Guru
Connecting teens to resources and professionals in the creative industry
Presented at the Microsoft Design Expo 2010
Microsoft and Motorola sponsored this project under the theme of "Social meets service." With a passion for the arts and decline of resources in public schools, my team chose the education sector to explore. Teens have many important decisions to make about their future. However many teens, especially those more passionate about creative activities, don't know where to turn for guidance. Guru fills the gap to help teens develop their creative interests, as well as future education and career paths, with the support of near-peer and national professionals.
Exploratory research and identifying opportunities
Through interviews and Make Tools activities with key stakeholders in a teen's life, my team came to understand the teenager mentality. Teens don’t know what they don’t know, and they don’t know where to turn to learn. Parents want to help, but aren’t sure how to do so. Teachers told us that far too many budget and bureaucracy constraints exist for an in-school solution.
Teenagers creating affinity diagrams of mentors and people they look up to. With Make Tools they also designed their ideal virtual workspace, highlighting the way they communicate and associate with different people in their lives.
Understanding the context in which the service lives and who delivers it became the biggest challenge in the generative phase. Ideation and synthesis lead to several scenarios, helping us to develop the final concept.
Since our solution couldn't depend on existing within a school setting, We looked out to professionals, universities and cultural institutions to provide resources as well as promote their organizations.
Interactions and discoveries
The final service was designed with several goals in mind. First, help teens discover new interests they won't get exposure to in school through the Guru browser sidebar of customized content. Over time, Guru can nurture their interests both physically, by highlighting events going on in their city, and virtually, by connecting them to professionals and organizations who are actually in the industry.
A teenager can view interests she has in common with friends and dig deeper by viewing content her friends might have that she might not have learned about yet.
| Individual Contribution Exploratory & generative research Guru Information architecture Interaction model & wireframes paper prototyping GUI design and production Presentation development All members of the team were involved in the research, concept development and presentation |
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Project Details Collaborators Designed at Carnegie Mellon with Aliya Baptista / IxD Cheryl Templeton / IxD Eric Spaulding / CPID Sarah Calandro / CPID Class Graduate Studio II Project Duration 15 weeks / spring 2010 |
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