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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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This is the end, my beautiful friend

The semester is gone! the past 3 weeks were very busy for a lot of us so of course we got confused and forgot who was doing which blog. So our entry today is a mashup of weeks 14 and 15, and our last entry

Week 14

We had a lot of pre-work for our class. Lydia+Yael+Estela were the Brand vision team, responsible for coming up with the brand Essence for MOED, as well as possible names and tag-lines.

John+Melissa+Bryn+Yuequi were the Visual brand team, responsible for coming up with possible visual directions. (include screenshots of visual direction)

Because we did the Spectrum Thinking work, we knew that both the visual and verbal language for the brand needed to feel Relaxed, Human and Action Oriented

Then we used both Brand Vision and Visual Styles to take our prototypes to the next level. We review them and discuss what we were going to present on our Share back on December 16.

For the share back we decided to show all 3 options of the brand identity and have people vote

We also had a special guest, Lee Davis! the Co-Director of the Center for Social Design. He presented us a collaboration between the Center + MICA alumni and the EcoLab at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art & Design (MOME). They worked together to redesign the brand for the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

A big takeaway from their work is that redesigning a brand is much more than visual work. There is a lot of thinking and strategy behind it, self-reflection and intentionality.

Week 15

We made some more adjustments to our prototypes and brand ideas and met on Sunday, December 13 to practice the flow of the presentation. From that meeting some other adjustments came up. By Wednesday, December 16 we were ready to present! We started class with a check in question: how are you feeling in 1 word?

We were feeling hungry, happy, exciting, grateful, almost thriving!

Our share back started at 8:30 am Central Time. It was 8:25 and we had 7 people in the waiting room. By the time we started we had 25 participants. The icebreaker brought to you by Yael was super fun: What is a skill you’re very good at but you wouldn’t put on your resume?

It was great to hear that there were a lot of good cooks, skin care professionals, Ikea assemblers, Football gurus, DIY fans, bakers, sowers and a self taught sign language translator.

(estela put some screenshots from the shareback in yuequi’s folder)

Feedback was AWESOME! It was honest and candid. People were vocal about liking or disliking things and that was great! We thought maybe they would be shy about it but they weren’t.

After the share back we came back to wrap up a wonderful semester with some digital zines

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 13 - December 1st

We’re back after a very different kind of school Thanksgiving break! The check-in this week was break highlights.

Some of us relaxed and played video games. others caught up on work. Lydia baked an apple pie. Bryn went biking with her family. John visited with his cousins. Becky made her parent’s cheesy potato recipe!

Then we got back into the groove. Becky went over the agenda, and we looked at our community agreements, and reviewed the blog.

The two focuses for today were SPECTRUMS and PROTOYPING

Spectrum Thinking:

As a group we narrowed down our favorite spectrums to the top 5 on the slide below, and then we starting gathering images in preparation for our workshop with job seekers. We split up into teams to find photos on Pexel and Unsplash.

Prototype Reflections:

Then we switched gears and shared our prototyping homework. A lot of us enjoyed doing something so different from our usual online work. People thought it was fun, and liked the crafty materials and physicality. Some appreciated the process of sketching and drawing by hand before going straight to digital programs.

I like, I wish, What If...

After that, each person presented their idea and then we took a minute to leave sticky note comments in the format of “I like,” “I wish,” “What if?” In total the group made 14 different analogue prototypes using colored paper, markers, pens, glue, and stickers.

we had so much feedback to give we had to break in the middle for lunch!

Prototyping Teams

After we finished up reviewing each prototype, we then began categorizing each of the ideas. We broke them up into these groups:

Quizzes (quick quiz, comfort-level survey)

Website (chat features, calendar, icons, staff directory, job search functions)

Printed (booklet and postcard, mailer)

Promotion (storytelling ads, Facebook Live behind-the-scenes)

Other (job seeker journey map, wellness club, job seeker library cards)

Everyone assigned themselves a category to work on and develop into higher quality prototypes for the final presentation. Becky shared with us some presentations and prototypes from previous classes, including the Baltimore Campaign for Grade-level Reading. The students called it "StoryMore" and created buttons, stickers, a logo, and all kinds of branding materials to “Rally a City of Readers”

Spectrums Workshop with Job Seekers

At 2pm some of the job seekers from our interviews joined us to develop some image spectrums. Becky asked us to use one word to describe our dream MOED. Here were the answers:

Becky - accessible Lydia - personalized Yael - uplifting Melissa - well-known Estela - brilliant Iris - multi-faceted John - limitless Bryn - intuitive Tameaka - realness

Estela presented to our visitors what spectrums are, and how we develop word pairings with opposite views to help us visualize the vibe of our design work.

We then stepped into breakout rooms and took the images we had gathered earlier in the day and began to line them up along a scale. Below are some examples. The group for Spectrum 3 chose the abstract sculpture to represent the most imaginative visual, and the clock and notebook to represent the most pragmatic.

We wrapped up the workshop by sharing our favorite images and by then, class itself was almost over.

Becky went over the homework and we split up into teams to do two very important jobs for next week, creating the VISION and VISUALS.

The vision team (Lydia, Yael, and Estela) would work on the words, like a new name and motto for MOED. The visuals team (Bryn, John, and Melissa) would work on the colors, images, and type for the re-branding.

and then, as usual, we ended with a good ‘ol clap out!

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 12 - November 24th

TODAY’S THE DAY! THE SUN IS SHINING, THE TANK IS CLEAN, AND WE ARE LEARNING HOW TO PROTOTYPE!!

Yes, today we started on prototypes after our share back last week.

We started off the day with a giphy check-in, followed by Lydia sharing the blog from last week. We then looked ahead and realized we only had FOUR MORE WEEKS LEFT! So sad!! We then shared our homework and our HMW questions.

We then found out there was a PACKAGE THEIF IN BALTIMORE!!

Then we all ran around our places to find something we are proud of making. This was awesome cause we got to see how creative and artistic one another are! YAY US.

Now we are getting into prototypes! Prototype is defined by: a tangible representation of an idea. We then talked about feedback for prototypes. It’s the sauce vs. the pasta - when you are getting feedback on something, it’s better to get it before it’s fully finished so people are willing to give you truthful feedback. When the product is done, people are less inclined to give feedback.

We looked at a cool lo-fi to hi-fi prototype chart and talked about these tips and tricks:

- give yourself time - gather fun supplies - prototype when you have energy - be creative - have fun!

We talked about ways to prototype: - build it - act it out - storyboard it We talked about the tools of the trade: - play doh - paper - scissors - pipe cleaners - rubberbands - paperclips

We talked about computer tools as well: - InVision - Live Surface - PSD Mockups - Figma - Illustrator - Adobe Dimension - Digital toolkits - Cardboard / Recyclables

THEN WE HAD LUNCH! YAY LUNCH!

Then we had our first prototyping challenge: - create something for your partner to help them through the rest of the semester - Interview, Build, Share Out AND WHAT WE GOT WAS AWESOME!!

JOHN: He made “Estelllla’s Big Book of Feels” which was a mindfulness book full of activities !! LYDIA: She made an interactive calendar for Melissa - there was a deadline section, which Melissa loved, and Lydia used Ziploc bags for laminate. Very cool !!

YAEL: She made a wall whiteboard for John that was colored coded with to-do lists to keep track of all his schoolwork and jobs !!

YUEQI: She created a photo album for ME!! with Ziploc bags to collect cool things from my outdoor adventures and a place to write stuff down for each memento. There was also a cool section for writing down the weather !!

MELISSA: She made a sticky note board with check-lists, like a tactile mural board, for Lydia !!

BRYN: I made an interview app for Yueqi that connects you to job counselors, open positions near your, and interview prep !!

ESTELA: She made an interactive book for Yael’s thesis and her cat to play with at the same time !!

We then took some glamour shots and sent them to Becky.

We then went on to talk about Spectrum Thinking with Estela !!

What is Spectrum Thinking, you might ask? It’s a methodology used to build a common language between teams when they are defining the brand. We started with word pairing that represents opposing views, but both words are positive words. The words can have multiple opposites. Where do these words come from? They come from the design principles and the brand personality documents. We then had to define the visuals which becomes a guide for the aesthetic direction. We then took these learnings and brought them to mural to start defining words for MOED. We grouped like-minded words and found the biggest umbrella to create the two “bookend” words.

We then went over our assignments for the week! And that was it - with a nice clap-out moment.

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 11- November 17th

The day finally arrived... **SHARE BACK TIME**

We logged into the Zoom room around thirty minutes before the presentation was scheduled to start. Unfortunately, Yueqi was not able to join the team today, but she was with us all in spirit.

We had to make the important decision of what music to listen to during the introduction of our presentation, and Bryn gave us the gift of Yacht Rock to guide us to share back success.

At 9:30am, we all gathered and people started flooding into the Zoom room. There were around 30 participants total, and they included a great mix of Center of Social Design faculty and alumni, MOED staff, and job seekers. After a bit of popcorning around for introductions (shout out Becky for keeping track of the attendee list!), we got into the meat and potatoes of the presentation.

Kudos to the whole team here- the entire PBS class was on the ball. We walked through our design challenge and an introduction to HCD with John, then Estela gave an overview of our research and the process leading up to interviews.

Melissa and Yael brought us through the interviews themselves and talked about the data collected from the staff survey. Bryn spoke about the inspiration we got from other cities’ websites, taking us into the personas. There, we were introduced to Old-fashioned Oscar, Excited Emani, Unaware Ursula, Digital Debbie, Overwhelmed Octavia, and Determined Daryl.

Queue Mercury popping into retrograde once more!

As we arrived into Design Principles, Becky froze, but the team quickly recovered, and Estela took on the role of moving the slides along for the team. Becky was back on a minute later, and we can honestly give everyone the “Cool as a Cucumber on Zoom” badge.

The presentation chugged along, and we hit Ideation in stride. We had participants brainstorm for about two or three minutes around six themes and opportunities our team had identified.

We can safely assume everyone’s keyboards were on fire, because by the end of our share back’s ideation session, we had around nine pages of ideas.

After thanking everyone for participating, we had a quick debrief, confirmed that we’d totally kicked butt on that presentation, and took a lunch break.

When we came back in the afternoon, we gave a few plusses and deltas on the overall experience and then began sorting all of the comments and ideas we’d received during the ideation session. As Becky mentioned, the hit rate for ideas was about 1 in 100, and we certainly had a lot of content to help us get to that one golden idea.

We finished out the day by completing our sorting and wrapping up the ideation portion of our project. After an impeccable clap-out lead by John and his microphone, we move forward into prototyping.

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 11: Nov. 10th 2020

This week was centered on the Shareback Presentation ! But before we got into rehearsing we started out with a...

Giphy Check-In: Election Reflection🇺🇸

We went into our Slack subthread and each posted a gif that reflected how we felt post-election. We saw a variety of reactions ranging from: hopeful to manic to half asleep.

Then, we were hit with a life changing question that would alter the course of PBS in the future...

PBS or nah ?

So Becky is thinking of changing the name to something that better reflects the course ! She then asked us to brainstorm as a group and we came up with the following:

Human Centered Design Studio

Innovation Lab

Social Design Studio

HCD Lab

Into to Social Design

and the all-inclusive...

✨Human Centered Design Lab✨

Of course, these are suggestions for now. We'll just have to wait and see what pops up next semester on the course registry !

Shareback Slidedeck

After some fun brainstorming we went through each slide in our slidedeck, assigned slides with our names and made adjustments along the way.

We took a break and when we came back we jumped right into our dry rehersal. Becky guided us throughout, timed us and made sure we were on track. We figured out who would take on which transitions and practiced switching off seamlessly.

Becky then added three slides near the end of the presentation which allows our guests to participate and brainstorm with us !

MURAL

After our dry run, we reached the conclusion that we can narrow down the themes. So we hopped over to MURAL and voted on the top six themes. In the end, four themes were suggested to be merged:

Using the web & Engaging social media

Believing in a higher purpose & Bringing the brand to life

One Word Wrap-Up

Our eventful class came to an end with our one word wrap-up:

Estela - focused✨

Melissa - confident✨

Bryn - calm✨

Yael - “brain feels smushed”🧠✨

Lydia - optimistic✨

John - calm + optimistic✨

Yuexqi - energetic✨

Becky - jazzed✨

Overall, we felt positive about our presentation and anticipated our next meeting. Our class ended with the traditional clap-out featuring the debut of John’s amazing reverb-heavy microphone 🎤 ✨

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 8: Oct. 20th 2020

This week we started working on Synthesis!

First, we began with our check-in on Slack. Everyone shared a fascinating gif.

After picking up the community norms, we saw last week’s blog and looked ahead our course schedule.

Then Becky made an introduction for the process of synthesis.

Data: What did we see and hear?

Themes: What are the patterns?

Insights: What tensions exist? What is surprising?

Opportunities: What are the areas for growth and change? (HMW statement)

And we started by finding themes. Becky introduced this part and shared some examples.

We also got a chance to practice before we tried it on the Mural. We split into three groups and looked for the first theme.

We had a break, then we returned around 10:15 and added more themes.

After that, we went deeper and explored insights. Becky gave us some examples and tips, and we created our own insights to reflect our findings.

Then we had a lunch break!

We came back at 1pm and continued our insights.

Our wonderful teams:

The Tortellinis: Bryn + Yael

Synthesize Me: Lydia + Melissa + Yueqi

Social Design Socialites: Estela + John

Besides, we also left feedback to each other.

The next part was Personas.

After a brief introduction, we created 3 personas.

We had Old-Fashioned Oliver, Unaware Ulysses, and Jaxson Jamm!

Then we moved to the Design Principles.

After a quick understanding of design principles, we documented our ideas on the Mural.

The last part was assignment and check-out!

We ended up with the one-word answer of the check-out question: How are you feeling?

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 7: Oct. 13th 2020

Week Seven rounded out our interview series, and ended with a triumphant simultaneous triple interview! But first, we began with a check-in question.

Check-In: “How are you feeling?”

Answers ranged. Some people felt anxious, like something bad was about to happen. Mercury in retrograde perhaps? Lydia had made the switch to coffee. Yueqi was finding her groove with virtual learning. Melissa was torn between balancing academics and a social life. Many of us were tired.

Morning Interview: Employer Perspective

After a review of last week’s blog post we prepared for the morning’s round of interviews. Team Rocket! interviewed John Danko, the president of Danko Arlington manufacturers. John is a board member of MOED, and a “super employer”. He relies on MOED to match him with lots of job seekers. He gave us valuable information from an employer perspective. I was so nervous I forgot to take a screenshot while we were in google hang-out, but here he is in the introduction video on their very early 2000′s-looking website:

Teams D-squared and LJ Effect weren’t able to conduct interviews, but they did review last semester’s interviews with users of the Eastside Career Center and Baltimore Job Hunters Support Group.

Technical Difficulties: Mercury in Retrograde!

We met back together as a class to go over interview takeaways but suddenly and mysteriously half of us lost internet connection. Maybe Mercury really was in retrograde. Becky decided it was time to break for lunch.

Afternoon Interviews: Triple Home Run

We reconvened in the afternoon for our final round of interviews and in a magical conclusion, every interviewee showed up for their slot! Estella and John interviewed Sharonda. Lydia and Bryn interviewed Temeaka. And Team Rocket! interviewed Iris. We shared highlights and gave our teammates shout outs for our hard work.

Shout outs to... 📣

📣 Bryn for bringing amazing energy and flexibility!

📣 Estella for gaining confidence interviewing and being detail oriented!

📣 John for always knowing the pulse of the interviewee and working through challenges!

📣 Lydia for quick thinking and organization!

📣 Yael for being quick with the questions and follow-ups!

📣 Melissa for professionalism and taking great notes!

📣 Yueqi for skilled facilitation and reliable documentation!

Check-Out: One Word

To end the day we gave one word each for how we’re feeling. Several people felt grateful for our teammates and the class. Others felt excited to have completed our interviews and be moving forward. Some were still a little tired but happy about our progress today so overall things felt pretty evened-out and centered.

We concluded with a clap out 🙂

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 6: Oct. 6th 2020

Week six was all about the interviews! But first - the check in question of the week.

What was your favorite halloween costume?

We got answers all over the board - from Dracula, to a blade of grass, to some people not really celebrating the holiday at all (which I personally dig).

Lydia followed up the check-in question with a fun blog recap. And let me tell you, those drawings were hawt hawt heat!! Very inspiring for me (which led to this GIF filled post).

Then, we were off to the interviews! But this time, we tried google hangouts to see if that worked better.

Lo and behold, D-Squared was the only team that ended up with an Interview in the morning part of class.

But it was a great interview and gave us a ton of amazing information. Insights are below:

Then we had a nice long lunch moment and prepared for FOUR MORE YEARS!!! Just kidding, four more interviews after lunch.

When we came back from lunch, we did more interviews - but there was a gal named Samatha who missed hers because of UTC time, which I still have no idea what that is. But alas, we were bummed to not meet her!!

These interviews were interesting, to say the least. Team Rocket and The LJ Effect teamed up to do some interviews for the afternoon. But we got an interesting person who signed up. The team ended up interviewing a PhD candidate who was actually using our interview for her to interview us on MOED and Baltimore City?? (is that right??)

We went over more insights which are below:

We also did a fun check-in with movement about how we thought the day and the interviews went.

After we did the check-in, we had a conversation about the flyer and the way we are marketing it to interviewees. Do we start saying things like, “Baltimore residents only?” This led to a conversation about us seeing if we can tap into the success stories from the MOED website. Then Estela asked, “how do we leverage the personas from the last group?” and would this help leverage what was used last semester and what we need currently?

Great thoughts - and some great questions!

We then took a breather and showed Becky our presentation. She thought it was great and the only thing she would add would be a slide about brand strategy.

WHAT A DAY!

We closed out the day with a clap and I thought it was pretty good. Look at this stunning group of humans (minus Yueqi)!

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 5: September 29, 2020

Week five of Practice Based Studios marked our first step into the wild world of interviews. But first, we started the day with a check-in on highs and lows...

After our check-in, we learned that we had three interviews set up for the afternoon, so the morning would be our final chance to review our draft interview guides before launch. We broke into our Team Survey and Team Interview Guide and swapped our drafts for feedback, then swapped again to incorporate edits. Once our guides were closer to finalized, Becky gave us a few tips to keep in mind during the interview:

Go into an interview in pairs- someone will be the question asker and listener, while the other person will be the note taker.

When listening to interview responses, try not to show any reactions.

It’s a good idea to wait 5-7 seconds to give interviewees a chance to respond. A long silence after a question can show data, as well.

Dig deeper past the surface level! Asking “why” helps to slow down the interview process if you’re getting quick answers and learn more from each response. Becky suggested asking “why” five times in a row, then demonstrated how the technique pulls out more information through a question about breakfast.

An additional part of getting important information from an interview is noticing what might be in the interviewee’s surroundings.

Follow-up questions help to clarify information or look more closely at an answer. These include: What did you mean by...? Can you explain more? I heard x, is that correct?

You can never be sure how an interview will go- be open and ready to adjust as needed.

Finally, be confident! As the interviewers, we’re the ones leading the discussion. The interviewee won’t know if things aren’t going according to plan- “we got this!”

After a short break, our class returned and we practiced our elevator pitches explaining who we are and why we were conducting our interview. Once we’d crafted that, our class split into teams to do practice interviews, with the slight curveball that our interview partner had to take on a challenging persona (Chatty Cathy, Busy Betsy, and Confused Carl).

In our new interview teams (D-Squared, the Lj Effect, and Team Rocket), we were ready to tackle the real deal after lunch.

After lunch (and re-reviewing the interview guide), our teams and interviewees split into our separate break-out rooms. Here, we put the “Be Flexible” advice to the test. The Lj Effect had a Zoom interview and experienced a few technical difficulties (recording challenges, sound cutting out), and ended up stealing Yael from Team Rocket to take notes. D-Squared’s Zoom interview turned into a phone interview. Team Rocket’s interviewee didn’t arrive, so the rest of the team hopped on the Zoom call with team D-Squared.

After the interview time ended and the PBS returned to the main Zoom room, we began debriefing the experiences. What were the pluses and deltas?

Pluses: We had tackled a lot of content in our questions and we had all been prepared to step in and help each other out as we navigated Zoom interviews for the first time around.

Deltas: We were curious about why our interviewees mostly only shared positive feedback about their MOED experiences, and we brainstormed about how we might create a space where interviewees felt comfortable sharing critiques. We also wondered if there was a way to make the interviews last longer, since our first round interviews were fairly short. We also talked about the online format of the interviews and the challenges that posed.

Ultimately, our group came away from the experience with a lot of takeaways:

After just one round of interviews, our class had learned a lot about what job seekers find helpful about MOED’s services and communication, but we also knew we were in a great place to improve our interview technique and learn more.

We ended the class with a check-out and the ~~best clap out we’ve had so far~~ !

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moed-socialdesign · 5 years ago

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Week 5: 09-22-20

Our day was pretty eventful, here's the breakdown:

Reviewing our readings, finalizing guiding questions, intro to interviews, visit from Brice & Arli and research methods.

We started our day by going around saying what we're grateful for.

Also... IT WAS NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION DAY !

...back to business

Readings

We were split into three groups for Molly's readings: Know Your Customers Jobs to Be Done, Getting Real About Delightful Design & Stop Raising Awareness Already

“Verb + direct object + context”

“Excitement+performance>basic expecations”

“Action>just raising awareness”

Each of us were assigned a persons success story off of MOED's website. We summarized their experiences and took away keypoints. We discovered that each person discovered MOED through different means: through MOED's main site, YO, MWC, Satelite and GEDCO. Another takeaway is that each person was at a different point in their life when they connected to MOED. A great reccomendation was to conduct the story interview-style, making it more personal. We all agreed that these success stories were a hidden gem and definitely need to highlighted.

Finalizing Guiding Questions

We were put in subgroups and brainstormed guiding questions from the sticky notes we posted last class. Our questions had to relate to: the design challenge, guide research, seek to understand what currently exists, what should exist and what's needed. We finalized our guiding questions and narrowed it down to four:

What is the current brand strategy of MOED?

What do Baltimore residents seek to accomplish when they connect with MOED?

What is MOED's current brand perception among Baltimore's residents?

How do Baltimore residents connect with MOED?

Intro to Interview Questions

Next we looked at what makes good interview questions. We quickly dumped mock interview questions into MURAL then split the questioning into two groups; employees and residents.

The questions we came up with should:

1. Open Ended

shouldn't result in yes/no answers

keep it short and sweet

ask a question that's engaging and that gives insight on the person

2. Solicit Stories

“Tell me about a time when”

best way to gain info = data

3. No Leading Questions

influences interviews opinions/answers

be neutral

4. Avoid Jargon

don't use acronyms

“How do you feel about the deployment section”

5. Keep it Simple

too many questions are overwhelming and confusing

easier to understand when narrowed down

Visit from Brice & Arli!

Brice and Arli are the duo tag-team that take care of MOED's external communication. External communication covers: messaging, mass messaging, social media platforms, writing speeches for the mayor, and media in general (website, facebook). Brice is now part-time, but he has a masters in Design from the University of Baltimore. He's curious about the team and is excited to see design take on social issues. Arli is still full-time, works with the youth works over the summer and is a huge canva fan. They also work with other city agencies and are the ones that wrote the success stories on the website. The tools they utilize are:

adobe suites

streamyard

canva

publisher

word

final cut pro & premiere (to upload videos)

They gave us some insight on MOED's background and history. The name changed many times, “mayor” was added because of his popularity in hopes to reach out to more people. This could be an issue due to a connotation/experience with the mayor. They pointed out that there are two major audiences: job seekers and businesses. When discussing politics, they explained how they're going through a transition and how this could be a good opportunity for positive change.

“We try to stay out of politics”

They expressed what they were looking forward to in regards to changes:

changing the name of the agency as it's “outdated”

impressed with the physical/spatial switch-up from last semester

slogan is currently “get a job, build a career” they're open to change it

separate the audiences when interviewing and find needs

consitency in branding - fragmented

too many logos from different agencies - logo soup

Design Research Methods

Finally, we shared how to conduct research through fun interactive methods. We found that these would be ideal if we were to apply them in-person, but being that we've gone digital most of these aren't possible (with the exception of secondary research).

Photojournal & Collage

Conversation Starters

Analogous Inspiration

Card Sort

Draw It

Secondary Research

THE END *clap out*👏🏼

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Week 3: 9/15

We started class with our usual Check-in question and we went through the agenda. It seemed a little ambitious: discussing the ECCD tools (Equity-Centered Community Design) meeting Molly and going through her work for YouthWorks, meeting the last PBS and going through their for MOED last semester, and finalizing our Guiding Questions. But guess what? We did it!

Let’s talk about ECCD

Equity-Centered Community Design is a creative process for designers (and non designers) to help problem solve based on equity, and humility, learning how to integrate history and previous knowledge, as well as understanding power dynamics to truly co-create with the community.

We read the field guide and discussed how we could incorporate these principles into our project.

#1 Invite diverse co-creators. We talked about how we should acknowledge people’s strengths and expertise, but we shouldn’t confine them to only that space. For this project, we already have two key co-creators as part of our process, Angel & Brenda, but Yael pointed out that we needed to think of who else would we need to bring along.

Who else do we need to invite? Job seekers, employers using MOED services, gatekeepers in city government and MOED.

Bryn brought up that we would need to ensure balanced decision making through constant communication with the community.

Get feedback at multiple stages from the community who is affected directly. Make sure it’s compatible for the users in Baltimore city. Be very conscious of who are we talking to and if is this accessible to everyone?

We'll need to brainstorm how to reach job seekers. Once we have plans in place for interviews, we can leverage Brenda and Angel.

Something we agreed was to make sure that the people we interview are brought back in throughout the whole process, so that they are not just a person seeing what we are doing, but also providing decisions.

#2 Building humility and empathy

Yueqi’s thoughts Acknowledge and respect differences. We are there to observer and listen. Research about the environment and situations in advance. Building trust takes time and effort. Be prepared

Meilssa’s thoughts Remember this is a collaboration, we working together. Is not us helping them, but working together.Keep the intention in mind and keep working towards that

Becky’s thoughts Empathy has come under critique because it has become a buzzword. We can make an effort to see/think/feel but we will never experience the exact same thing.

Being empathetic is just being there, in the hole with the person

#3 History + Healing

John talked about the stigma around the type of jobs and job seeking in itself. It can feel lonely and stressful, so how can the brand strategy be inclusive to meet everyone where they are?

We talked about how could we inspire a more professional delivery, not changing the way people are, but helping them be more professional. This started a discussion around what being professional meant, which brought up the success stories. Success stories are the healing, they show possibility and are trying to build back trust between MOED and the residents.

It would be nice to have a video where you can hear from people's own words. This is the healing at their best.

#3 Acknowledging & dismantling power structures

Recognize assumptions. Recognize your power and privilege. Our is that as MICA students we get to see this as a project for a class, but may not be impacted. We get to decide what is presented to MOED, what ideas to pursue, so we talked about giving decision making power to actual job seekers & users.

Because this is the first time the ECCD process is part of the Practice Based studio, we have to think how these things get built into our flow, put some systems in place so that is not a one and done type of thing.

Time with Molly

Molly Reddy is a Design Strategist at Fannie Mae. During her time at MICA her thesis project was about rethinking relationships between youth & supervisors to turn early job opportunities into long term plans. She did this in partnership with YouthWorks, a branch of MOED.

After some intros where we learned what our dream job as a kid was, she shared with us her process and what she learned from it.

Balancing tradition with change

Bureaucracy can be tricky when dealing with “the way it has always been done”. The key is to co-design with your stakeholders, making sure you’re elevating their voices.

The system can be defensive and protective because it’s about managing risk rather than delivering positive experiences, so we need to think how can we build relationships with our stakeholders. Sharing stories or playback from the interviews can be a powerful tool to connect with the stakeholders and show the why.

“When you ask people to engage in a process like design, we can get excited, but for them it may feel vulnerable, scary or threatening” - Molly

We should consider how are we bringing everyone from MOED along, making sure our job is to make them look good, and elevate their work, their mission.

Research: more than interviews

Molly mentioned that for research she asked youth to text her what was the best thing and the worst thing of their day at work. We could think of ways we can get information beyond interviews.

Because we have a multi-stakeholder project, there are different expectations: MOED has expectations, job seekers, businesses, etc. A good way to see what people are expecting is through reviews. Facebook & Google reviews can tell you what needs are not being met.

Jobs to be done of the Brand Strategy?

A job is what a user needs to accomplish. Different users will have different jobs to be done, that is something that we need to learn. At the same time, we need to define what are the jobs that the brand strategy needs to do. They should ladder up to MOED big goals and help them achieve their bigger picture.

PBS x 2

We met the team that worked with MOED the previous semester. Their worked focused mainly on improving the experience for the Job Seekers, since MOED had talk to business owners and employers, but not employees.

Research

They used immersion, pretending to be job seekers to go through the experience. They also conducted interviews of different types of job seekers.

They created personas to represent a type of user. These characters were based on data collected from interviews that highlighted bright spots and pain points. These personas and their research seemed to be relevant for our work, we can try and leverage what feels appropriate.

Things to keep in mind as we do research: look at the different users, and the unique experiences and relationships. We want to get an unfiltered look, the good and the bad.

“Let yourself be surprised by the data you collect” - Francesca Bonifacio

Design Principles

This tool stood out to me, it’s a good tool to guide the work. The design principles helped during ideation and selection. They functioned as internal guidelines.

Even though they were thought for the people who facilitate the process, this design principles could be taken by MOED to inform their work.

Could we use these design principles? Could they help inform our work?

Ideas that stood out

The spring PBS had some ideas that touch on some of our initial conversations, like the ad campaign and the app. The ad campaign’s main purpose was to create awareness of MOED career centers and services. They used quotes from the job seekers and it centered around “Enter & learn/engage/connect”

They also saw the value of success stories, and another idea was a youtube channel where people could tell their experience.

Something they mention I thought was key: 70% of people do not have broadband internet at home, but they do own a smartphone, so what’s the role of social media? This statistic also makes the case for a mobil website redesign.

Q & A

Questions we asked them:

Where is the branding at? Was it accepted? - They (MOED) seem open to whatever is next

If you had a magic, what would you want to happen/get implemented?

Building - can’t do a new building, but that’s why they did the price points.

New Branding - campaign, storytelling, strong virtual presence.

Welcoming space & coffee bar

Welcome Kit

Guiding Questions

To close our day we went back to Mural and resisted our guiding questions. They were still work in progress and we used all the information we got that day to finish them. We started grouping them by themes, and ended up with 5 groups of questions: ideal experience, awareness, prioritization, current brand strategy and current job seeker perception.

We are still working through them, but by next class we’ll have between 4 and 5 guiding questions.

And that’s it!

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