Revisiting our site component mapping

To reiterate, last week we diagrammed out the components of our outreach and centralization system. This map is critical to our momentum right now:

Peer presentations:

During our peer presentations this Monday, we got to walk some of our classmates through our updated How Might We statement, our solutioning mapping, and some of our early visuals.

The feedback we received was relatively productive. It is definitely challenging to engage everyone on zoom.

• Many classmates validated our area of focus. Our topic is unique and was received well.
• Suggestion to incorporate doctors/medical facilities in connecting with the patients through our system. For example…

This week we scheduled our own “design jam” for our team.

First, we outlined some considerations:

• Increase visibility/impact of local organizations
• Centralize the efforts of local organizations
• Focus on trust in healthcare → relationship-based, community-centered
• Smaller, pointed solutions
• Where design isn’t → Meeting people where they are
• Democratizing technology (considerate of low-tech users)

Then, we broke apart for a timed hour and brainstormed some possible solutions. Here is some of our (messy) work:

We’ve achieved somewhat of a breakthrough with the direction we are moving. After consolidating our insights from our interviews with Paula, Jim and Chatón, we revisited our initial plan for the scope/outcome of this intervention. As mentioned last week, we’re operating in the space of connection. Rather than trying to replace or outdo the work of UPMC or local organizations, the best role we’ve identified for communication design is in connecting all of these resources together under one unified campaign and location.

When talking with Kristin on Monday, we narrowed down our audience. …

Week overview

This week was dominated by some really powerful interviews. Because we reached out and connected with so many people, we set up a very sexy spreadsheet to track correspondence. We probably should have done this sooner!

As we continued to collect insights and personal stories from the experts we were talking to, we’ve started to really narrow down our message. In the past, our solutions proposals were very far reachinand required a lot of our own authorship in the design process. Or, we were looking at methods like cultural awareness education for health professionals that already currently exist. …

Digging into our desk research

In preparation for our midterm review, this week we worked on an insight mapping exercise that helped consolidate our research into key target areas. Using figma, we organized our insights into sticky notes and consolidated our concepts into sections.

Mid Term Presentation

On Friday, we presented a rough draft of our presentation to our professors and peers. The primary feedback we received was that a) our concept would benefit from a ‘how might we’ statement to tighten up our purpose, and b) how do we make this a clear and concrete solution that engages and benefits our intended users? We incorporated both ideas…

Talking to the Experts

This week was time for the rubber to hit the road. After scoping and rescoping our space and reaching out to a lot of community leaders, we got the chance to speak to some real professionals and get a sense of the healthcare and racial equity landscape in Pittsburgh.

Also, the same morning we conducted our first interview with Ashli Montinero, an article came out in the New York Times that was related to our topic:

This article is a really excellent piece of journalism (especially photojournalism). It follows the efforts of local Rev. …

This week, we presented our concept for peer reviews. Our deck outlined our position and the possible areas we’re thinking of intervening.

Narrowing our focus

At the end of this week, we’ve decided to push ourselves to narrow down our scope. We originally decided that we would concentrate our focus on “option 2”, so focusing on making a tool or educational intervention for healthcare providers. However, after listening to perspectives from current healthcare providers, people in disability research and people with disabilities, we’ve realized that its more important to put our research into the “who” rather than the “what.” Therefore, we’ve decided to narrow our scope to focus specifically on black female community members and their access/relationship to healthcare.

In our previous project brief, we…