Diving into the Ideation Phase
At this point, we have a LOT of collective knowledge of the death penalty space. We need to start making it actionable.
We left off last time by identifying the different archetypes or buckets that users fall into. Since then, we refined those buckets and explored each group’s core needs. Mapping the archetypes out on a matrix was extremely helpful and revealed that our users follow a trajectory from a general public member to someone who is equipped with the knowledge to influence others.
Having identified the main issues, the user groups facing these issues, and the groups’ needs, we’re finally ready to start ideating!
Also, after receiving feedback on our plan, we decided to drop usability testing (which would reveal problems with DPIC’s current site) and switch to concept testing our new ideas (which would test never-seen-before solutions to improve the site) since the latter would be more generative for the early stage of the process that we’re at!
Archetypes
Last time we left off with a knowledge vs. investment matrix to start defining the types of people in the death penalty space. We then came up with some examples based on our research and interviews. This sprint, we wanted to really solidify these examples into archetypes, one for each quadrant on the matrix.
- Casual Information Seekers (CIS): Low knowledge, low investment. Coming in with no experience or exposure but might have just seen something Death Penalty related on the news or have a school assignment.
- Concerned Curious Learners (CCL): Low knowledge, high investment. Already have some personal or emotional attachment to the Death Penalty space but do not yet have a thorough understanding of it.
- Dedicated Thought Influencers (DTI): High knowledge, high investment. Heavily involved in the Death Penalty space both because they personally care but also because they have a comprehensive knowledge due to their career, research they’ve done, or activist spaces they’re in.
- General Investigators (GI): High knowledge, low investment. Have a lot of knowledge of the Death Penalty because they are researchers or reporters in adjacent fields, but do not personally feel very attached to the issue.
With these 4 archetypes in mind, we outlined their needs and behaviors below:
Archetype Maturity Model
From aligning on the archetypes and discussing them with our faculty, we found that there was a maturity model framework we could use to connect these different archetypes and help DPIC further their mission of educating more people.. Essentially, we will try to help DPIC users progress from having low knowledge and investment in the death penalty (Casual Information Seekers), to having more investment (Concerned Curious Learners), to having more knowledge (Dedicated Thought Influencers or DTIs). This mapped out like this on our archetype model:
The solid purple line represents the path that we are ideally moving users along as they learn about the death penalty. The dotted purple line represents DTI’s engaging with and spreading the message of death penalty reform to others.
From here, we realized a really simple way to prioritize our 13 HMW statements that would help us narrow in on a project direction: mapping our HMW statements along the arrows. This way, we were able to see what kinds of opportunities would help different types of people along their journey. Mapping the statements on the line created this model:
Sticky notes that are grouped represent HMW statements that are similar in the opportunities that are being addressed. There was one statement that was more for helping DTI’s spread the message about Death Penalty reform to others, which is why it’s placed on the dotted purple line. In addition, there were two other HMW statements that we had that didn’t fit along the purple lines at all, which are on the right hand side of the diagram. We will keep these two in mind as we start ideating and solutioning, but will not prioritize addressing them as they don’t fit in our maturity model framework.
Core Insights
With these HMW statements in mind, we were then able to pull out core insights, mapping to the different stages of our maturity model. These insights draw from our extensive research findings including observations on how people form their opinions in the death penalty space and strategies on how to get people more invested and knowledgeable on the topic. We call these our core insights since we plan to use them as the foundation for the rest of our ideation process. Our 6 core insights are the following:
- Casual information seekers aren’t incentivized to learn more about the death penalty, missing opportunities to educate about its ineffectiveness
- Death penalty info is often too complex for a casual information seeker or concerned curious learner to understand, so there is a need for it to be more digestible so that people can easily draw connections
- Casual information seekers and concerned curious learners form their opinions based on emotion and punitive justice ideas, so familiar and trustworthy sources can inform them and humanize other perspectives in the space
- Concerned curious learners need up-to-date information at times when certain topics are trending so that they can build upon their understanding
- Concerned curious learners need easily discoverable and comprehensive context and information to successfully back up their ideas and become dedicated thought influencers
- Once people become dedicated thought influencers, they see their role as educating other casual information seekers and concerned curious learners allowing a farther reaching impact than we initially believed
Ideating Approach
Before we started ideating we decided to breakdown the different stages users’ experience when progressing through the maturity model. We came up with these 5 Stages:
- Awareness is when a user becomes aware that their are issues in how Death Penalty is applied.
- Attraction is when a user is convinced to care about issues regarding the application of the Death Penalty.
- Engagement is when a user becomes engaged with Death Penalty information content.
- Producing is when a user begins creating their own content on the Death Penalty.
- Leave is when a user begins educating others on issues regarding the Death Penalty.
Keeping this journey in mind and the core needs of each archetype, we began ideating.
To ideate we conducted a 20 minute sketching activity where we tried sketching as many concepts as possible. In addition we also conducted a Crazy 8's activity. After that we mapped the concepts we came up with to where they fit in the user’s learning journey and also to which need they addressed.
In order to narrow down our concepts, we conducted a dot voting activity where we each voted on 5 ideas we thought would be impactful to solve the problem and 5 ideas we were most excited about. From this activity we were able to narrow down to 7 concepts that are:
- An LLM chatbot assistant
- A choose your own adventure game
- An interactive visualization dashboard
- A Death Penalty 101 learning page
- A game to relate the death penalty to you
- A values questionnaire quiz to make you reflect on your stance
- A profile feature for user’s to customize their experience
After narrowing down our concepts we created very low-fi sketches to visualize these concepts.
Next Steps
With our concepts sketched out, we’re ready to hear some thoughts on them! Next week, we dive into testing these concepts with users who are representative of each archetype bucket. We’re looking to learn how users experience a solution, when they would use it, and where they would expect to find it on the Death Penalty Information Center website.
This will help us narrow down our solutions and get us ready to prototype them in the coming weeks!
