For my graduation thesis I designed 'The Road to Impact': an immersive experience for the HBO course Social Work at the Hogeschool Utrecht, specifically the graduation department. This experience is aimed at making the impact of graduation projects more visible, so that students experience more transparency and motivation, resulting in a better reputation for the course itself.
The experience has since been implemented into the course and is used at every graduation orientation lecture twice a year and accreditations, which consists of a panel of teachers, Social Work organizations, managing boards, and students.
This case study is organized based on Design Thinking.
Project
Graduation thesis at Social Work Hogeschool Utrecht
Roles
Project manager
Researcher
Storyteller
Concept developer
Visual designer
Prototyper
Design methods used
Desk research
Diaries and probes
Moodboard
Empathy map
Fly on the wall
Benchmark creation
Interview
Ideation
Guiding principles
Storytelling
5E method
Co-creation
Usability test
I concluded that
The concept has to serve as the starting point for improving the graduation department of the course.
The concept has to be easily expandable with more stories from students who have graduated.
The concept must undergo periodic evaluation and further development to ensure sustainable development, ensuring the design solution remains a valuable addition to the graduation department in the future.
Empathize
Orientation research to grasp the core issue.
The first sprint was signified by orientation and iterations. This included interviews with the client (Social Work) and the target audience (students). What started as the question to increase the visibility of Social Work graduation projects to prospective students and the work field, was specified to transparency and motivation for current graduation students. Because of this the main design question was formed:
"How can Social Work make the impact of graduation projects more visible, so that students experience more transparency and motivation, resulting in a better reputation for the course itself?"
Define
Identifying the societal and organizational context of the course.
Different perspectives were analyzed to define the context of the course, its students and all it entails.
On a societal level, it is noted that the need for Social Work is improving. Currently there's a shortage of 3,000 social workers, by 2033 this will be 7,500.
Organizationally, the graduation department has a team of teachers that are constantly working on the course and guiding students. At the moment the course has 1.236 students following the course, with 415 first-year students. 52% passes the first year, where 66% is the national average.
35% graduates within five year, whereas the nation average is 44%. Moreover, the student satisfaction score comes down to 3.2 out of five, with a national average of 3.5.
Qualitative interviews covering stakeholders
The interviews were conducted with a group of 16 people in different positions within different sectors which were all relevant for my 'define' fase.
The interviews conclusions were processed into an empathy map, as shown below.
Best practice
After marking the target group, it was time to enrich myself on the graduation proces of other similar courses with a better reputation and other Social Work organizations using interviews and desk research, and analyze best practices based on the research.
Remaining methods during Define.
- Current situation interviews and deskresearch
- Current experiences (consisting out of visibility, transparency, inspiration, and reputation) interviews and deskresearch
- Target audience probe and diary, fly on the wall and interviews
- Motivation and motivation theories deskresearch
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Piecing together research and turning it into prototypes in an iterative process.
The prototypes below were all made and iterated during different stages of the thesis. Each prototype backed with more research, leading to a solid high fidelity end product.
Sprint 0
The first concepts were made based on:
- Context research
- Target audience interviews
- Brainstorming
- Co-creation
What Social Work Offers
The connection with the professional field and exploring dilemmas through a game in which students must combine various statements and situations to explore their own professional development.
Celebrating Pride
To stimulate student pride through a festival/event that celebrates their graduation.
Creative
Stimulate and showcase the creativity of graduating students by creating a work of art that incorporates the physical elements each student brings with them from their professional product.
Self-development
Demonstrate a student's self-development through the physical journey they make from the HU to their internship, along with accompanying stories.
Sprint 1
Presenting different directions helped the client and studentes articulate which direction would be best suited. During sprint 1 the following research led to two new concepts:
- Interviews with the client and students.
- Crazy-8 session with peers, the organization and students.
Social Work Day
A day dedicated to Social Work graduates: an event where students take center stage. It's intended as an introduction to the field and vice versa, a networking event with an event/festival twist by incorporating cultural elements. It's about connecting, inspiring, and becoming part of the field in an accessible way.
Feedback
The Road to Social Work
A concept that revolves around a graduate student's journey: by creatively showcasing successes and challenges, students are encouraged to reflect on and describe their own development. In addition, other students are informed about the journey in a non-static way, allowing the professional field to experience the student's growth, impact, and final work.
Feedback
Social Work Rights
A concept that revolves around activating students in a way that is especially important these days: through protest signs. These easily hung protest signs throughout the school feature inspiring and informative quotes, opinions, visions, and findings from students about their projects.
Feedback
Sprint 2
The main concept that would be used moving on was "The Road to Social Work" (which would later be changed to "The road to Impact") seen as this concept intrigued the target audience the most. After gaining a deeper understanding of the methods and factors necessary to create a meaningful and immersive experience out of the concept, a simple and low fidelity prototype using a beamer was made to test with the client and target audience. The test was intended to see if the concept was easy to set up and use for the teachers, and test the form and storytelling mechanics with the target audience.
Sprint 3
The third sprint was used to process feedback from the test:
- The routes and moments of impact were not visible enough.
- There was a clear lack of depth.
- The use of a beamer made it easy in usability and accessibility for teachers.
- An extension of the map would make it more memorable.
This sprint aimed at improving the storytelling of the concept via interviews with the students who applied to appear in the concept, applying the 5E experience model to actually turn it into a memorable experience, and improving the prototype with materials and animations.
The prototype was tested with a part of the target audience who had never interacted with the concept and prototype, a yearly accreditation panel, and a motion graphic designer affiliated with a design agency specialized in devising and developing impactful events and/or elements thereof.
Sprint 4
The final sprint in my thesis was used to finetune the prototype using the results from the tests conducted at the previous sprint, apply the 5E experience model visuals designed to complete the experience, and conduct a final usability test to measure the succes of the experience with the target audience. The following requirements had to be met based on my guiding principles:
- The experience has to let the target audience experience success stories.
- The experience has to encourage the target audience coming together.
- The experience has to contain reliable knowledge that is accurate theoretical knowledge of the course.
- The experience has to be be playful/lighthearted as to not feel as an obligation to the target audience, but more as an tool to inspire and support them.
The requirements were all met after testing the experience among different members of multiple student graduation teams.
The "The road to Impact" experience
The experience is presented using the 5E experience model.
Engage
Entry
Engagement
Version 1
Version 2
Exit
Extension
Extension example
Recommendation Social Work team leader
