Context
Creative Reaction Lab & Adobe announced a week-long design challenge inspired by Creative Reaction Lab’s work and mission of educating, training, and challenging Black and Latinx youth to become leaders designing healthy and racially equitable communities.
Our goal was to create a mobile app that helps mobilize youth leaders working toward equity.
A Personal Note
I’m in a season of connecting the dots, so I learned about the challenge on Monday and started it on Wednesday. I deeply believe in the mission of cultivating designers for justice, locally and globally — and I’ve never taken to classroom learning, so this offered a way to push myself with UX/UI and Adobe XD.
It served as so much more than that. It became a container for trusting and designing from my own life & beliefs.
In working in international development and with communities of different identities and experiences than me, I often hold myself as a design ally.
Yet I know (and astrology confirms) that I’d love to return to working in K-12 education someday. In designing from my own experience, the question alive for me is: how can a storytelling, design, and social change education serve as a vessel for individual and collective wellbeing?
Scope
I prototyped this mobile app through research, insights, design theory & principles, low-fidelity concepts, and high-fidelity designs. Our process drew inspiration across design justice principles, equity-centered community design, and a double diamond discovery model. Read on for a synopsis, or in the spirit of open collaboration, check out one of our working docs here.
Foundations
Framed initial vision, theory, principles, and key outcomes. We continued to refine these foundations with new insights & perspectives throughout the design process.
Vision & Theory
How can we create an ecosystem of healing for students, parents, educators, and community leaders to step into their power as community shapers for a better world?
Principles
Sensing for change - as a theory of change, we believe in starting with mindfulness and storytelling to step powerfully into designing for equity, justice, and freedom.
Healing-centered - we design toward healing & weave in care for social, emotional, mental, and cultural wellbeing.
Empowering - we offer a vessel for creativity, supporting emergence & fluidity within a guided form.
Key Outcomes
Consciousness - an understanding of our selves & our relationships to each other
Community - a home of belonging, support, and growth
Power - access to knowledge & skills, mentorship & connections, financial & institutional resources
Discovery
Insights across students, parents, educators, and grown-ups working within storytelling, design, healing, and social change. This process included:
Framing generative & evaluative research questions for different segments
Gathering primary interviews & secondary observations with siblings, students, and former campers (who are now all grown up and in high school).
Synthesizing into needs, behaviors, and touch points
Ideation of early concepts. This included:
Ideating through crazy 8’s and low-fidelity sketches
Gathering evaluative feedback — likes, dislikes, questions, ideas — from our initial interviewees
Refinement of design concept, foundations, and vision for first prototype
Design
Design Hierarchy of design goals, screens, and features
Inspiration from current trends, behaviors, and digital touch points. Examples include:
For discovery, belonging, and thriving: Clubhouse, Ethel’s Club, Join the Cosmos
For wellness education: Headspace for Kids, Flo
For creativity & content creation: TikTok, Tumblr, Snapchat
For safety in education tech: DIY.org, Playworks, Questions to your answers on school safety
For healing: healing-centered engagement at Flourish Agenda
Wireframes for low-fidelity sections, screens, and features
High-fidelity — with sample content, illustrations, cupcake ipsum text, and all!
From this process, we introduce … Treehouse!
Treehouse by Dezine School
We are a Dezine School (yes, a portmanteau of design + zine) for young people to step into their power as storytellers, designers, and community shapers for a better world. And to stand in our power, we must be in loving relationship with our selves and each other.
Treehouse is a place to discover, belong, and imagine worlds together. Think of it as a healing-centered version of Clubhouse for students, parents, educators, and community leaders to grow our collective consciousness, community, and freedom — together.
Outcomes
Our team was awarded as fourth place finalist in the Creative Reaction Lab & Adobe Creative Jam 2021. To date, we’ve shared our prototype for feedback with educators, parents, community healers & leaders, the Design Justice Network, and the K12 Lab.
I truly believe in weaving diverse experiences & strengths toward a shared mission and set of values — and we’re continuing to seek perspective, feedback, and collaboration. We welcome you to reach out if you resonate with these themes!