Design for America Service Design: Supporting Studios & Project Teams
Fall 2016 - Spring 2017
Intro
As a Design for America Fellow, I managed 38 studios and project teams in order to teach human-centered design methods, engage campuses with their communities, and build student capacity. Throughout the year we evaluated and evolved our service to develop new programming and address students' project support needs.
Learn more about DFA here.
Outlining the new service blueprint with my coworker Deniz
Current Service
Carrying out Studio Services
We spent fall semester getting to know studio leaders and ensuring they were set up for success for the upcoming school year. We then gathered bi-monthly survey responses from the leads about their projects, progress, and overall studio success, provided resources and advice, and organized monthly virtual calls to build a supportive network.
Existing DFA National service blueprint
Considerations
As we geared up to evaluate DFA studios & our services, we took a second look at what it means to be a successful Design for America studio, resulting in eight core DFA Studio values.
Discovery
Gathering Data to Understand Our Service's Effectiveness
We then began gathering all of our previously collected data and asking questions ourselves: What kinds of projects are students really working on? Are these projects and teams fulfilling our DFA values? Do studio leaders take advantage of our services and tools, and if not, can we figure out why? How can we innovate our processes to more effectively support students and meet them where they are?
During the process, we discovered some less-than-satisfactory insights. Most importantly, our studio leaders weren’t exactly doing what we wanted them to do. So we asked ourselves: what do they want?
Student Engagement
We observed and recorded studio behaviors to identify their needs. As we analyzed survey responses, led virtual group call discussions, had one-on-one chats, and even scanned through studios' social media accounts, we noticed various trends in what studio leaders want or need.
Group call with studio leaders around the country
Synthesis
Reframing Our Questions
Prototyping
We then brainstormed around the three How Can We questions. Out of hundreds, three ideas were prototyped and tested during the spring semester:
Slack: A DFA Network Slack channel to increase communication among studios and with DFA National, provide guidance and feedback in a more informal way, and monitor usage and activities across only one platform.
Social media updates: Studios post updates on social media rather than filling out our survey, incentivizing them to share their work more often and be able to see what other studios are doing.
Evaluation Form: A way for studio leaders to evaluate their leadership and project work as a team, while understanding and receiving DFA National expectations.
Prototype #1: Connecting Studio Leads on Slack
Five studios were asked to connect and share project updates with each other via Slack. They wrote much longer messages - unlike the usual forms of multiple choice questions and short answers, this form of updating progress was more detailed, but more difficult to analyze. Studios responded more often to direct messaging on Slack than emails, and studios who were already familiar with Slack preferred this method.
Prototype #2: Posting Project Progress on Social Media
Five studios took part in the social media update test. All studios participated and followed directions promptly, but students were less likely to share what they were struggling with due to the public sharing on social media. It was also more difficult to keep track of the posts for data collection. Moving forward, we decided to give more guidance on social media usage at our annual conference, but not require updates in this format.
Prototype #3: Self-Guided Evaluation Forms
Testing with Northwestern, USC, MSU, and Purdue students gave us the opportunity to observe how students go about filling out their own “report card.” We also got tons of valuable feedback on how to better ask questions, which questions were most confusing, and learned that studios preferred working together with fellow leaders to complete the forms.
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Testing with students from USC and MSU
Moving Forward
DFA’s annual conference in August is the perfect time to implement new programming, as 110+ student leaders are together in the same room. We were able to get everyone set up on Slack, explain expectations of usage, and give each studio team the chance to fill out their first evaluation.
Throughout the term, the new DFA Fellows, Geneva and Ken, spearheaded execution of the studio support service and new programming.