We started our building phase guided by our how-can-we statement, “How can we promote the self-sustainability of marginalized individuals who lack a GED by focusing on their personal spaces?” We started our building phase by having a really fun and productive prototyping meeting to create a low fidelity prototype of our GED box idea.

We split up into 3 pairs so that we can explore different areas of our solution. First group focused on how to motivate the user to work towards getting a GED, the second group focused on organizing the studying aspect, and the third group explored how the box can teach the user the general steps of getting a GED.

Angelo and Matthew came up with a few prototypes to help motivate working towards getting a GED as you can see in the pictures. The progress tracker would help the user see where they are at by taking practice tests and see what they need to work on, as well as how far they are from passing.

Emma and Claire designed the box so that each section is a step in working towards getting a GED. For example, the first step would be information on why getting a GED is important and beneficial to them, step 2 would be overview of GED and content, so on and so forth. This way, each step is broken down and don’t seem as daunting when tackling smaller tasks.

Finally, Mayu and Jason thought about how to structure the box so that it helps the users study. For that, we came up with having three sections, one for materials such as pens, index cards, highlighters and erasers, another one that contains notebooks, and a bigger section that contains worksheets. We envisioned the worksheets being labeled with how long it would take to complete it, so a stack would be labeled 30 minutes, 15 minutes, and an hour, for example. That way, our user would be able to use even short periods of time to study. Also, we would want the worksheets to be in folders so that they can easily take it with them if they know they can work on the bus, for example. It would also contain a “Done” section, because we thought it would be satisfying to see your “Done” pile increase in size as you work towards getting a GED.

Having done rapid prototyping, we realized that we didn’t know enough about the process of getting a GED. So we also worked to put together a comprehensive step-by-step guide of getting a GED, which took us a good chunk of time. Just the fact that it took 6 of us with laptops an hour to find the information and put together the guide was itself an insight. We know that our users don’t have access to computers, so finding out all required information on their phone would take a significant amount of time and effort.

With our prototypes and insights, we’re excited to test at a GED class offered by Houston Center for Literacy!