(Vietnamnet) With an innovative design for a product to support adolescents in terms of gender and prevent sexual abuse, Ms. Tran Thi Le Quyen (FPTU Hanoi) and a group of authors won the First Prize in the 2022 National Applied Fine Arts Competition and Exhibition.
The 2022 National Applied Fine Arts Competition and Exhibition aims to encourage and orient authors to create and design products that are both practical and of high aesthetic value, contributing to strengthening relationships between designers – craftsmen – manufacturers – distributors, and consumers.
In this contest, the creative design category with the first prize was awarded to a group of authors from FPT University, including Ms. Tran Thi Le Quyen (instructor), Ms. Le Thi Thu Thao, and Ms. Bui Hanh Luu with the work named Unzipped – Gender support for adolescents and prevention of sexual abuse.
Ms. Tran Thi Le Quyen is currently in charge of the Digital Art & Design specialization at FPT University, Hanoi. The lecturer is also a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Industrial Design at National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan).
The authors said that they jointly designed this application because they share the same love for children and concern about a product that demonstrates sustainability in design.
“Through our research, we found that the issue of sex education in Vietnam is often misunderstood. Especially in Eastern culture, whenever I hear the word “sex,” I often think of something terrible, even dirty.
Vietnamese people often confuse sex and sexuality. In sex education sessions, people often think about sex, but it’s not; it’s sexuality (i.e., understanding your gender and body). Besides, people often do not know where to access information. Many parents themselves do not know how to answer their children’s questions.
Or sometimes people think sex education has to be something macro, but actually for children, sometimes, it’s as simple as wearing a skirt, sitting down, having to close your legs, pull the skirt, for example”, Quyen said.
In addition, many public schools today do not have this activity, or a few schools do, but often just stop at exchanges that are not open or one-sided.
Because of that, the authors came up with the idea of designing an application to support adolescents regarding gender and prevent sexual abuse.
Ms. Quyen said that the group’s product received high praise from the jury, perhaps because it dared to pose a very real problem that Vietnamese society has not been able to solve.
“This research will also be presented by the group at a scientific conference in Malaysia in December 2022,” Quyen informed.
According to Quyen, the Unzipped application has been researched and deployed with two main goals: improving and raising awareness of comprehensive sex education for minors and providing a comprehensive sex education platform for parents and adolescents to strengthen connections and develop communication.
The application builds on the toolkit for designing a new program or evaluating an existing program in UNESCO’s Comprehensive Sexual and Sexuality Education, including the following objectives: scientifically accurate ( based on research, factual data, and evidence); appropriate for the age and level of development; integrated into the educational program; comprehensive, not merely sexual acts.
Stories designed to teach children like the adult habit of seeing a pretty child and then hugging, kissing, or touching – that’s not okay; or don’t go into lonely places alone, or when someone approaches and touches you, you need to know how to scream loudly and run away.
“We believe that when children understand the problem and have knowledge, they will know how to protect themselves. In previous generations, sometimes we were afraid but didn’t dare to tell our parents, or sometimes friends played with touching but didn’t know it was not allowed,” Quyen said.
The working process, including researching and designing this application, was about 4 months. The biggest difficulty, according to Quyen, is that the implementation is carried out during a time when there are still echoes of the Covid-19 pandemic and the research subjects are children, so it is not easy to get research data.
“The most memorable is interviewing teenagers. With the psychophysiological characteristics of this age, it is extremely difficult to really approach children for research. We had planned to conduct the interview carefully, but the reality was not as envisioned before. The way we faced and resolved this issue was a memorable experience,” said Quyen.
“The interface and lessons are built and designed by us through creating characters suitable for each age, making them into short animated films for easy access for children. These are built according to the standards of UNESCO and the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam”, Ms. Quyen said.
“We do not want to stop at simply designing the application form, but also want to design the presentation to convey knowledge and understanding in the most effective way. Education is the same, we do not aim to educate at a time but want to create awareness and understanding in each person’s life from children.”
“Sustainable development is also a trend of the world in general and towards people. Human is the most important subject, so if people themselves do not have a sustainable chain of behavior, nothing will be sustainable. Even in sex education, if only schools teach children, it is only one-way and cannot think of sustainability. But if all society and everyone participate, it is possible to create a sustainable community,” Quyen said.
The biggest wish of Ms. Quyen and her team is that this UNZIPPED application will be applied in the Vietnamese education system. “All schools can use this application because it includes lectures, interactions, exchanges, and tests based on the curriculum framework of the Ministry of Education and Training.”