UMSI Mastery Course (UX, HCD)
As we were tasked with addressing a “fuzzy” or nebulous problem, my team focused on determining if local mutual aid networks could be technologically mediated. We began by performing secondary research on the history of mutual aid and its contemporary applications.
Implementation methods
Ecosystem and assumption mapping: we were informed by IDEO Design Kit’s Ecosystem mapping framework to define our audience of focus. We completed an activity to define users via the community, services, and institutions they are a part of in order to identify potential solutions. This resulted in an assumption mapping exercise which helped us narrow down our hypotheses and craft a vision statement.
Outreach to existing groups: next we contacted a variety of mutual aid and mutual aid adjacent groups in Washtenaw County in order to conduct interviews. This led us to working more closely with the Maize and Blue Cupboard (MBC); a food bank connected to the University of Michigan community.
Findings
Some of the groups we contacted shared that they didn’t consider their work congruent to mutual aid. This resulted in the acknowledgement that some organizations may be involved in mutual aid activities without identifying them as such. We pivoted to allowing our audience of focus to include members of mutual aid adjacent groups, such as MBC. They expressed specific needs that helped us formulate How Might We statements that further guided our work. Next, our team visited MBC in an effort to better contextualize our engagement with them.
Success criteria
Based on our discussions with MBC we identified specific artifacts or activities that we could deliver within our constraints:
Comparative report: a report of best-practices and ideas from other universities’ food pantries and community cupboards used to help inspire the MBC bulletin board project
Co-creation session: opportunity to conduct a workshop with MBC in order to apply human-centered design and share co-design best practices through a brainstorming activity
Design
Co-design activity:
Outcomes:
Provide MBC with best practices and ideas to build upon (sustainability)
Co-creation workshop participants: MBC staff, Student Action Advisory Council, MBC shoppers
Brainstorming => validating => prioritizing ideas
Jam Session: “create as many ideas as possible with your group, exploring different solutions and building on each other’s ideas in a supportive manner.”
Practice co-creation session with the class
Conclusion
Interrogating assumptions
Dedicating a lot of time to interrogating your assumptions can help you practice human-centered design more effectively.
Building confidence
Embracing moving forward
Being okay with things not being perfect
Seeing alternate ways of thinking and doing
Believe in our capability to get to somewhere great in the end
Many fuzzy goals
We anticipated having one main fuzzy goal of figuring out how to support mutual aid networks but ended up finding many fuzzy goals of varying size and scope.
Feedback
Our class had the opportunity to present our projects to a panel of UX professionals for critiques. The panel appreciated the idea of the co-creation session and the fact that we had a practice run with our classmates. Specifically, one panel member stated that they “loved seeing the high level goal turn into real deliverables for a real organization.” Although our project was more exploratory than immediately actionable, our instructor shared that our group was “an excellent example of leading with hypothesis and not solutions.” Since I don’t believe that a technological approach is always the right solution to a problem, this course helped me think through complex questions with a more careful approach.