user needs.