RecPods Case Study
This project began with the class being split into groups. We started the development process of our final Service Pitch project with some activities that were aimed at just getting to know each other through icebreaker exercises, such as the exercise where we tried to explain what a microwave was to each other from the perspective of a caveman.
After this we moved on to assigning roles to the group members using our Team Charter document. This acted as a visual representation of what each of us would bring to the group. It also gave us the opportunity to clearly delineate things like our team values, goals, expectations, possible obstacles, and what we would do if we were to come across these obstacles.
Our next step was creating a group chat and taking the time outside of class to come up with the possible problems we would try and confront with our service.
After this came our brainstorming period, during which we tried to come up with the problem we’d be focused on solving with our service. After taking the time outside of class to think about possible issues we could design a service for, we met in a separate classroom during the brainstorming time in class where we felt we could discuss with each other comfortably without disturbing other people. We then discussed the possible directions we could go. We ended up talking a lot about the way children, specifically high schoolers, had no real designated spaces to hang out and create connections with their peers and just generally spend their free time offline.
Our audience was rather broad at the beginning — too broad, actually, as it ranged all the way from middle schoolers to college students. Since we were still coming up with a solution, this expanded range allowed us to consider a bunch of different possible services for different ages.
From the brainstorming period, we condensed our thoughts and came up with our problem statement: How Might We create opportunities for high schoolers and college students that empower their sense of agency in their use of free time?
We talked to each other about our usual weekly availability, trying to find a time to schedule meetings with each other with the goal of chatting outside of class at least once a week.
We then wrote up our interview questions in a Google document. Me and another group member, Theo, met with one of my coworkers in the MakerSpace and interviewed them using the questions we had written. We asked about their past experiences with spending their free time, and got some interesting insight on the fact that they wanted venues for communication and productively creating or learning new skills. This was heavily tied to how when they were in high school, most of the activities they did with the people in their same-age community were physical, primarily sports related. Participating in these sports was the only way to foster and maintain a connection with them, there was no opportunity to sit and chat or create.
I also interviewed my younger brother who is a junior in high school about his experiences with third spaces, how he spends his free time, and who he spends it with. His insight was a lot different from my coworker’s, as he was very introverted and preferred staying at home, spending time with his friends online or inside a gaming environment. This was a valuable perspective as it showed that our service would have to be customizable and adaptable to personal preferences to be successful.
Considering the answers we had gotten in the interviews, we decided we would be making a communal area where people could donate their excess crafting materials to these spaces and people could volunteer to teach students about certain activities and skills they requested from our program. This program would be tied to the schools in the Brooklyn area around Tandon and provide high schoolers with a place they could hang out and learn a new skill. Workshops would be scheduled occasionally, with the spaces used as hang out places for the rest of the time, and the donated materials for art and other creative endeavors free for them to use.
I then created a preliminary prototype of the third space with Chloe. I modeled the first iteration of what the space would look like out of clay and paper, with the sides covered with clear tape. This was so individuals could draw on the sides and show me the sort of space they would have liked to spend time in. Chloe modeled the building in Fusion 360 and printed it out using the Ultimakers in the MakerSpace. We arranged these two together into a small shoebox diorama, showing that somewhere like a park would house the two indoor rooms that would be used by the highschoolers and host the workshop activities.
We briefly played around with the idea of these being traveling, portable stations that could be moved around different areas in New York. But since we couldn’t figure out the logistics for making these portable, we decided it would just be better if they were stationary with the possibility of the service expanding to other locations if it proved successful.
We then prepared to give our progress report — we thought that we would be presenting this to the class in slide format, so we created a deck explaining the many steps we had taken. This included the initial assumptions we had made about the problem with children not having spaces to build connections with their peers offline, our how might we statement and the brainstorming process we took to arrive at one, the interview questions we asked, the responses, and our next steps we would be taking. Once in class, we just presented our part of the mural board and explained the process we had taken.
We also created our prototype map, shown below.
We did more interviews, our second round. From these we learned more about the amount of free time high school students have, and the kinds of communities they were seeking out. We noticed that the answers were very varied.
We met over FaceTime to discuss our findings, the notes of which I wrote down in a Mural board pictured below.
After conducting these interviews and regrouping, we arrived at the consensus that our service being both a community workshop space and a place where students could hang out would most likely mean we’d run into the issue of doing too much and failing to do both effectively. We decided to narrow down what our service would be doing into one specific thing. We also wanted to limit our audience to be only high schoolers, specifically financially challenged ones who live in the city.
We just had to decide which thing our service would focus on — offering workshops, or being a communal third space.
At this point, we were divided into two opinions on the direction we would be taking our service. One side believed that it would be good to go with the community workshop space, and the other thought that we could do both community workshops and individual quiet space in the same building.
We made a mock layout of the possible divided layout, where there would both be quiet space and a community space divided from each other.
There was some disagreement about this. One member thought it was bad that there was quiet space at all. He argued that this would isolate some members from getting the community experience. The rest of us believed that providing this separate quiet space would actually be more welcoming to more people, and would be inclusive for those who prefer a quiet space to do their own thing. We had learned from the interviews, after all, that some people wanted to be out of the house and be around people but still do an isolated activity.
There appeared to be some confusion on whether this place would be a space for people to seek community or to come and do what they like. Personally, I had thought it was supposed to achieve both at the same time. In the end, we resorted on it being a communal third space for high schoolers to hang out inside with designated quiet space for those who prefer it. We were still playing with the idea of hosting workshops in the communal space sometimes.
Violet mentioned that if we were to continue providing workshops, the service would end up being remarkably similar to what the libraries in our area provide, and it might be best to find ways we compete with them or just stray from this idea entirely. We did some more research into this, and learned that there were indeed programs provided by the library people for free where they would be able to learn skills and play with Legos. Despite the similarity, we noticed a lot of these more fun workshops didn’t market to the same age demographic as we were trying to, marketing instead towards a younger age range. Though we could get by by just providing these to high schoolers, this did lead to us being a little dissuaded from pursuing the workshop idea.
We then had a discussion of maybe creating a voting function on our website or application where people could submit a vote for what way the main communal space would be used. For example, if people would use it to do a crafting workshop, a dance class, a skills class, or something like that. We were a little torn on designating it as a space for these activities. In the end, we decided not to go through with this since it would remove the ability of individuals to use it as a communal area fully todo whatever they’d like.
One group member argued that we needed voting, as he believed voting for what workshop would be done in the community space was the only way that the user would show their agency, but the rest of us thought that reserving the individual cubicles for whatever they want was a better expression of their agency. In the end, we agreed that the existence of one specific activity everyone would have to participate in, even if they had voted for a different activity for that week, went against our desire to provide high schoolers with the agency to do what they wanted. If an option didn’t get voted by the majority, that individual would probably feel dismayed and that their choices didn’t matter. Removing the role of voting eliminated this issue of feeling overshadowed.
This confusion further demonstrated that our service would most likely not work out if we had more than one thing provided to the user, and convinced us to completely move away from the “community workshop” idea.
We finally landed on our service being a location responsible with providing high schoolers with a bunch of spaces, called cubicles, they could reserve for their desired activities, whether group or individual. We played around with the idea of having specific presets for cubicles. This would require a special layout and supplies for a media room, a study room, a game room, and other examples, each with their own supplies. For example, the media room would have the ability to arrange curtains for a darker setting since we had learned from the interviews some people prefer a darker setting.
There was also the idea of a feedback survey that would be used to learn what we could improve or provide students with in the future weeks that the service was active.
This was where we ran into some communication issues. One person suggested that we continually switch out specific activities for users based on their specific needs and interests, providing different materials or activities every day, but the rest of us thought that this would not be the most sustainable way to keep our service running — switching out the materials and getting new ones each day for new ways people could use the cubicles would require a lot of funding and storage and involvement of staff.
Somewhat of a verbal altercation arose in class due to one member not understanding why the rest of us thought we couldn’t sustain this setup. I believe this misunderstanding came from the peculiar wording of what he’d said. It sounded like he was talking about “doing something different” than what we were talking about. But he was just mentioning that we should provide individuals with a variety of supplies so they could do what they like, and switching it out based on what they were reserving the space for that day, which was basically what we had already discussed. The rest of us were confused by the wording and the fact that he was pitching his (similar to what we had discussed and decided on) idea in a way that sounded like an opposing point. We thought he was suggesting we run a different activities and acquiring new supplies (board games, big workshop materials) every single day.
Thankfully this miscommunication was resolved through just taking a break as we all finally agreed again that the service would be providing individual reservation spaces with basic layouts that could be used by users for a set predetermined number of activities — studying, playing board games, playing electronic games (they would have to provide their own consoles and games to prevent theft), chatting, and other options that would be displayed to the user to choose from when they made the reservation on our website. And if there were any things we didn’t supply people with, they could request them in the feedback form and we could consider providing those materials to them in the future.
We created prototypes of the space’s layout. This included two floor layouts as well as a 3D model and the bare bones idea of a reservation website people could use to reserve the spaces we’d provide.
This layout that we mocked up from this idea reminded Violet of WeWorks, a community area she previously had utilized to do work. She mentioned that she had some negative experiences with the space — while it was free to use, there were some issues about the layout and atmosphere that she felt detracted from the user experience. Based on this, we decided to make sure that our service and space would not fall into the same pitfalls. I thought this was a great contribution since we wanted to make sure the environment we fostered was open and welcoming to those who came in seeking a community, and did not come off as hostile and cold in design.
Since we had settled on a service, I then wrote up a deliverables list pictured below. I thought it would be the best way to clearly delineate tasks, as the deadline was fast approaching and I had begun to worry we wouldn’t be able to finish in time for the due date.
We also made sure to interview a few more people by the Friday of that week to look into their preferences for what sorts of materials and sensory adjustments people would like in the cubicles we would be providing people with.
We began working on our specific tasks, with the goal of getting everything finished and put into the slide deck I’d created by the end of the Tuesday before our presentation. Due to a miscommunication of some sort, the Figma prototype ended up being done by a different groupmate instead of me, but that was alright. It provided people with the ability to choose the size of cubicle, select the number of guests they’d be bringing with them, and the amenities needed as well at the time and date of the reservation. She also made an additional example of what our social media feed would look like, as a representation of our marketing strategy.
Theo created the Stakeholder Map as well as mocked up one of the Persona profiles, which resembled closely one of the people he had interviewed and pulled a lot from their experiences as someone who wanted a place that provided them with privacy in public.
We worked together to create the journey map, which was a visual representation of the steps the user would take when interacting with both our reservation site and the physical space.
I also had to shift which tasks I would be responsible for due to the deliverable mix up, since the work was now distributed differently. I now instead created one of the persona profiles as well as the floor layout. I also created the slide deck and layout of the story we would tell, as well as the flow of the pitch.
For the floor layout, I wanted to show how there are multiple sizes of cubicle space, so that we could accommodate large and small sized groups. Each would have a base layout which would provide people with the basic supplies they might need (regardless of the specific activity they reserved it for). An in person staff member would then put the materials related to the activity the person wanted to use it for (i.e. for someone who selected the board games option, they would retrieve board games for them and set them up in the space) into their reserved cubicle. People would also have partially glazed windows, which allowed for some feeling of privacy while also being safe.
My persona profile represented something I had noticed a lot in my interviews — an individual who would like to pursue their creative interests but did not have the resources to, or a quiet environment to concentrate on it.
The 3D models were also created and arranged in the slides (shown below).
I wrote up a list of possible next steps, including a pilot program where we have people test out our reservation system and the in person layout, so we could get more user feedback. I also looked into how we would retrieve and allocate funding if we were to actually create this service in real life.
We then met to finalize the slides and practice our presentation before the class period, which wraps up our development process.
As for takeaways from this experience, I had learned a lot about the role communication plays in a successful group project. Without constantly checking in and clarifying that group members are on the same page, confusions like the ones I discussed earlier would occur. We were always going back and forth on the project’s direction, and this could have been avoided had we met more often in person and not just communicated over text and video call. I feel miscommunications like this are more easily smoothed out when chatting face to face.
One of my weaknesses for this class was definitely organization. I often had an issue where I would not be able to find artifacts or know the location of deliverables I had finished, mainly because the notes I took were in a multitude of different google documents. I would try and grow from this experience by organizing things more and keeping track of my notes in a single document, and uploading images in a way that is more chronological.
As for the next steps of this project, as I stated above, it would probably involve a whole lot more user testing a prototype iteration. We would want a large, life size space prototype layout that people could walk through and give their input on how it felt to use the space. We would also like for users to be able to test the flow of our reservation app, and to connect with stakeholders like faculty and administrators of the local schools to better understand how we could connect with students’ needs.
