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We use human-centered design for equity, inclusion, and sustainability in Houston. Students creating local and social impact. Shaping the next generation of social innovators. Continue reading Welcome to DFA.RICE.EDU
In the past few weeks, we had been working towards creating a mascot for Hermann Park Conservancy. However, after meeting with the staff at Hermann Park, we were inspired by the stories they told us about their interactions with the park visitors. Learning about these genuine and unique stories, we decided to change the direction of the project. Instead of moving forward with designing a mascot, we decided to focus on finding a way to encourage people to interact with the gardeners, who are critical for the sustainability practices in Hermann Park. We believe increasing these types of interactions, … Continue reading Hermann Park: BUILD/TEST
We concluded the UNDERSTAND half of the DFA design process and are heading into the CREATE phase with a reframed problem. After analyzing the HCWs (“How Can We” statements) from REFRAME, the studio leads created the following HCW for studio wide ideating. How can we guide a student with multiple dishes, a cup, and utensils to navigate the [servery] dish drop without colliding with any other students? We split into groups and each chose a particular dish drop area from one of the 11 residential colleges at Rice to further narrow our ideating. The colleges that are being designed for and their … Continue reading Dish Drop ReDesign: IDEATE Community Studio
This is the last workshop in the UNDERSTAND phase of the design process. During this studio we will be synthesizing our key insights and deciding on how exactly we are going to narrow the problem before we build. The primary results of this studio should be creating a testable how can we statement. In other words, a question that identifies a user, behavior, and place with a measurable action associated with it. Further Research Key Insights Dish drop areas get emptied out very frequently during meal times as employees rotate to each dish disposal area. During this time, the cart … Continue reading Dish Drop ReDesign: REFRAME Community Studio
The second workshop in our Dish Drop Community Studio project is IMMERSE. Using the user stories from last week, we identified some potential problems and users. The congestion of the dish drop area can have some unexpected consequences, a student diner reported “one time during the shuffle of putting up plates at Siebel I dropped my phone in the trash, which was gross.” Another student noticed how an Housing & Dining Employee “got stuck trying to collect plates and dishes and clog the flow of dish droppers.” There were also several observations about the dish drop area, like “Liquid disposal … Continue reading Dish Drop ReDesign: IMMERSE Community Studio
This is the kickoff of a series of events in which any Rice student attending can participate in designing for a new servery dish disposal area. All Rice students have experienced this problem and its frustrations. Now is the time to take our insights and learn how to apply the human-centered design process to this problem. We’ll be hosting 8 events and this is the first one to kick off the project! [Full Spring 2018 Schedule] During this session will define the problems spaces so we can dive deeper during research, IMMERSE. Spend some time looking at your prior knowledge … Continue reading Dish Drop ReDesign: IDENTIFY Community Studio