Presentation by: Randy Scherer
DEFINE Ideate, Prototype, Feedback | OBSERVE View users and their behaviors in context of their lives | ENGAGE Interview users, short and long interactions | IMMERSE experience what your user experiences |
It has been a huge time since I went to school and it felt like it was over in a blink. Yesterday in class we had a special visit from Randy Scherer, an educator in High Tech High and expert in project based learning. He began his presentation on the innovation process used by Standford University's design school and as he spoke I didn't know that with him, we where about to run the complete process ourselves. I learned that a huge concept when selling a product or delivering a service is EMPATHY. People need to understand their audience. Given that our main issue was that the administration isn't communicating well with the school we found that there had to be a better system to address the people and it was interesting to see how our ideas shifted as we got to know our public. At first we believed that making film was the best way to carry the news in FDR but after identifying our target's needs, desires and personality's we found out that other alternatives would suit them better and started innovating ideas. The more we know who we are producing for: the better we will create something that suits them. A step that for me was effective was having direct contact with the people but at the same time I found one of the most enritching moments to be when we failed at doing this. As a group we tried to ENGAGE, we interviewd users for short and long answers depending on how they reacted and tried to get to know how they interacted with the news to channel all that information into creating a better system. As we saw that student's where not taking the interviews seriously and giving out quick answers to get them done with we realised we had to stop and think. Why where our interviews not going well? We found that we had to drift this idea of an interview into an engaging conversation and change the idea of "news" that was limiting the students to only newspapers, to all the "updates" or media around them. After re-creating the questions we started the interview process all over again and could see the difference. Without stopping to reflect we would not have been able to collect the useful information we gathered that allowed us to create news FOR the people instead of just assume what they needed.
The power of visually representing ideas was also something that defenetely stood out since by using the big white boards, post its, drawings, sketches, markers and huge cartulinas we where able to make our thinking paths visual and in a way much more clear.
The power of visually representing ideas was also something that defenetely stood out since by using the big white boards, post its, drawings, sketches, markers and huge cartulinas we where able to make our thinking paths visual and in a way much more clear.
Finally, we ended up with challenging exciting projects as solutions. Out of 100 proposed ideas the ones that where claimed the most include: having an interactive news browser, Insta-post news where student could be involved in photo competitions, television on quiosk lines, QR codes around school and even the popular "crusibreak" - our own original crossword puzzle sent weekly. Now, for wednesday's class we have been separated into different groups with the purpose to create prototypes of the most popular ideas. Along with my partners Gonzalo and Augusto we created QR codes for the break, innovation twitter account, Facebook page and school website. Tomorrow, we will all share what we have created in front of a greater audience where not only the class but Randy Scherer will be present among other high school students.