Hi, come meet our team!
Anushree is on the left, she is a Game Designer from India. Her specialty is questioning the teams’ ideas and making us justify our design choices.
Roxane is to her right, she is a design student at the Design Academy of Eindhoven, she specialises in coercing decisiveness out of our (sometimes) decision-averse group.
Mick is in the middle. He’s our coach, specialising in giving careful guidance and being a G4 Jet Coach.
That’s me with the thumbs up. My name is Alec, I’m a User Experience Design student hailing from America, currently pursuing a degree in The Hague. I don’t know what I specialise in, you’ll have to ask my group!
Ginger is to my right, she’s a Software Engineering student at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. She specialises in knowing more about the tech stuff we will require than the rest of us combined.
We are part of the ‘Digital to Physical Track’ within DSS, more specifically in the ‘Intention Mirror’ project, working in collaboration with Exodus. We are focusing on how data can be used to aid people who are leaving prison. These people have a ton of data collected on them throughout their prison experience, but ironically this data is used more often to their detriment rather than in a way that could benefit them. We plan to disrupt this structure, to put the data in the hands of the people, so they can transition successfully from prison-life to “normal” life. I assumed that there was not much being done to help people leaving prison, that the system was set up in a way that would focus on punishment and would put little emphasis on rehabilitation.
I learned that creating small goals is the best way to achieve big things, and SCREAM is a fantastic way to accomplish that.
The first sprint was an experience, to say the least. I have never worked with the SCREAM model so this framework for the design process was totally new to me. I learned that creating small goals is the best way to achieve big things, and SCREAM is a fantastic way to accomplish that. We researched our hearts out, brainstormed countless ways to collect useful data on our user group, and created a paper prototype to use with our user group.
We learned that our user group (and this may seem obvious) is made up of normal people.
I learned that my group is opinionated, and we often have differing ideas about how to solve problems. That might come across as negative, but I see it as a major benefit. Every person in our group has fallen in love with the problem and is passionate about creating something impactful. We didn’t just learn about each other, though, we learned that our user group (and this may seem obvious) is made up of normal people. They like to joke around, they have smartphones, they struggle with the temptation that is Thuisbezorgd. We learned this simply by having conversations with our potential users.
I learned that there is in fact a system for rehabilitation for people leaving prison. Programs like Exodus serve this very purpose. However, people still struggle, and many find themselves back in jail. We learned there are a few key factors leading to this, namely financial problems, an insufficient support system, and antisocial behaviour. The fact that people are struggling once they are out of prison, and many are caught in a cycle is terrible. There is good news, though. These key factors that we identified can all be tracked via data, and letting our users track this data may be the first step to helping them make a change for themselves.
Throughout this sprint we used a few different design thinking methods. One good one was ‘BrainWriting’. This allowed us to have a brain dump of ideas and get our creative juices flowing. Another effective method for us was interviews. We interviewed some caretakers from Exodus which gave us a deeper insight into the minds of Exodus participants and also what some Exodus members struggle with.
In this next sprint my group is focusing on making “it” tangible. We are jumping into the creation phase, making prototypes that gather physical data through sensors. We will test these prototypes on our fellow DSS members. We will iterate, iterate, iterate, and hopefully create a wearable device that can accurately gather physical data. If you want to see our Sprint Plan, you can click here.
If anyone is looking to research this topic, I’d recommend talking to the people who are involved, speak with social workers, speak with people who have been in prison. We all like to think that after browsing Wikipedia we have a grasp on a topic. That’s just simply not the case, at the heart of this issue there are people. A big problem with the whole prison system is that individuals are treated as numbers, not people. Talk to anyone who’s been to prison, I’m sure they’ll tell you all about it.
If you want to follow our process through this project, follow our Tumblr page. If you have expertise in a field relating to behaviour modification, wearable tech, or anything you feel is related to our topic and want to help with this project, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
The Digital Society School is a growing community of learners, creators and designers who create meaningful impact on society and its global digital transformation. Check us out at digitalsocietyschool.org.
