Designing for Tomorrow
I think there is something inherently unsettling in thinking about the future. While it is possible and easy to imagine what many would consider a close-to utopia America; a shiny city teeming with whirring drones delivering packaged meals at a drop of a hat and ridesharing autonomous vehicles ready to whisk citizens off to their next destination; it is more laborious and even terrifying to consider how our future country will deal with inequality, the rise of technology, rapidly increasing population, climate change (should I keep going?) and more. Besides, is the city I described even a utopia? How can technology propel us into a future that takes everyone into account? Can technology create equality, or does it inherently foster inequality? Will technology help connect us or further separate us? Cue the inherently unsettling feeling mentioned at the beginning of this piece.
Last week, I attended the New York Times’ Cities for Tomorrow conference and witnessed the speakers and interviewees experience that same feeling but describe how they go about combatting it. The content of the conference was powerful, meaningful, and deeply related to how we might go about designing for healthy future cities. With lengthy conversation ranging from the opioid epidemic to energy electrification, it quickly became clear that we are a country rife with problems; but, in turn, we are rife with dedicated problem solvers proactively combating a disturbing image of the future, working together to make tomorrow’s cities better today.
This inspires me, and inspires my project for the residency even further. While I am hyper aware of the fact that interaction designers are not world peace makers, be-all-end-all problem solvers, or masters in understanding so many of the issues pressing us today, I find interaction design as an powerful outlet to express how we might envision a more human-centered future.
This is the meat of my project: researching and identifying problems in industries today and envisioning what ethical, human-centered solutions might look like. I’ll be evaluating and ideating in five different spaces: professional networking, charity donations, news organizations, environmental resource management, and elementary educational tools.
Designing for the Future of Professional Networking
Right now, I’m working on professional networking and I’m currently in the middle of my creative process.
Thus far, I’ve gotten to work in secondary research (doing some competitive analysis and understanding of the current space), interviewed people and received insights, found principles based on my insights, and have begun to brainstorm and find ideas I think sit within the principles.
Research Phase
In researching and doing a competitive analysis of the current space of professional networking, I realized that many of the popular virtual tools related to networking and job hunting create opportunities for users to browse; browse jobs, people, companies, etc; but often didn’t create opportunities for focused goals or meetings to occur.
After doing secondary research of the space, I formed a primary research question related to the the content I had found in my secondary research, which also highlighted the millennial generation as an audience looking for better tactics in networking and opportunities to “make an impact” — “72% of students, as opposed to 53% of workers, consider having ‘a job where I can make an impact’ to be very important or essential to their happiness.” (GPS University) Similarly, “millennials are the largest and most educated generation in the U.S., yet many millennials are faced with crushing levels of student debt and, with youth unemployment at 12.8 percent, they can’t find good paying jobs or afford to start their own businesses.” (Millenial Jobs Report)
Thus I formed the question, “what is the relationship between how millenials like to meet people and how they view networking?”
I interviewed six millennials that responded to a survey asking for design interview participants and asked each interiewee the same questions about their habits, likes, and dislikes when it comes to networking, meeting new people, and going to large events like conferences and career fairs. After each interview, I had the interviewee participate in an activity called a circle of trust.
In a circle of trust activity, participants are given ideas on sticky notes and are asked to place the ideas on a scale of comfortable to uncomfortable, with comfort being closest to the participant and uncomfortable being the farthest. These activities are always an exciting and telling part of my process as I’m able to observe participants’ expressions after reading each sticky note (for example, an idea they each placed as completely uncomfortable was the idea of texting a professional they had never met before. Not only did they place this idea the furthest away from themselves but 5 of 6 also made a grimacing expression after reading the note).
Insight and Principle Generation
After writing down all of the pieces of information interviewees had said (also known as codes), I began to generate themes and insights based on quotes.
I found these ten major insights from my interviews:
Job boards feel unlikely to actually foster getting a job.
Most every job was received by having a connection or meeting in person.
Casual interactions in meeting places like coffee shops feel less overwhelming.
“Networking” events feel forced and overwhelmingly large.
Getting an introduction is most comfortable when meeting a new professional.
Job boards have so many jobs it is difficult to discern which are trustworthy.
Recruiters feel like automated robots.
Talking to a professional is most comfortable 1 on 1.
Linkedin is used almost solely for messaging or finding mutual connections- not for it’s news feed or job posts.
Meeting in person trumps meeting over Skype or over the phone and those connections are lasting.
I then turned these insights into three main principles guiding my solution:
My solution should promote one on one, in-person conversation.
My solution should make all interactions feel personal and organic.
My solution should only attempt to create and instigate conversation.
Brainstorming
I am current at the phase in which I brainstorm many, many ideas and start storyboarding out what some of those brainstormed ideas might look like- and the scenarios in which the solution would be useful. My next move is to work on low-fidelity prototypes and begin testing these prototypes out with real people, as genuine feedback for my prototypes is the most helpful piece in generating a human-centered solution.
STAY TUNED.
Things are just getting started! I’m working on brainstorming out some storyboards and will have those to show super soon. I’m excited to keep working on this project and share my findings and prototypes with the creative community! Get ready to see a lot of crappy ideas and probably a resolved solution towards the end.
Thanks for reading everyone!
