High school student Isabella dreams of a more inspiring STEM curriculum. Enter HASSE, the Houston Association for Space and Science Education, with its mission to kindle that very passion. HASSE envisions a “School of the Future” in Houston, leveraging local … Continue reading Immerse: Team HASSE
For build our team began to synthesize our insights from interviews, survey data, and visiting Baker Ripley locations. From doing so we came up with several different weak points within Baker Ripley that we wanted to address through our design. With these in mind we began low fidelity prototyping, what this means is brainstorming some initial ideas regarding how we can help Baker Ripley and identifying where we could make the biggest impact from the different problems we found. Once we decided communication was the most important problem, we could find we went to work figuring out how to set … Continue reading Build: Team Baker Ripley
When contemplating the problem we aimed to solve, we successfully refined our focus through discussions with our community partner and visits to Baker Ripley sites. Based on the information acquired, we determined that our primary goal would be to reduce the communication gap among Baker Ripley staff members, enhancing the internal system and, therefore, generating a positive impact for senior users. Throughout the solution development phase, we consistently guided ourselves with our “How can we” statement, ensuring that our proposed solutions were practical and directly addressed the identified problem. Our approach to generating solutions primarily involved individual brainstorming to prevent … Continue reading Ideate: Team Baker Ripley
During the Mid-semester Review, our team presented our progress to the entire studio. We aimed to make the presentation engaging, considering that the audience could likely relate to having grandparents or knowing seniors. In crafting our presentation, we narrowed down our key insights and highlighted the upcoming steps before delving into brainstorming solutions for our problem. The feedback we received prompted us to make a decision and concentrate on a specific problem before initiating the ideation process. Continue reading Mid-Semester Review: Team Baker Ripley
We found that the HASSE program partners with organizations like NASA and also with universities like Texas A&M, UH, Rice, and other space companies. We learned more about what HASSE currently has in Houston – they offer summer programs and have experts from NASA come as speakers and professor volunteers come in as well. We were able to gain a better understanding of the current state of the HASSE program, which was important because we want to know the existing state of the program before we start asking questions on what specific areas need to be improved. Continue reading Identify: Team HASSE
In reframe, our team was able to cluster our broad and specific key insights generated from our conversations with seniors, Baker Ripley staff, our community partner, Angie White, and visits to the facilities. After going over our notes from these interviews, we determined that socialization and senior intrinsic motivation were two key reasons seniors want to attend health and wellness events. Our third key insight was transportation, which is one of the main barriers to attending a Baker Ripley event. These clustered insights formed the basis of our narrower how can we questions. Our goal is that as we continue … Continue reading Reframe: Team Baker Ripley
Our user persona is seniors living in Houston. Specifically, those who are interested in pursuing wellness of some sort whether that’s physical or mental. This user persona ties into our team’s main insights through our site visit of a Baker Ripley center. We found that most seniors in Houston were most engaged after noon, they found a mix of physical and social activities to be the most enticing, and they were encouraged with rewards for winning certain events. Many seniors had pets, with around 30% having dogs and would walk them. They liked gardening and had been requesting for Baker … Continue reading Immerse: Team Baker Ripley
The identify step of the human-centered design process involves getting a clearer understanding on the issue we are presented with by listing our first impressions and previous knowledge associated with the problem and finding problems spaces that we wish to address in our solution. Since our users are going to be seniors, we first focused on assumptions that we had on seniors based on personal experience and reasons for why attendance for holistic activities might be so low. Primarily, our assumptions were based on the idea that seniors were unwilling to engage in an activity that was not part of … Continue reading Identify: Team Baker Ripley
Hello! We are Team Baker Ripley– a team of Rice University undergraduate students working with Rice’s chapter of Design for America (DFA) to encourage senior holistic wellness.Our team eagerly took on this case assignment with Baker Ripley. This local nonprofit … Continue reading DForientation: Team Baker Ripley
Hello! We are team HASSE (Houston Association for Space and Science Education) – Maaz Zuberi (Jones ‘25), Francesca Nemati (McMurtry ‘26), Sophia Rebello (Will Rice ‘25), Luke Yuen (Will Rice ‘25), and Sarah Luan (Jones ‘25). We found our project … Continue reading DForientAtion: Team HASSE!
IMMERSE This week, we completed Immerse. Our team started by conducting secondary research, identifying our stakeholders as coordinators, students, alumni, volunteers, TWP administration, and members of the community interested in volunteering. In addition to learning more about the mission and curriculum of TWP, we researched each potential problem space. For example, we previously identified engagement of young volunteers as a problem space. We learned many young people do not volunteer because they do not feel qualified, are afraid it will take too much time, or are not connected with a cause that motivates them. We conducted primary research by observing … Continue reading Immerse: Team The Woods Project
INTRODUCTION Hello! We are the Design For America team that is working with The Woods Project (TWP) this semester. Here is some more about us: I’m Chloe Livingston, and I’m a sophomore at Wiess. I wanted to work with the … Continue reading Introduction / Identify: Team The Woods Project
Hello! We are team Urban Harvest, composed of Minjung, Leigh, Ryan, Esther, and Kelly. We will be working with the Houston non-profit Urban Harvest, who promotes the consumption of healthy local fruits and vegetables. Urban Harvest facilitates farmers markets, community … Continue reading Introduction/Identify: Team Urban Harvest
Hello all! Our names are Adam, Chris, Namita, and Aman. This semester, we are excited to work with our community partner, Lisa Lin, and the rest of the Transportation Demand Management Department in order to improve Rice’s bus stops. We … Continue reading Introduction/Identify: Bus Stops
Introduction/Identify Our team is excited to work with the Houston Museum of Natural Science to create an educational model for the museum’s Touch Tours. The Touch Tours create unique experiences for patrons with visual impairments, but face challenges when conveying complex concepts like distance. Currently, the museum uses puff paint or wooden models of constellations and moon patterns. We are interested in exploring topics related to astronomy to create an accessible, immersive museum experience for all users. Through user interviews and research, we hope to scope down our current “How Can We” statement: How can we create tactile educational materials … Continue reading Introduction/Identify: Team HMNS!
This week allowed us to look back at our design process, and it was exciting to share our work with the studio! We presented our problem space, shared a user journey map, and elaborated on tackling the problem from a people-oriented and a space-oriented perspective. Continue reading Mid-Semester Review: Team Magpies & Peacocks
Based on the feedback we received from our previous test, we added a receptacle box by the front desk, and waited another week to see the results. Since we only made a change that would affect time taken to sort donations into boxes, that was the only metric we asked employees to pay attention to in this iteration. We received feedback that it took less than a day for employees to take donations from the front box and sort them into the categories at the station. Employees also expressed that the boxes under the table would need to be bigger. … Continue reading TEST & ITERATE: Team Magpies & Peacocks
We tested our idea of an immediate sorting station at the Magpies & Peacocks warehouse. For our medium fidelity prototype, we brought four cardboard boxes representing different categories of donations, and set up our sorting station. We placed a large table Magpies & Peacocks already had away from the front desk, and asked the employees to first empty out donation bags onto the table, sort them into piles on the table, place the piles into their corresponding boxes, and later take the items in the boxes to their assigned locations within the warehouse. We left the prototype for a week … Continue reading TEST: Team Magpies & Peacocks
This week, we built a low fidelity prototype based on our different assumptions. Because our problem was very specific to Magpies & Peacocks, their space, and their needs, it was not really possible for us to come up with a low fidelity prototype that would really reflect the problem space, but we tried our best. After the Mid-Semester Review, we had identified two possible solutions: a space oriented solution, which was an intermediate sorting station to break up the organization process, and a people oriented solution which involved weekly volunteer sessions to deal with the existing mess. After weighing both … Continue reading BUILD: Team Magpies & Peacocks
This week, we brainstormed ideas for our narrowed-down How Can We statement, focusing on how we can make the task of emptying donation bags less of an undesirable chore for Magpies & Peacocks employees. We started by individually writing our thoughts on sticky notes during Open Studio. After getting all of our ideas out, we organized them into clusters as a team. We realized that our ideas had two main approaches: people oriented and space oriented solutions. People oriented solutions aimed to make the process more enjoyable and seem more feasible for the employees, while space oriented solutions were focused … Continue reading IDEATE: Team Magpies & Peacocks
It’s been a fantastic semester working together as a team, with the wider studio, and with the Rice community. As we reached the end of the semester, we realized that from our testing we could not definitively say we had a prototype that improved on existing solutions. However, we realized we did have two things: Information about a variety of stakeholders working in the space of access of menstrual products, who were not all informed of the projects of the others, and not working in a coordinated manner. A wealth of data and user insights from our three rounds of … Continue reading Period: Final Review & Implementation
In Reframe, we took a hard look at our insights and our initial problem space and put them into perspective by creating design goals, a more focused “How Can We” statement, and measures of success. We then decided the specific problem within the problem space that we will be focusing on. How Can We We identified 5 key insights from Immerse: The space is also used as an events space & art gallery, so M&P pursues a look of a stylish, aesthetic mess. To keep the warehouse aesthetically pleasing, messes are swept under the rug, leading to pileup. No … Continue reading REFRAME: Magpies & Peacocks
The results of our testing were essentially inconclusive. Over the course of the semester we have gathered a wealth of information, both from current stakeholders working in the menstrual product access space, as well as from interviews, three rounds of surveying, and in person user testing. We have important data and user insights, particularly in regards to the existence of the hidden user. However, we also found that feelings about menstrual products are highly individualized, that the existing solution in terms of the Rice Women’s Resource Center has some strengths, and there is desire for the Student Association’s in progress … Continue reading Period: Implement
This week’s testing was two-fold. First, we left our prototype out in the wild (the RMC) with a link to a survey, which we also distributed digitally. We ended up getting 114 responses on this survey, but the vast majority of respondents said they encountered the survey digitally, rather than in person. However, even if users weren’t taking our survey, they were taking products from the prototype. When we removed the prototype two weeks after putting it out, almost every product was missing. All of the bundles were gone, but we hypothesize that this was influenced by the bundle drawer … Continue reading Period: Test & Iterate
Once our team created our medium-fidelity prototype, we moved to testing with this prototype. Our first round of testing was at Open Studio, where we asked members of our studio who menstruate who interact with our prototype. We laid our three drawers out side by side and asked users to read each label, take a look at each drawer, and then tell us which they would be drawn to and why. One team member facilitated dialogue with the user, while another team member took notes. We were able to rapidly iterate and make edits to our prototype as we … Continue reading Period: Test
Hello friends, The past week we got a lot of feedback on our low-fidelity prototype from the rest of our DFA group. Boiled down, they were: What materials will you choose, why, how,… any specific colors/textures? etc. Focus on being solid on function and then move to aesthetics. Material constraints may influence how it looks. Make sure our design doesn’t exist already In the future we’ll be thinking about these while making mid and high-fidelity prototypes. Our materials search is going to be thorough and probably somewhat lengthy. We should definitely make something that works first. And before all of … Continue reading TIRR- Mid Season Review
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
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
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
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