Austin American Statesman article feature Shadow Day with Middle School Kids. Design Studio hosted 10 kids to mentor and teach them about the User-Centered Design process. http://www.statesman.com/news/local/700-middle-schoolers-head-work/2YDalONvosl5rcBQdc72EJ/
Austin American Statesman_Shadow Day_UCD Process
Shadow Day_UCD Process_Planning Stages. For several weeks leading up to the April Shadow Day at the office, I held a brown bag lunch to teach about the UCD process to internal Design Analysts, and at the same same detail out the execution of teaching the kids about UCD.
Shadow Day is upon us! We received 10 out of the 20 middle school kids that visited the HMH office. We did group activities, as well as middle school kids being partenered up with DAs to learn about the UCD process in an interactive and fun manner.
UCD process hand-out for kids' goodie bags.
During the Empathize phase, we went thru a group exercise and played the Wind In Your Sail game to learn about kids' current ways of turning in assignments to their their teachers, as well as their challenges and struggles with it.
During the Define phase, we defined our Guiding Statement and further refined what we were trying to solve.
A 7th grader busy at work with her wireframing following the Guiding Statement: We need a way to submit assignments online that is simple, flexible and efficient.
Joyce (Sr. Design Analyst) partnered up with two middle school kids during the Prototyping phase.
7th grader Gabby enthusiastically sharing her prototype. She had out-of-the box great ideas! This 7th grader was marked as "ask back" during future user testing.
Emily also sharing her ideas during the prototype phase. Kids were so eager to share their ideas that we didn't have enough time to get to all of them.
Kids are all smiles and posing with some of our interal Design Analysts that took part in the UCD process workshop.
While some kids were inside the testing room and observation room, kids that were in this waiting room were challenged to design their logo for the online submission website they prototyped.
Emily (7th grader) and Rhonda (Design facilitator) going thru the testing protocol we prepared in advance to get feedback on our current functionality for submiiting assignments to teachers.
During a de-brief, kids were enthusiastic and were sharing what they learned.
The whole gang (kids and HMH'ers) goofing around after a successful Shadow Day.
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User Centered Design Process
A user-centered design process is the concentrated understanding of users, tasks and environment. Mentoring junior Designers and teaching elementary kids at the same time, the Design Studio held a Shadow Day to teach kids about the UCD process.
