Summary of Design Work

For my last semester of college, I had the fantastic opportunity to work with EcoRise in my senior design capstone course. What started as a project centered around connecting high school students to future career opportunities in sustainability turned into a quest to build a long-lasting community and toolkit for students to lean on as they personalized their career journeys. We began our work diving into the nitty-gritty details of sustainable careers, high school logistics, and EcoRise programming. We then began interviewing a wide array of stakeholders from high schools, colleges, and professional communities to learn about how different individuals tied sustainability into their lives. As the project progressed, we developed concepts that slowly transformed into our culminating product idea: Rise Club, a student-led high school club designed to give students the tools, resources, and community they need to create fulfilling careers with a core theme of sustainability.

Business Objectives

EcoRise is an Austin-based non-profit that offers school-based programming for youth to tackle real-world challenges. Their curriculum includes teaching sustainability, design innovation, and social entrepreneurship. They’ve built these curriculums to immerse high school students in sustainability but want to provide support and resources to graduated high schooler and college students so that they may find a career in sustainability. This was the focus of our project. We started with a broad problem statement that we would refine at a later point. It goes,

“How might we support EcoRise students in their transition to college and careers in sustainability and green building?”

Our Design Process

1. Empathy: We started by familiarizing ourselves with the people we were designing for through interviews, secondary research, and a lot of absorption of new perspectives.

2. Synthesis: We then took all that we learned and pulled the most critical findings out to form insights that guided the rest of our process.

3. Defining the Problem: After identifying insights, we further highlighted our users’ exact problems and where we might design to improve their experience.

4. Ideation: We then moved to brainstorm and develop a range of solutions and ideas that could potentially work and benefit our users.

5. Prototyping: Then, we put our ideas and assumptions to the test as we returned to our users with a prototyped experience to see what about our solution worked well and where it needed a tweak, change, or pivot.

Empathy Overview

As we began our design journey, we were so excited to dive right into it, but we were acutely aware that we were not the stakeholders here through our previous design experiences. To truly understand the problem, we had to research the context and speak with those experiencing the pain firsthand.

We performed secondary research and looked into current EcoRise programming, sustainable careers, and the high school to college transition to gain background context. We looked from educational curriculum to professional databases to formal research reports to an ethnographic survey of Reddit / Twitter threads, among other sources. This analytical and strategic approach allowed us to develop a solid understanding of the space we would be working in and allowed us to create deep, probing questions for our interviewees.

After a few weeks deep in the trenches of secondary quantitative and qualitative data, we were ready to venture out and speak with real people. We contacted the high school and college students, EcoRise staff, and other sustainability professionals to hear their current problems, their life journeys thus far, and their goals for the future.

A mission that started as connecting students to future opportunities in sustainability became more about the process of finding clarity in ambiguity. This problem hits home for a lot of us in the middle of a raging pandemic.

Secondary Research

I helped create a set of research objectives to create a more focused approach to our design process. We wanted to know what the college application process looked like, what kinds of online discussion were happening around the topic of jobs in sustainability, and what options were available for students looking to pursue a career in sustainability.

Our digital ethnographic research looked at online forums such as Reddit subreddits and Facebook groups focused on careers in sustainability. These online groups were useful for sharing out resources and creating a community for those that wanted to pursue a career in sustainability. One fascinating point that we found from looking at all these forums was that there were many perspectives and avenues for people to take when pursuing a career in the environmental industry.

Our foray into this world led us to look at what was immediately available to students right after high school. We looked at the different jobs and skill requirements for a wide range of entry-level jobs. We found many vocational opportunities and white-collar jobs needing a wide range of technical proficiency and soft skills. There were many opportunities to incorporate sustainability into a career, but we needed to understand how to bridge the gap between students and employers.

Stakeholder Stories

My team members and I formulated a series of question based on our research objectives. I led and assisted in the conversations with 22 stakeholders in our problem space. Our stakeholders were comprised of 4 high school students, 7 college students, and 11 industry professionals.

We were privileged to hear incredible stories from our interviewees. All of their journeys helped shape our design work and overall end product, but those of Lesly’s resonated with us the most.

Lesly Navarro

Lesly is a Freshman in college majoring in Mechanical Engineering. She grew up in Stony Point, TX and has always had a deeply-seated passion for improving the living conditions of her home community, which suffered from waste induced tragedies. As a first-generation college student, Lesly is determined to lift her family out of poverty. That motivation has driven her to utilize the resources and opportunities she has found through EcoRise as much as she could. Lesly is continuing her EcoRise project to improve her town’s water quality from high school in a summer internship with EcoRise in the coming months. Her particular story resonated heavily with our team because, despite all of the hardships she has faced, Lesly continues to serve as a shining example of how students can succeed if provided the access they need to tangible resources, rewarding opportunities, an inspiring community.

“The best thing [EcoRise] asked me was what can I help you with?... I loved the panels, mentors, and accountability structure.”

Design Method Feature: Personas for Real

After all of our rich and insightful interviews with college and high school students, professionals from a range of industries, and high school students with varying experiences, we didn’t want to lose their stories or dilute them in any way.

Personas for Real is a design tool we used to keep our users human and top-of-mind throughout our design process. Instead of categorizing our users and just capturing bits and pieces of each person, we made each interviewee their own persona worksheet to recall the insights they gave us, their journeys, and how we might be able to design for them.

Using Personas for Real allowed us to retain the humanity of everyone who shared their experiences with us and pushed us to remember that our design work is impacting real people, not just made-up names and faces. It was an especially important tool for communicating the needs of our users to stakeholders at EcoRise.

Synthesis

By now, had a cornucopia of data, ideas, and stories. While each individual offered valuable information on their own we began to see commonalities emerge from their insights and our secondary findings. Here are some of the insights we formulated from synthesis.

Insights

1. Early experiences have a significant impact on student’s motivations and inform their decisions to address the problems they want to solve.

2. Sustainability and equity are inherently tied together, and essential resources are often inaccessible for the students who need them the most.

3. Immersive experiences, community support, and educational resources provide students more clarity in their paths in sustainability.

4. Sustainability is expansive but in ways that may not always be clear. Incorporating sustainability into your future takes a wide range of resources.

Research Recap

From our research, we identified three typical milestones that are part of the journey through sustainability:

Sparking Sustainability
The moment when they discover motivations to pursue sustainability as a passion or career - finding the "A-Ha!" moment.

Reaching Resources
The moment when they start accessing and using available tools and resources to find different ways to be involved with sustainability.

Integrating Interests
The moment when they get to integrate personal interests with sustainability to define a unique and fulfilling career for themselves.

Ideating & Prototyping

The more we heard from our interviewees and independently researched the topics on our own, the more excited we became to develop potential solutions. Equipped with our key insights, we were ready to begin ideating and prototyping our ideas. I’ve highlighted a few design methods that helped keep our team aligned, focused, and creative while working on our prototype:

Design Method Feature: Crazy Eights

After intense weeks of listening, empathizing, and deepening understanding of people in the problem space, we started ideating with Crazy Eights, a tool with heart-pounding, rut-breaking, excitement-inducing energy built right into it.

All you need for this exercise is a piece of paper, a pen, and 8 minutes of creativity! Paper is folded up into 8 squares, and one minute is given to fill each square with an idea that addresses the How Might We question. At the end of 8 minutes, the team shares their thoughts and moves forward with energy and inspiration for what’s next.

This design tool allowed the team to rapidly put down on paper what we had been thinking about and where we hoped to go. From here, we discussed, brainstormed more, and arrived at a few ideas we wanted to run with.

Design Method Feature: Building Blocks

The “Building Blocks” design method is a framework that allows all the members of a team to align on an idea or implementation by being given a structured format to fill out. It’s an excellent tool for the times you have a general idea of your solution but still need to iron out the details and ensure that every team member’s thoughts are considered.

This framework is great for finding common ground on the most contentious points. It can be great to get everyone on the same page regarding the timeline, communication strategy, and roles then focus on the components of the project where things are not as defined.

First, the team needs to get aligned on which elements they want to iron out details for. For example, our project required us to consider events, rituals, and space. The features vary from project to project. Next, all team members need to fill out the “Building Blocks” individually over two to three days, so members have ample time to process their thoughts. Finally, all team members should present their ideas at the next meeting/given share time. A team lead or volunteer facilitator can help spearhead the process of walking through each element one-by-one to come to a consensus.

Aligning ideas for each element was far more straightforward than our team expected. It seems that people are naturally drawn to the best ideas for details they are comfortable with or most passionate about. If it appears that your team is still not coming to a consensus, you can put that element on pause and come back to it or take a vote and move on. Overall, this activity drove our team forward and gave us some much-needed clarity as we proceeded in the prototype phase.

Concept Development & Prototype Testing

Discovery Days

As we discussed how to bring sustainable futures to life for high school students, it became evident that an immersive, collaborative environment would be necessary to foster the growth we hoped to catalyze for the students.

Reflecting on how we became interested in our fields of study and early formative experiences, we decided to emulate educational experiences that we enjoyed when we were younger. Our team came up with the concept of ‘Discovery Days,’ a five-week program designed to help students find their footing and acquire the tools and resources they need to carve out their path in sustainability.

Discovery Days consisted of five key components:

Testing Out Discovery Days

To test our idea of ‘Discovery Days,’ our team created a mock presentation that outlined the curriculum this program could follow. We came up with activities, time allotments, and speaker suggestions for each mini session within this program.
We tested these concepts with 3 industry professionals and 5 students that participated in EcoRise Programming.

Prototype Feedback

From our sessions with stakeholders, we learned that:

1. Not everyone comes in with the same knowledge or definition of sustainability, so it is up to us to set the pace and ensure everyone has the context they need to participate fully in our program.

2. Sometimes the most simple, juvenile activities can be the most impactful and fun. We learned that simplicity allows people to focus on the end objectives rather than the rules. It also makes activities more accessible to audiences of a variety of backgrounds.

3. The amount of control and structure will have to vary throughout the program. Sometimes, flexibility is best, whereas other times, more control is better. While having a clear direction and “shepherding” help get students involved and engaged, we should actively consider the role of imagination in generating the best outcomes.

4. Students do not want school-related activities on the weekend!

Pivot: Introducing RiseClub

With the feedback we received, we decided to pivot our initial concept of ‘Discovery Days’ to a concept called 'Rise Club'. We realized that we needed to make our programming more accessible for the students who would need it the most and would need to meet them at a venue and time that was convenient for them. Therefore, we saw opportunities to find and create intersections between their interests and the field of sustainability.
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Rise Club is a high school community led by students and guided by EcoRise. The club provides students with opportunities to find and create intersections between their interests and the field of sustainability.

With experiences, resources, mentorship, and friendship, Rise Club aims to move students forward in their individual sustainability journeys.

Rise club is centered on three core pillars:

Forming Community

Providing time to socialize, so members have quality time with peers and mentors to create long-lasting relationships.
Creating memorable, collaborative, and challenging projects brings students a sense of accomplishment when they finish them.
Having swag that can help the club establish traditions and create physical, visible bonds between members.

Exploring Sustainability

Bringing in guest speakers from college and industry to show students how to integrate sustainability into their current plans.
Host skill-building workshops with EcoRise to examine different facets of sustainability and the relevant job opportunities.
Going on field trips and volunteering opportunities to experience the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability firsthand

Building Futures

Providing mentorship through dedicated advisors who can give students the inspiration, clarity, and guidance to succeed in their future paths.
Equipping students with tangible tools and resources can help students plan their futures through high school and beyond.
Developing activities, experiences, and exercises to build hard and soft skills needed to establish successful careers.

Conclusions and Recommendations for EcoRise

Growth Vision

Rise Club's success starts with EcoRise. A coordinator can build the resources students need to run their club well and reach out to teacher networks to help get schools involved.

A teacher network could post flyers and make announcements to encourage all students, not just those in EcoRise, to join since no background knowledge is necessary. The teacher would also be a point of guidance for student leaders as they built the club. From there, EcoRise will hand off most of the work to the new student leaders - it'll be their job to plan club activities and host meetings and find guest speakers, but EcoRise and the teachers can provide them with support and resources along the way.

One of the resources we created for students to get started is a shared hub, powered by the Notion Platform, called the Rise Club Student Hub. This hub contains resources to aid students by creating a club, running a club, Community Building & Advocacy, and many workshops and Daily Activities. A section gives mentors, teachers, or sponsors resources to guide young Risers as they go through their time in the Rise Club.

Starting with local areas, we hope to see a few clubs pop up in a school district. The main focus here is seeing the club being built, changed, adapted, and grown by the founding high school students. EcoRise will be responding to feedback, obstacles, and triumphs, and together, the clubs will start shaping and improving the organization.

Then we could see the club spread regionally across the state and begin seeing traditions emerge and see the club age and change with its members’ needs and wants.

Nationally, we hope to see a web of clubs across the country that connect, communicate, and grow together but still keep their individual charms and stay focused on their members.

As a national organization, we hope to see Rise build a firm name recognized the same way the National Honor Society or Key Club is. It can be something all students are familiar with as they join high school and are excited to be a part of, it can be a familiar name on college applications and job resumes that comes with its reputation and high regard,

But at the core, we hope the pillars of community, sustainability, and future building remain strong and are only amplified as Rise Club gets bigger and bigger.

Actionable Next Steps

EcoRise can conduct more interviews with their high school students and support teachers to gain more insight into the high school experience, structure, and impact. This research will inform the program specialists in building out and developing the existing Rise Club resources and tools.

After that, EcoRise should pick one high school to host a semester-long prototype with a team of real student leaders to get feedback and gauge interest, student/teacher capacity, and whether the resources and activities create meaningful experiences for those involved.

Acknowledgements & Thanks You

This project would not have been possible without the help of our incredible community.

Thank you to our professors Gray Garmon and Katie Krummeck for their never-ending support and guidance in navigating a challenging semester and an incredible capstone journey.

Thank you to our high school and college student participants for dedicating their time to answering our questions and helping us test out our concepts.

Thank you to EcoRise for providing us with a real, meaningful problem to tackle this semester. Special thanks to Brittany Jayroe, Alexia Leclercq, Sharon Huerta, and Gamal Sherif for taking additional time to meet with us and answer our many questions.

Thank you to the sustainability professionals for meeting with us and sharing their stories of joining the field of sustainability.

Rise Club, a Design Collaboration with EcoRise