Fa19 Period, Uncategorized

Period: Build

agy1

After Ideate and Mid-Semester Review, we had one big, general idea of how to improve access to menstrual products at Rice. Our idea revolves around the concept of a “period pack”, which incorporates multiple products bundled together to eliminate concern over taking more than one. Although we had a basis for our solution, we still needed to work out the details. Which location on-campus is private, yet centrally located for all users to access? How many products should be in each pack? Maybe the “packs” are not pre-built, but customizable instead. How do we regulate the amount of products taken … Continue reading Period: Build

Fa19 Magpies and Peacocks

IMMERSE: Team Magpies & Peacocks

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In the process of Immerse, we decided to forego the traditional user persona. Instead, we’ve generated a user journey map to highlight key moments throughout M&P’s standing donation intake system. Because this intake system is highly specific to the two users (our community partners at M&P), this user journey map provides perspective into the tendencies and decision-making processes of these two individuals, as opposed to those of a more generalized audience or demographic.   An example user scenario: Ahshia, one of the employees, has just returned to the warehouse after overseeing a pop-up event at an art gallery in Los … Continue reading IMMERSE: Team Magpies & Peacocks

Uncategorized

Week MSR: Team New Hope Housing

Kelly Park

One major insight that we got from the audience’s feedback form is that our user research was well conducted and our user insights were well communicated. We also saw that our audience was compelled by our reframing of the design goals from one that tackles the physical advertisements themselves to one that tackles the way that residents and staff at New Hope Housing moving forward. We were proud of how our statistics from primary and secondary research were clearly conveyed to show why we decided to make the certain design choices that we did. We also received feedback that it … Continue reading Week MSR: Team New Hope Housing

Fa19 Period, Uncategorized

Period: Mid-Semester Review

agy1

Mid-Semester Review is a great opportunity for us to reflect on our progress thus far , and receive valuable feedback from a more objective perspective. We presented key user insights, stakeholder insights, and focused on communicating our period pack idea with its areas of variation. At the end of our presentation, we were seeking feedback on which of the different areas of variation seemed the most exciting/feasible to studio members. We received feedback relating to different aspects of the solution: Location: Would these packs be accesible only when the women’s resource center is open? What about non-rmc bathrooms? Structure: Excited … Continue reading Period: Mid-Semester Review

Fa19 Period, Uncategorized

Period: Ideate

agy1

  During Team Period’s ideation stage, we worked to take our user insights and new and improved How Can We Statement to generate ideas for what our solution could look like. During Open Studio, we began this process by thinking individually about different potential solutions on post-it notes. After we had time to think and process individually, we gathered as a group and put them into general clusters, which we found to be education/stigma reduction and physical period product-related solutions. After a few days, we regrouped for our team meeting. There, we went about the same process again during our … Continue reading Period: Ideate

Fa19 New Hope Housing, Fall 2019

Reframe: New Hope Housing

Ashton Drake

This week we completed our “reframe” step of the design process, where we reflected on the data we had collected up until this point to come up with design goals, measures of success, and two “how can we” statements that guide us into next step where we begin to ideate. The data we examined here was primarily the notes we took during our conversations with our community partner at New Hope Housing and our external research on NHH. While our initial proposed problems space concerned the low attendance of some of the programs at NHH, we realized relatively quickly that … Continue reading Reframe: New Hope Housing

Fa19 New Hope Housing

Week IDEATE: New Hope Housing

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This week, our team worked on the ideate process of human-centered design. We all independently brainstormed possible ideas – writing them on sticky notes regardless if they were wacky, super simple, easy or difficult to implement, expensive or inexpensive, etc. After clustering our ideas, we identified two themes that we were attracted to as possible solutions – a feedback system, and content of either advertising or the programs. For the feedback system, we developed the following design goals to guide our refinement of potential solutions: regular, relevant, accessible, easy-to-use, easy-to-implement. For the content portion, we identified the following design goals: … Continue reading Week IDEATE: New Hope Housing

Uncategorized

TIRR Reframe

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Hello friends,    This week at DFA x TIRR we’re moving into prototyping! We couldn’t get interviews for some bureaucratic reasons this week. But for now, the interview we had with the patient therapist (the person who works with those with spinal cord injuries), in addition to lots of informative youtube videos by people with spinal cord injuries, are a solid enough foundation to start designing a mid-fidelity(solid but unrefined) prototype.  Looking forward, we hope to gain access to interviewing more users at TIRR. When that happens, we will be adjusting the prototype (user-testing) to better fit their needs. After … Continue reading TIRR Reframe

Fa19 TIRR1 Comment

Midterm Recess: Team TIRR

Scott Fessler

As our team finished week one of immerse and midterm recess arrived, our project was in a pretty good spot. During our first few open studios, we conducted background/secondary research on the problem spaces in our project. There we gathered what we believed to be a good understanding of the users and stakeholders in the project. However, our assumptions were turned on their head after meeting with our Community Partner, Haley Smith. This interview was one of the most rewarding moments of the past few weeks since it revealed tons of valuable insights about the users and some additional constraints … Continue reading Midterm Recess: Team TIRR

Fa19 Chaus

Team CHAUS: Mid-term Recess

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After Mid-term Recess, Team Chaus continued to deeply understand the various problem spaces and gather user insights. After receiving over 240 responses to our initial survey, we spent most of this week interviewing those who opted for a follow-up interview and communicating with other stakeholders, such as employees (also known as “Keepers of Coffee,” or “KOCs”) and suppliers. The initial survey sent out to the public. Graphic designed by Katherine Hui. One of the most rewarding aspects of the design process became clear as we discovered more perspectives on sustainability. We learned that many customers were informed about the sustainability … Continue reading Team CHAUS: Mid-term Recess

Fa19 Period

Period: Reframe

Magdah Omer

The reframe step of the human-centered design process consists of highlighting measures of success, defining design goals, and narrowing our How Can We (HCW) statement. This design step is crucial to understanding exactly what we want to achieve from this project, ensuring all decisions we make are motivated by the valuable user insights collected. At the reframe OS, we focused on brainstorming various HCW statements driven from user insights identified below: 80% of our survey respondents menstruate monthly, and 67.2% can typically anticipate when their periods will start. 35.1% of respondents budget for purchasing menstrual products. “I would rather buy … Continue reading Period: Reframe

Fa19 Chaus

Team CHAUS: Immerse

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This week, Team CHAUS focused on immersing themselves in the issue of sustainability in Rice Coffeehouse and its users. Before starting this stage, we had already done research into CHAUS’s various current sustainability initiatives that included discounts on bringing your own mug, in-house mugs, and more. We first started out by creating a survey that generated over 200+ responses about their general habits and knowledge of these current sustainability solutions. From these responses, we were able to gain an understanding that while most people already know about CHAUS’s sustainability initiatives the overall usage of them is low. Afterward, we conducted … Continue reading Team CHAUS: Immerse

Fa19 Period

Period: Mid-Term Recess

agy1

Because this project encompasses a broad, important issue, we expected other groups on campus to be working on a similar issue. As we began our research during Immerse, we came across multiple examples of solutions other universities had designed. For example, some had begun to unlock the menstrual product cabinets already in the bathrooms, while others distributed period products in all binary bathrooms. During this stage, we also uncovered the Student Association at Rice had made significant strides in this area. They are planning to unlock cabinets already installed on-campus and already made arrangements with the previous supplier to keep … Continue reading Period: Mid-Term Recess

Fa19 Period

Period: Immerse

agy1

From our insights (generated from a survey with 140 responses, as well as six in-person user interviews) we have created two user personas. The first is the more typically visible user: The Situational User. This user is a Rice Student that typically menstruates monthly and can usually predict when it will start, but not always. They think menstrual products should be free, but doesn’t feel financially burdened by purchasing products & doesn’t budget for them. They also care about product quality (they don’t like tampons with cardboard applicators or thick pads), and as such they would rather buy themselves a … Continue reading Period: Immerse

Fa19 Period

Period: Identify

agy1

During our “Identify” week we worked to understand further understand our users, stakeholders, and overall experience of accessing menstrual products on campus. This process began by breaking down our project’s question of: How Can We increase accessibility to period products for menstruating people on Rice’s campus? We began our session by coming up with key questions and guidelines we wanted to further understand about our project, including: increase by how much/how do we measure success; Does ‘people on Rice’s campus’ just mean undergrads, and where on rice campus should we be focusing? From these more broad questions, we began to … Continue reading Period: Identify

Fa19 Chaus

Introduction – Team CHAUS

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  Introduction – Team Chaus Hello all! We are Team Chaus comprised of Sabrina Bisaga, Adam Oshan, Katherine Hui, and Brandon Cua. Sabrina Bisaga is a junior and a returning member with her second semester of DFA, studying Civil and Environmental Engineering. Adam Oshan is a senior and also a returning member with his second semester of DFA, studying Cognitive Sciences. Katherine Hui is a freshman and new member of DFA, studying Architecture. Last but not least, Brandon Cua is a sophomore studying Computer Science and a new member of DFA. This semester we plan to work with our community … Continue reading Introduction – Team CHAUS

Fa19 New Hope Housing

Week [Identify]: [New Hope Housing]

Kelly Park

This week, our team worked on the “identify” stage of the design process, which involved us defining and narrowing down what our specific design challenge is for this project. We started by brainstorming facts, assumptions, and background information that we had about the project from either our prior experience in the problem space, or from the information provided on our community partner’s website. After brainstorming, we noticed a handful of emerging themes: “theories about why current programming is not effective”, “user demographics”, “information about the current program”. We agreed that these were critical categories to think about because our project … Continue reading Week [Identify]: [New Hope Housing]

Fa19 Period

Introduction: period.

Magdah Omer

Our team is working with Period at Rice/BCM this semester to help improve accessibility of menstrual products for people who menstruate on Rice’s campus. We’re interested to explore the different aspects of accessibility this semester, whether that’s financial, physical, situational, or other aspects of accessibility we haven’t considered yet. Ultimately, we hope to use design to help Period advance their goals of ending period stigma and increasing access to period products in the most effective way possible. So far, we have started research into existing solutions in this space and will be meeting with our Community Partner this week to … Continue reading Introduction: period.

Sp19 YMCA

BUILD: Team YMCA

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This week our team focused on using feedback from Mid-Semester Review and using insights to develop our first prototype. We began with a key insight we gained from our community partner – that they were only targeting swim teams. We realized that this left an untapped market of athletes from other sports that could be reached out to in order to diversify the applicant pool.  From there, we had to decide how we would best reach out to this new market. The result was a flyer that would be distributed to high school student athletes. We determined that such a … Continue reading BUILD: Team YMCA

Uncategorized

BUILD: Mi Familia Vota

Kelly Park

This week, our team focused on making a variety of tangible prototypes of voter pledge cards to communicate and test out our ideas. We identified a few points that we believed were essential to keep on the voter pledge cards, and which points could be condensed or reframed on the newly designed cards. We worked on lo-fi prototyping, or creating simple, low-cost prototypes to implement and receive feedback for our ideas. We prototype at the lo-fi level first to test out multiple ideas we have for the final product, so we can learn more about our concepts. We are currently … Continue reading BUILD: Mi Familia Vota