Art Class
We began to experiment with potential designs! Many ideas were floating around in our heads, so we worked on materializing them.
Recap
Last spring, we focused on understanding the current course registration process, so we conducted a contextual inquiry with current juniors to understand how they make decisions. From there, we felt it necessary to pivot our focus from the current system to an ideal system — in other words, from what is to what could be.
We don’t want to make the current system more efficient. We want to change it or maybe even reinvent it.
Personal Communities
This sprint began with a few major questions that we had to get answered:
Do students need all of the information in the South Fayette Program of Studies?
- No. There is some information there which is completely outdated and/or redundant.
Is there information they need that they can’t get from it?
- Yes. Among other things, students can’t get personalized course recommendations, recounts of personal opinions or experiences with individual classes and teachers, or information on how a course might apply to their career or further academic path from the Program of Studies alone.
If students aren’t generally using the Program of Studies as a key information resource, what are they using instead?
- The people around them! Students talk to teachers, counselors, family, friends, and acquaintances.
Students might go to different kinds of people in their communities for different kinds of support, but the important thing is to have the people in that personal community both available and identified.
So, how might we ensure that’s the case? Or, to put a spin on that question and attack it from the other end, how should we not?
Worst Possible Ideas
In the spirit of engaging more with our clients in fun and interactive ways, we invited them to complete a “worst possible ideas” exercise with us. This exercise helped us pick their brains in a low-pressure way and align on their concerns. In other words, we wanted to use what NOT to do to help guide our exploration of what to do.
We reaffirmed that our system should not just reinforce the current system more efficiently. Yet, this activity sparked conversation well beyond what not to do. We learned that organic interactions are extremely important in all educational communities, and will be key to our possible goal of community building. Further, we learned about a scarcity mindset that school staff have noticed: students hesitate to talk to their peers about opportunities or resources because they are scared that sharing with the collective will take away from them. Yet, even when they do have certain opportunities, they do not always feel empowered enough in their unique strengths and abilities to take full advantage of them. This left us asking how we might reframe the high school experience as an opportunity for growth, and not a “zero sum game.”
Storyboarding
After pivoting to our concept of community building, we started thinking of ways for students to broaden and strengthen their personal circles. We wanted to test out a variety of ways for students to interact with each other and other members of their local community. For example, one storyboard idea centered around getting to know others through a game simulation while another focused on structured daydreaming to think about how they envisioned their support circles.
After storyboarding, we used the speed dating methodology to get quick feedback from our MHCI peers. We quickly realized there were some issues with our initial ideas. A couple of them didn’t feel engaging enough while others felt too niche, like for a specific student group instead of the whole school. For that reason, we went back to the drawing board and are now focused on reiterating our ideas by getting some perspectives from high school students.
Xoxo,
Team South Fayette
Note: This project is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge and is not human subjects research.
