Spring 2012 -- Creative Process -- P2

For this project, students will form 2-person teams and choose a problem space that may serve as a basis for a semester-long project. (Students will have an opportunity to change topics and teams after P3). Students will learn how to effectively understand human needs by gleaning information from social media and by interacting directly with potential beneficiaries. The goal for students is to triangulate data sources, and to become relative experts on the constraints and issues that shape a problem space.

Preliminary list of socially-motivated problems that students may work on:

How can we help encourage more recycling? (Pennsylvania Resources Council)

How can we promote action for clean water? (Clean Water Action)

How can design help raise awareness for cleaner air? (Group Against Smog and Pollution)

How can we reduce the spread of germs by encouraging hand washing? (Center for Disease Control)

How can people save energy and money through interventions in the home? (US Department of Energy)

How can we reinvent sanitation systems for regions without water infrastructure? (Gates Foundation)

How can we make voting technology more accessible for Americans with disabilities? (Accessible Voting Technology Initiative)

How can we encourage kids to eat healthier? (Let's Move initiative)

How can we help policymakers track progress on leading health indicators in local communities? (Healthy People 2020 initiative)

How can we empower patients to get healthy and improve their heart health? (Million Hearts initiative)

How can technology help promote transparency in governments? (The Economist)

How can design help address the UN Millennium Goals? (INDEX: Award)

How can create value from sensors embedded in mobile phones? (Nokia Mobile Data Challenge)

How can technology enhance our domestic experience? (CHI 2012 Student Design Challenge)

Suggest a different socially-motivated problem

Social media analysis. Students will harvest at least fifty comments or blog entries from one or more online forums that talk about the problem. Students should analyze the data systematically in order to identify important trends and outliers.

Local interviews. Students will interview three people in the local community from different stakeholder perspectives. To faciliate the process, students should create a set of interview questions, audio record each interview, and take copious notes. All team members should be present at every interview. Phone interviews are acceptible, but it's better to meet participants in person.

Stakeholder personas. There are always different sides to a story. Students should be able to articulate the needs and desires of multiple diverse stakeholders who will be affected by new design interventions. Personas should describe the characteristics, needs, and constraints imposed by essential stakeholders. Prepare a draft of the personas for the interim crit and a final version for the needfinding presentation.

Needfinding presentation. Each team will deliver a short presentation (10 minutes max includes time for Q&A) that discusses the problem and opportunities, social media data analysis, stakeholder personas, interview results, and the key questions that will frame your process moving forward. Students should send the instructor a link to a ZIP file (name it P2_lastname1_lastname2.zip) with the final presentation, all data, and process documentation.

jan 24 Project 2 assigned
jan 31 Bring to class: web community analysis, draft of personas, and draft of interview questions
feb 9 Needfinding presentations (10 minutes includes time for Q&A). Send a Web link to the final deliverable to Prof. Dow before class.

This is a group assignment for two people.

Criteria	Guiding questions	Check -	Check	Check +
Quality of needfinding presentations (40%)	Is your presentation clear, insightful, and to the point? Does it concisely cover the problem setting, Web community analysis, stakeholder needs, personas, and interview analysis?	The presentation fulfills the requirements, but the needs analysis is superficial and difficult to understand.	The presentation does a nice job of framing the problem space and provides non-obvious insights about user needs. Key design questions are raised.	Great talk. The needs analysis clearly and concisely presents the problem space and offers thoughtful and generative insights about different stakeholder perspectives. Presents key design questions that will clearly guide ideation.
Breadth of social media data analysis (20%)	Did you strive for gathering a broad and diverse of opinions from various online resources? Did you rigorously analyze the data? Can you articulate common trends and notable outliers?	Students did the minimal amount of effort to fulfill the assignment. The data analysis does not demostrate rigor.	Students gathered a useful dataset and conducted a rigorous and systematic analysis.	Students created a large dataset from multiple sites, and gleaned important insights that would not have been discovered without an exhastive analysis.
Insights through interviews (20%)	Did you interview people that have very different perspectives? Did anything surprise you or confirm something you thought was true? Can show why your findings are interesting?	Findings seem obvious and do not bring much new to the table.	Stduents provide a good variety of interesting insights collected from representative stakeholders.	Students offer very detailed and insightful observations documented from interviews with diverse, representative people. Insights are compelling or surprising, making good material for ideation.
Clarity of stakeholder personas (20%)	Are your personas representative of the people who have stake in a new design invention? Are your personas descriptions detailed and believable?	Personas feel stereotypical, repetitive, or do not cover key perspectives.	The personas represent key points of view in the problem space. They are also clear and feasible.	The personas represent important stakeholders and creatively demonstrate these points of view. They help frame the problem space and provide clues for who to interview.