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

This week, we worked on synthesizing all of the problems we came up with into one, singular prevailing problem so that we can focus on that moving forward. The main goal we had this week was to create a single How Can We statement, along with our measures of success. Our final HCW statement was thus: How can we utilize social media to advertise the lifeguarding position at the YMCA to teens in a way that downplays the daunting responsibilities, while marketing the long-term applicable professional and leadership skills? This was based on insights we gained in the past two … Continue reading REFRAME: Team YMCA

IMMERSE : understanding the issue at hand to a greater depth through user/stakeholder interviews, and secondary research. This week, Team YMCA focused on immersing into the issue of addressing diversity in lifeguard recruitment for the YMCA. We did this through interviewing current and previous lifeguards, lifeguard supervisors, and the aquatic directors at multiple locations, including Houston, Charlotte, and Portland. Our first interviewee included the Assistant Aquatics Director at the Rice Recreation Center, Jaime Jones. The main insights taken from this interview include the importance and influence of the lifeguard supervisor in obtaining and retaining sufficient lifeguards for the job. In … Continue reading IMMERSE: Team YMCA