Eric Li - Selected Work Portfolio

PROJECT CONTENTS

INDIVIDUAL CULTURAL PROJECT

Evanescence

Social & Humanity Studies, Architectural Design, UX / UI Design

HCI CAPSTONE PROJECT

MELAbase

Database Design, AI/NLP Design, UX / UI Design

LEARNING MEDIA DESIGN

SPARK

Persuasive Design, UX / UI Design

EVANESCENCE

EVANESCENCE

INDIVIDUAL CULTURAL PROJECT

>>> PART 1. SHANGHAI CULTURE PAVILION PROGRAM

"Evanescence" is an interdiscplinary project that seeks to bridge the past into the future through the creative as digital channel / platform through which history, culture, past memories, and social identities could be recollected, The first part of this project delves into the lack of knowledge / awareness amongst Shanghai young people was inspired by "shen" (old name of Shanghai), that serves as the cultural hotspot. In order to actively engage young across the Bund until it finally arrives at the pavilion, where various cultural elements are exhibited in both visual and

creative interweaving of social studies, architectural design, and UX/UI design. The goal is to provide a physical as well recollected, showcased, disseminated, and rejuvenated. people of preserving Shanghai history and culture. I took a novel approach of designing a culture pavilion, whose shape young people into learning about Shanghai culture, the pavilion extends its influence through a bike sightseeing tour and audio, static and fluid, and tangible and intangible forms...

Research on Young Pople and Shanghai Culture

I began my project by delving into how exactly young people are interested in and familiar with Shanghai history and culture. During the research phase, I realized that questionaires were not adequate to reveal underlying reasons and motives, and therefore chose to conduct semistructured interviews as a supplement. Results were mostly as expected--there exists a lack of awareness and knowledge of Shanghai culture--yet traditional methods have already been exploited, under which condition a Shanghai Culture Pavilion is proposed as a novel solution.

1. Findings indicate students lack basic knowledge of city culture ( Avg. < 76.8%)

Results polarize with those from top schools doing significantly better than others. 3. Students know more questions relevant to experience (food) than those more abstract. From the interviews I learnt that the number of avenues / resources to learn Shanghai history and culture is quite limited. A tough issue is the tremendous cultural conflicts they experience here - students from other provinces are more likely to keep their traditions instead of mingling with local customs. But the biggest problem remains on ourselves-many Shanghai adolescents still dismiss the importance of preserving Shanghai culture.

上海中学 9.8 9.5 7.1 位育高中 9.2 8.8 6.6 南洋高中 8.7 8.3 6.4 中国中学 8 7.5 5.9 徐教院附中 7.8 7.4 5.7 高中 饮食(20’) 艺术(20’) 服饰(10’) 上海中学 19.4 13.6 6.9 位育高中 18.9 12.7 6.5 南洋高中 17.9 12.1 6.2 中国中学 17.2 11.6 5.8 徐教院附中 16.9 11.5 5.3 总均分：77.1 初中 时间（10’） 租界（10’） 交通(10’) 华育中学 9.7 9.5 7.2 西南位育 9.4 8.9 6.8 文来中学 8.8 8.2 6.1

II. Choosing the Site: The Bund, Shanghai >>>

Choosing the site for my pavilion is important to exerting cultural influence. We finally decided on Fuzhou Road, the Bund as our ideal site for the following reasons:

1. Near Young People

Near History Called "Exhibition of World's Architecture", the Bund is well-known for its diverse architecture, where every one has a rich hisotry to tell.

Assorted shopping malls, restaurants, and recreation centers at the Bund receive a daily flow of hundreds of thousands of young people.

3.

2. Visible from Pearl Tower

The pavilion can be seen clearly from the Oriental Pearl Tower. The tower provides a chance for young people to be impressed by the "shen" shape of the pavilion when visiting.

View of Pavilion from Pearl Tower

Fuzhou Road

The Bund Site Plan

Pearl Tower

III. Engaging Yound People: Bike Sightseeing Tour >>>

In order to physically and mentally engage young people to my pavilion, we designed a bike sightseeing tour that enhances the pavilion's cultural and societal influence. Our carefully designed bikes would be distributed around the Bund and are driven by tour guides (or by visitors themselves). On the way to the pavilion, the tour guide can introduce different Bund architecture and elaborate on their histories. When reaching the pavilion, a track belt system would move the bike through the pavilion's helix gallery, where a number of memories of old Shanghai would be displayed in both visual and audio forms (see diagrams on the right). The whole experience culminates when the bike arrives at the pavilion atrium, where more cultural items such as paintings and sculptures are showcased, and where group activities and public lectures on Shanghai culture and dialect regularly take place.

Dumpling-Inspired Bike Design

These bikes are carefully designed to attract young people. Their basic structure is a tricycle. A more elegant frame and a fancy dumpling-shaped shield form the back and give the bike a more modern and fun sensibility.

IV. Pavilion Architectural Drawings >>>

Axonometric

Roof Circulation Walls

Plan

Second-Level

Elevation

PART 2. Chinese Dialect Platform

Working with professors from Shanghai University and Fudan University, this program deals with the gradual demise of Chinese dialects amongst the young generation. Due to complex social and personal reasons, the number of (young) people speaking dialects is drastically going down, most severely in Wu dialect regions. Various efforts have been made to preserve Chinese dialects, such as "caifeng", the collection of audio resouces from local people-yet such methods have not been efficient or influential. I believe that it is not enough to "preserve" dialects, but "rejuvenate" dialects--engaging young people in actively using dialects and raising their cultural awareness.

We tend to build an online platform that connects dialect experts/scholars with the general public. This platform will be a built-in app of Wechat. Given the wide influence of Wechat and the inconvenience to download another app, a built-in Wechat program seems the most appropriate.

EVANESCENCE EVANESCENCE

gradual number efforts peopleto This download

EVANESCENCE EVANESCENCE

Potentially$

DESIGN CONSIDERATION

Stakeholders

Once the user opens the app, a preference question is asked whether he/she wants to be a "player", "creator", or "expert". A player is someone who speaks dialect(s) fluently and are fond with dialectrelated videos/games; a creator is also a dialect maniac who enjoys creating and publishing his/her own contents/activities to engage the community; an expert/scholar is someone who has been or is interested in studying (preserving) dialects and is eager to collect plentiful materials from the general public. Based on the user's selection, the app's content is adjusted accordingly: for instance, experts have access to text/ verbal recordings and other data analyses in a game, and creators are encouraged and facilitated in their video/game production. In a nutshell, our app provides an active platform through which experts, players, and creators are all engaged in the preservation and rejuvenation of dialects.

From videos, games, to Murder users can enjoy watching and variety of activities around or in of Chinese dialects. They will be most recommended based on their records, or the most popular ones click rates or ratings. They will also create their own (described later).

Murder Mystery, and playing a in the form feeded the their history ones based on also be able to later).

Community >>

Users can select a "hot topic" by pressing or searching a keyword, such as "Shanghai dialect", and popular posts would pop up based on the user's selection. Users can then look at what others, including their friend, have been heatedly discussing or experiencing around the topic, and join their discussion by simply pressing "reply", "favorite", or "forward".

Users, especially experts, can chat with one another or create chat groups to share materials or other things. This is useful for keeping the conversation to be only around "dialects" and protecting privacy (since Wechat is already a social app).

Chat >>

Users, especially "players", their favorited activities page, where the activities chronological order recent). It helps players game or view the latest

Favorite Create Export

"players", can view activities on the "favorite" activities are listed in order (topmost the most players to replay the latest updates.

Users, especially "creators", can create and publish their own games, scripts, and animations, following the "plus" button on the "create" page, where the app itself makes it easier for users to create activities on Chinese dialects. Once submitted, the activity will be reviewed by selected experts who make sure the contents are safe and correct before it goes fully published. Users can always check the status of their activity (green: pass, yellow: pending, red: not pass).

"Expert" users, once exporting the dataset of an activity (described later), can view their exports and the materials themselves on the "export" page. The exports are listed in chronological order and a red "latest" sign would remind experts of the most recent export.

INTERACTION HIGHLIGHTSGameplay & Data

Players are told what they need to prepare for this game, such as basic knowledge requirement, and whether to turn on their mike during the game (so that their answers can be recorded for future uses).

Some vivid game description...

"View the data" will be only visible to "experts", which includes all the information that have been gathered so far from players (age, location, correctness, audio materials...). This will be shown in the next page.

Example of asked what an dialect. The by an audio material recognize the

Before Game

a timed task: players are an expression means in a question is supplemented material that helps players the term.

Example of an untimed task: players are asked to sing a lyric / read a poem in their dialect and need to press the "audio" button to record their voices.

Players will be asked one or two concise questions after game play. This question can be: in what situations are you prone to speak your dialect? (with families, friends, at workplaces...). This will be extremely helpful for experts.

During Game

After Game

1 & 2:

At the start of expert feedback, some metadata about the game will be shown, including but not limited to the number of players so far, geographical distribution (visualized by colored dots on the map), age / sex distribution, and the situations for using dialects (based on the follow-up question). These metadata would provide a clear overview of the dataset without much effort by the expert.

5: By clicking on the red button ("export all"), the expert can export the data with the choice of either as local folder or an online workspace (such as Tencent Folder). The expert can download any time with updated data.

3 & 4:

Following the metadata, experts will be provided detailed data analysis for each task in the game and, depending on the question type, be provided audio materials (including a "trial" audio that the expert can choose to listen). The expert can export the data for each question as a single file (like excel) or export all data (including metadata) as a whole package.

5

MELAbase

Starting from the initial problem of divergent and scattered data reporting of national melanoma tumor boards, Team MELA scoped down to designing a system, MELAbase, that simplifies the tumor board reporting process while generating researchready data. We hope that MELAbase could be a first step toward bridging the gap between clinical reports and usable research data and in the end facilitate better treatment for people with melanoma.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM -- Problem Scoping & Feature Brainstorming

In order to provide comprehensive treatment for melanoma, a type of skin cancer, our client, Dr. Bryan Carroll team at Univerisity Hospitals at Case Western University hold tumor board meetings every week to discuss patient cases and determine treatment plans. Beyond such clinical routines, they also conduct research to understand the effectiveness of current treatments.

In our research phase, we talked people who coordinate and gather for tumor boards, three specialists attend the meetings, a technologist who manages the systems used doctors, and three researchers would like to know the results of boards. The main problem we out is that there’s a disconnection between the clinical practices tumor board and melanoma research, which leads to duplication of work. isolated processes cost a lot and effort for both the tumor coordinators and researchers. coordinator needs to sift various records, charts, and doctor’s notes to compile the patient Meanwhile, researchers follow same procedures to extract research needed data.

Considering that our client is not an EHR company, we felt that directly dealing with EHR records might immediately impactful to our clients. We also thought changing healthcare privacy regulations to allow cross-center sharing would be outside the scope of an HCI capstone project. However, we did identify an opportunity in impacting how various NCCN centers have different tumor board practices. With this narrowed down space, we set out to create single digital system that streamlines local tumor board documentation and workflow. By achieving standardization local setting, the same process can be adopted at other cancer centers to facilitate future data unification.

Example Storyboard 1. Automating Data Entry and Exports

To prepare for a tumor board, the current workflow requires the coordinator to gather patient data from a variety of sources. We propose a tool that can automatically enter and export data, reducing the coordinator’s workload.

and his specific understand not be cross-center impacting create a standardization in a

+ Add field

talked with gather data specialists who technologist used by the researchers who of tumor we found disconnection at the research, work. The of time tumor board researchers. The through doctor’s reports. follow the research

Context

The tumor board coordinator (TBC) needs to prepare this week’s cases that will be presented at the tumor board.

problem

The patient’s information is scattered across emails and EHR pages that she has to sift through.

solution

The system guides the tumor board through a form to enter relevant information and formats it into a presentation and PDF report.

resolution

The TBC selects the final treatment plan decision on the system which automatically updates the PDF report, consolidating patient information in a structured manner.

Example Storyboard 2. Filtering and Comparing Cases

Our clients expressed concern that they wanted to directly compare similar patients cases filtered by key words. We were given the feedback that searching by catalogued data (such as “stages of melanoma” or “anatomical locations”) was desirable and that the filtering/searching criteria needed to be consistent with other cancer centers. This led to a filtering and comparing feature.

Context

Specialists gather virtually for their regular tumor board conference.

problem

The surgeon wants to review past cases in a holistic view and provide a surgical summary for future reference.

solution

Using the system, the surgeon filters and compares past cases by searching key words, including stages of melanoma or anatomical locations.

resolution

He now finds it easy to summarize past surgical experiences and even find potential areas of improvement for future cases.

For this digital platform, we ideated several features that can minimize the effort of data entry and facilitate tumor board discussions. Those features included automating data entry and exports, NCCN guideline searching, publications searching, filtering and comparing cases, and retrospective analysis. We created sketches and storyboards to visualize our ideas and speeddate them with specialists to spark conversations about their needs.

During our research, we came across a system called NAVIFY that aimed at facilitating the tumor board process. We decided to delve into how NAVIFY works, so we interviewed 3 specialists who worked with NAVIFY and 1 Executive Representative of NAVIFY. After conversations, we found out that NAVIFY does provide some functions that we ideated. Most importantly, NAVIFY integrates with any EHR, making it accessible across departments and eliminating the effort required for data entry and exports. NAVIFY also has features such as clinical trial matching, NCCN guidelines visualizations, and targetted publication searching. However, we did notice a light at the end of the tunnel — NAVIFY does not do everything. Needs such as filtering and comparing patient cases and retrospective analysis of patient data were not included in NAVIFY.

After discovering and exploring NAVIFY, we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps and generated potential options we could pursue. After several discussions within our team and with our clients, we pivoted to a new goal of developing a database that streamlines the tumor board workflow, makes it easy to store and extract patient data to create research registry, and can be flexible enough to adapt to changes in the NCCN guidelines and allow new fields to be created in the database.

Research Registry

With the newly visualized the University data extraction for including Electronic there is an overlap consolidate the two leverage the work the various systems. data fields that are

Collection of data used to answer research questions Scattered Multiple Various Redundant

EXTRACT

sift through everything to find relevant research data

questions

DISCOVERING NAVIFY & PIVOTING -- A New Path

Scattered and divergent data

Multiple fractured systems Various data formats Redundant entries

PREPARE

sift through everything to find relevant tumor board info and format into report

Tumor Board Report

Google Doc Patient information Tumor characteristics Treatment recommendation

newly set goal of transforming clinical melanoma tumor board documentation into research-ready data, we first University Hospitals workflow. We observed that two processes are occurring: tumor board report preparation and for research. These two processes both consist of someone digging through multiple hospital digital systems, Electronic Health Record, department-specific software, and Google Drive, to gather relevant data. According to our client, overlap in the data for tumor boards and the data needed for research. Thus, we speculate that it is possible to two efforts into a single database — what we are calling, the MELAbase. In this system, the researchers can work done by the tumor board coordinator rather than using their time and effort to redundantly extract data from systems. The next step is to understand the workflows of a tumor board coordinator and researcher and the specific are needed for this database.

Tumor Board Report

and divergent data

fractured systems Various data formats Redundant entries

ENTER

sift through everything to find relevant information and enter it into a structured form

MELAbase

Melanoma structured database Distinct data fields

UNDERSTANDING WORKFLOWS & DATA FIELDS

We first investigated the workflow of a tumor board coordinator. We asked the coordinator to bring in deidentified examples of all the things they digitally “touch”, and with these items, we created checkpoints so that they could recall how they got from screen to screen. This allowed us to create a timeline with all of the tasks they complete for the tumor board. To ensure that sure we did not miss any of the coordinator’s tasks and to build off of the work we already did to create the timeline, we asked the tumor board coordinator to print out this timeline, take it to work, and do diary check-ins. Every time they sat down to do a tumor board related task, we asked them to check the timeline. For researchers, we asked them to bring all the de-identified screens they use and artifacts they make while building a research registry. We found the same doctor’s note (highlighted by purple border) that appears in the tumor board coordinator workflow. Both of them read the same doctor’s notes and extracted some of the same pieces of data such as melanoma stage and pathological diagnosis. This validated our assumption that there was a redundancy in the work of tumor board coordinators and researchers.

Primary providers email Emma patients to be presented at the TB with the departments to be consulted

Pathologists review biopsy slides and confirm diagnoses

Emma puts the primary provider emails in a folder for the upcoming TB

Emma creates a conference agenda (based on the primary provider emails) and email the department specialists the agenda

Emma prepares a tumor board report for each patient

If evaluation 1, new report Otherwise, grabs old report and adds updates (Usually finishes one patient before moving on to the next)

Emma prepares a tumor board report for any last minute requests

Patients are presented by primary provider at the tumor board conference (radiologists share screen to show scans, pathologists share screen to show biopsy slides when necessary) and Emma documents the final recommendation

Emma uploads all tumor board reports to Encite (select all, copy, paste text from report)

Someone sends the tumor board report to the related physicians

Tumor Board Coordinator Workflow Timeline

Researcher defines a data dictionary with what fields they are interested in

Researcher looks through old tumor board reports and notes on a patient record to collect all the data

Taking about 30 minutes to read through the doctor’s note

Researcher creates aggregated visualizations to find trends and patterns in the registry

Researcher Workflow Timeline

Venn Diagram of Data Fields

Seeing that one-time data entry that would be useful for both the tumor board and researcher, we dived in to figure out what overlapping data fields are between the tumor board reports and a potential melanoma research registry. We conducted a data audit of the two artifacts and listed out all the pieces of data along with their formats. We then made a Venn diagram to illustrate the data fields. The highlighted part is the data fields that the tumor board coordinator enters into MELAbase. From the graph, we noticed that the data needed for the research registry, in general, is more granular.

enters data found in the EHR

generates reports and agendas keeps data in one place

Primary User

Tumor Board Coordinator

quickly access aggregate data Researcher

Data Field 2

Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Data Field 4

Text Text Text Data Field 3 Data Field 5 Item 1 Item 5

Item 4 Item 2 Item 3 Item 6

Additional Fields

Add to report

MELA Dropdown / Search Selection Data Field 6 Add Field +

Tumor Board Report Data Field 1 Data Field 3: Data Field 4: Option 1 Item 1 tem 5 Data Field 5: Data Field 6:

Lo-Fi Wireframes

LO-FI WIREFRAMES & DATA ENTRY PROTOTYPES

Option 3 tem 2 Option 3 tem 2 Option 3 tem 2

Option 2 tem 6 Option 2 tem 6

Data Field 6 Input Form (MELA Libs) Submit

Option 2 tem 6 Option 2 tem 6

Data Field 1 Data Field 2 Data Field 3 Data Field 4 Data Field 5 Option 1 tem 1 Item 5 Option 1 tem 1 tem 5 Option 1 tem 1 tem 5

After understanding different data needs for tumor boards and research, the question became: How should the data be populated in MELAbase? After a discussion with our clients, team MELA decided that this platform, MELAbase would not collect all the information relevant to researchers; rather, it would give them a headstart and pointers for where to look. Although the tumor board process does not generate all the data fields that researchers are interested in, the ability to quickly access the tumor board data would greatly reduce the researcher’s workload. In particular, we envisioned the tumor board coordinator being the primary user, where they enter well-defined data fields found from various sources. Later, the researchers can quickly access the aggregated patient data when they are doing research.

Since MELAbase would primarily store tumor board data, we tried to hone in on the entry format for each data field of the tumor board report, so that they can be recorded in a structured way that would be easily searchable. We started our prototype with Google Forms, breaking down the minimally formatted word document template into sections. We continued the iteration with Qualtrics, which allows for more flexible and dynamic formatting. We conducted usability tests with 4 physicians and researchers in order to test out: 1) whether we covered all the data fields, 2) whether they are formatted in a structured way, and 3) how to further parse some data fields.

From Tumor Board Report Template to Data Entry Prototype

Powerful Searching

Find 536 cas s Patient 1 Patient 2

Finally, we identified some key interfaces that we wanted to focus on for our prototypes, including the patient list, individual patient records, and tumor board page, as well as some key interactions include editing /updating patient information and searching /filtering patient cases. We went through three rounds of iterations and user testings before settling on our final prototypes, which have three key features targeting our user needs: reducing clicks with autogeneration, well-organized data fields, and powerful searching,

Wong DC14-85 Carson, Ben pIB

Wong DC03-73 Don, Richard pIIIB

Wong DC26-91 Pergo, Geroge pIIIA

Wong DC30-83 Johnson, Ron pIV

Wong DC20-28 Lane, Kohl pIC

pa e t ith the record, mo e the for the pa e t tumor board (i our age da.

2

Edit patient Move to top Remove patient Change date 3

Name Kren, Jane

Stage pIB

Rad Primary Prov

Wong

Path DC22-94

Derm Surgery Med Onc Rad Onc

Tumor Board

E

Search for patient ca e ...

4

Name Sex Age Location Stage Conf Date

Kren, Jane Carson, Ben Don, Richard Kim, Western Pergo, George Johnson, Ron Lane, Kohl Mittelman, Calisto Brankovich, Ndubuisi Hennig, Adebowale

F M M F M M F M F F

43 56 72 67 85 49 62 77 59 38

Left Forearm

Right Thigh Right Upper Arm

Left Elbow Right Lower Leg

Left Upper Arm

Left Thigh Left Knee

Left Forearm Left Upper Arm

pIV pIB pIIIB pIIC pIIIA pIV pIC pIIA pIIID pIIIA

04/04/2022 04/04/2022 04/04/2022 03/28/2022 03/28/2022 04/04/2022 04/04/2022 03/21/2022 04/04/2022 03/28/2022

Status

Incomplete 03/28/2022

Ready for T 03/28/2022

Ready for TB 03/28/2022

Ready for TB 03/28/2022

Ready for TB 03/28/2022

Ready for TB 03/28/2022

Reviewed 03/28/2022

Reviewed 03/28/2022

Recently Add/Edit

Patient La t Name A-Z A Z

Additional Workup 03/28/2022

Additional Workup 03/28/2022

Schwangau, Tevye F 64 Right Thigh pIIIA 03/21/2022 Additional Workup 03/28/2022

lic ing on t e “St tus” t b, t e coordin tor c n filter t e p tient c ses by specific p tient st tus(es), ic es it e sy to bring up cert in c ses for upd te Typing in “p t ology report” in t e se rc b r dds speci l “PAT ” br c et t t loo s up filters ( it in t e PAT br c et) only it in t e p t ology report section of t e p tient record

Filters c n be custo ized it specific criteri it in t e se rc function, nd c n be re oved e sily Altern tive se rc options ill pop up to tc t e ord(s) t e rese rc er types in, it t e top being t e one it t e ost nu ber of c ses. For cert in se rc options t e rese rc er c n custo ize by entering cert in r nges or selecting cert in criteri .

2 3 5

lic ing on “Add ne p tient” t es t e coordin tor to n e pty p tient for (edit ode). lic ing on “Sort by”, t e coordin tor c n sort t e p tient list by recently dd /edit (def ult st te), p tient l st n e A- , or p tient l st n e -A lic ing on n exising p tient t es t e coordin tor to t e p tient s individu l record (re d ode) lic ing on t e “N e” t b does t e ex ct s e sorting function s in t e “Sort by” enu : clic ing once sorts by A- , clic ing second ti e sorts by -A, nd clic ing t ird ti e returns to def ult (recently dd /edit).

64

ll

Clear All

FINAL PROTOTYP -- Individual Patient Record ( dit Mode)

Clicking on the “+” tab creates a new page with c stomizable title for this section for every new eval ation.

When the coordinator selects the T, N, and M stages, the overall stage and melanoma 5-year s rvival rate will be a togenerated according to the NCCN g ideline fter selecting the s ggestion for this patient, a keyword label that s mmarizes the s ggestion will be a togenerated for ease of reference and searching.

Typi g i keywords i the se rch b r bove the p thology report e bles se rchi g through the report licki g “Highlight ll”, keywords i the se rch b r c be highlighted with color.

FINAL PROTOTYP -- Individual Patient Record (Read Mode)

licki g o the “three dots” ext to the p tie t, the coordi tor c edit/upd te p tie t record go to edit mode), export the p tie t record s report, or delete the p tie t record The over ll st ge d mel om 5-ye r surviv l i form tio is brought to the top i the re d mode d st ys fixed lo g with p tie t me d ID) for e se of refere ce.

F22 Learning Media Design

SPARK

In collaboration with

supportive discussion and sharing platform SPARK

find and trigger their sparks form active conversations and interactions

To address the need of Randy and Jess from CoBHS of finding potential teachers and students for their prospective folk school, we designed a , that encourages community members of Pittsburgh to share their skills and discover their potential of teaching. We believe that our platform will establish and foster an online community around skill sharing and provide the support and encouragement to help community members and with one another.

Produced by

Eric Li Yimiao Wu Lin Gong Hongyu Mao

OPPORTUNITY SUMMARY & BACKGROUND RESEARCH

Randy Bartlett, head of City of Bridges High School in Pittsburgh, is planning on founding . The new folk school is independent of CoBHS (although students of CoBHS can take courses at the folk school) and is meant to face . “Everyone in Pittsburgh can become a teacher or student”, said Randy, defines the founding principle of the folk school.

a local folk school

the entire Pittsburgh community what community members of Pittsburgh are interested in teaching and learning and encouraging everyone to participate in the folk school a more systematic, sustainable approach

Though having an ambitious picture in his head, Randy is having trouble finding out .

Despite a few personal connections he could rely on, Randy has an extremely preoccupied schedule and shoulders a number of other responsibilities. With the help of Jess, Director of Community Engagement of CoBHS, he is eagerly looking for to discovering community members’ interest in learning and potential of teaching.

Jess Director of Community Engagement

Head of CoBHS & Folk School

Randy

Pittsburgh community member interested in teaching & learning

fostering interaction and communication an active community around the folk school

On the other hand, we also discovered a need of between community members, who often come from a variety of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. As Randy said, “Pittsburgh does not lack talented people, but what’s lacking is interaction among each other”. Therefore, we felt strongly that we should first build even before it is founded.

The disconnection between CoBHS faculties and students with the community’s intellectual resources and the lack of interaction between community members are laying significant barriers to the successful founding of the folk school. create a convenient and sustainable system to of community members with diverse interests, hobbies, talents, or skills?

How might wefacilitate and encourage the sharing, interaction, and exploration prompt them to think about the possibility of folk school

With this question in mind, we conducted a contextual inquiry and focus group activity with Randy and his students. The goal for us is to get the student's expectations and we designed some questions to . For instance, we let them introduce their peers‘ special skills and things they want to learn from their community members and brainstorm what things they can offer to community members. We saw lots of opportunities where they could bring several pieces of their amateur life into the folk school. During this activity, we acted more like listeners and prompters to let students spend more time sharing their thoughts and experiences.

Eric Li

Yimiao Wu

CoBHS Students

CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY SYNTHESIS MODEL

Based on our contextual inquiry and focus group activity, we developed a contextual inquiry synthesis model to find

the commonplace and differences between Pittsburgh community values, CoBHS values, folk school objectives, and visions of folk school

. We realized that community engagement lies at the heart of CoBHS education--this is reflected in the school’s core value that no one lives in isolation, and that students, even at a very young age, should and can be inspired and taught to make radiations to their community and society and become prepared for their future careers. Currently, CoBHS serves as .

a bridge that connects students to other community members through their community internship and apprenticeship programs

The model helped us to discover two design opportunities: the first one is discovering connections and resources within the community, including what people want to teach and learn and the second one is incentivizing community members to participate and form connections.

Therefore, we found three insights that should be addressed when designing the folk school: . Our design should focus on promoting community connection and providing people a place to exchange their resources and learn from others.

The first insight is connection

Pittsburgh Community Values

The second insight is people’s interests

The third insight is the structure of the curriculum

, which refers to encouraging people to share their interests, finding people’s interests, and aligning learners’ interests with folk schools’ curricula. .

The way we organize the folk schools should focus on the accessibility of classroom formats to people, with a focus on continuous attendance and reducing extra burden for teachers.

Rich i dustrial history with fresh air comi g from its tra sitio to a eds a d meds tow

Full of people with e citi g tale ts a d i terest Lack of i teractio or shari g betwee member

Some groups have bee historically or culturally e cluded

Folk School Objectives

Prepare stude ts for future career

I spire stude ts to become life-lo g lear er

E gage stude ts as active members of commu ity/society

Create a commu ity arou d shari g resources a d k owledg

Establish lo g-term bo ds a d co ectio s amo g commu ity member

Embrace a d foster e cha ge of cultures a d commu icatio across ge eratio

Bri g e ergy, vitality, creative ideas, a d fle ible thi ki g to the commu ity

Have a diverse ra ge of topics/subjects for teachi

Plans/Visions of Folk School Design Opportunities

Everyo e is welcome to become teacher/ stude

Fle ible hours a d schedul Program assessme t at the e d of workshop to gauge feedbac

Prefer i -perso tha zoom due to i timacy of face-to-face i teractio

Discover co ectio s a d resources withi the commu ity, i cludi g what people wa t to teach vs. to lear

I ce tivize commu ity members to participate a d form co ectio s

Diversity of cultural a d socioeco omic backgrou d

Focus o practicality a d real-life impact

Love a d passio for life

DESIGN PROBE & IDEATION

After meeting with members of CoHBS, we decided to collect further topics and expressions related to by means of Design Probe. Since Cultural Probe has the advantage of being able to solicit

people's interests unexpected answers and ideas through a series of open-ended questions

, it can broaden the scope of our design. Because we were able to give them the camera and let them contribute ideas and moments over a period of time, we designed a series of questions with openness and unexpected wording to inspire participants and made them into the .

form of booklets

We concluded from this Design Probe activity that skill sharing among students is actually ubiquitous, and that they are . But this motivation was or helped by the idea of being able to participate in more random activities and having the opportunity, and the venue, to interact with others together. In addition, one of the most remarkable insights is that some of them are more aware of what skills others have than the founders themselves. Many times some people are reluctant to express themselves or show themselves, but .

willing to share with their peers and have some experience with skill sharing activities not systematically supported such moments when others take pictures or praise them can make them feel confident

Idea 1 An app to help you exchange the skills at any time

Idea 2 Gather one’s interest through step-by-step questionnaires

Idea 5 An app to enroll in folk school courses online and provide browsing and recommendations

Idea 3 Idea 4 An interactive platform for sharing skills and insights, with bonuses and group activities

What are the people around you learning? Formation of interest groups with voice conversation

Example Design Ideation

After the Design Probe activity, we came together to hold a brainstorm session, where each of us generated 5 ideas with wireframes and lo-fi prototypes that could represent our system or a part/ function of our system. We then reviewed these design ideas and discovered four potential directions that could shape our final design solution: .

community platform, recommender system, curriculum design, and engagement incentive

Cultural Probe Booklet & Feedback (Photos) Received

STORYBOARD SPEED-DATING

In the next phase, we developed eight storyboards in the four potential directions identified in the previous stage: . We brought these storyboards to a speed-dating session with CoBHS faculties and students, where we provided them with colorful sticky notes to write down any comment, thought, or feedback they had regarding the ideas in the storyboards. Based on the feedback, we discovered the following key insights:

community platform, recommender system, curriculum design, and engagement incentive

According to our conversation with CoBHS students and teachers, the recommender system could address two issues. First, from the perspective of students, the system offers a platform for them to , and helps students to realize what they are good at, which not only gives students confidence, but also . Second, from the perspective of the folk school, the system helps the folk school to .

1. The recommender system uncover their peers’ hidden skills provides them with an opportunity to learn from peers find potential teachers and curriculum topics

Example Storyboard: Recommender System

2. Students value human interaction community platform communicating with community members physical communication get more community members involved transition from digital communication to physical interaction

In the speed dating session, a student mentioned that he liked the idea of because it allowed him to stay in touch with his friends even after graduation. Besides interaction with students, some students expressed their interests in . However, they are also concerned about how to reach out to community members, which our current design is lacking. Besides that, the interaction provided by the community platform is in the virtual world, our design needs to transform the virtual interaction into . In other words, how might we use the online community platform to attract community members attending the folk school. Therefore, our next step should focus more on the approaches to and promote the .

SERVICE BLUEPRINT

After receiving feedback from our speed-dating session, we narrowed down our design opportunities to the , where users can recommend and share with other people their skills and talents that might be suitable for folk school’s teaching. This system aims mainly at . We then developed a service blueprint to illustrate a typical path of engaging with our platform SPARK. The user journey can be divided into three phases: , , and .

community platform and recommender system exploring and connecting with potential teaching resources for the folk school skill sharingpublishing or joining experiential online coursesparticipating in offline courses

In the first phase, our platform can be interpreted as a skill sharing platform, which emphasizes the features of the . Each user has several “tags” that represent their skills. Users can customize their own or others’ tags, share their skills through posts, browse and like other users’ posts and tags.

recommender system develop an online experiential course establish a further connection

When users receive enough likes or comments on their posts and tags, they might be motivated to to share skills to more people. In the second stage, users can publish an experiential course, co-teach with others (in case the user doesn’t have much experience or time in developing a course) and invite users to participate in their course.

After the user receive positive feedback for the experiential course, they will be contacted by Randy and with the folk school, and they might be invited to teach offline courses.

Grilled sausage pizza Material

10" pie crust

High gluten flour 120g Low gluten flour 20g Milk powder 8g Whole egg mixture 20g

FINAL PROTOTYPE

Throughout the above research, it became clear that we are designing a supportive discussion and sharing platform to encourage community members to share their skills and discover their potential of teaching. Therefore, our mobile application contains three main pages: , and .

NearbyActivitiesProfile

Nearby

browse the various skillful people around them on a spatial scale confidence building, skill sharing, and formation of connections and interactions

In the Nearby page, users can . Each circle represents a tag of a user (left). For example, the CoBHS Pizza Genius is a tag of another user, who is good at baking pizza. The user could click on that tag to browse the profile of the person behind the tag (center). The user can also access the content of posts for the tag (right) by swiping the tab that represents the skill category like “Bakery”, and then interact with posts via emojis, likes and comments. The user can also create a new customized tag for that person if they happen to know a “hidden” skill of that person. This allows amongst community members.

Sheryl

Profile

There are two main tabs in the profile page, one is , where users can (left). By clicking on the “Edit tags and post“ button, users can delete the tags showing to others, add new ones, and customize their highlights after choosing the right category (center).

Tagsshowcase their skills, edit their skills and posts contents

Activity Host, Join and Invited

The other main tab is , which contains three categories: . The Join page displays previous, ongoing and incoming activities the user has joined. The Host page presents activities the user hosts. That leads to another feature of our platform: the user can not only join activities, but also

host their own activities, and co-host activities with other users

in case they don’t have much experience or time in teaching and planning a course. They can also invite others to participate in the activity. To browse invitations from others, the user can go to the Invited page to accept or deny invitations.

Activity

Browse and join nearby activities to trigger your sparks. Build Fun with Origami In 2 days 1:00-3:00 PM, Online

Baking

How to Bake a Chiffon Cake

+12 Let s do yoga together! Sports Health Yoga

7 days 1:00-3:00 PM, 5000 Forbes Ave

Activity

In the Activity page, the user can and its tags, time, location and number of participants (left). By swiping left of the activity, the can choose to join an ongoing online activity (center), sign up for an upcoming activity (right), or view activity details. For example, if the user is interested in origami, they can swipe left to sign up for this fun activity. Signed-up activities would appear under the Activity tab in the user’s profile page. The Activity page also helps Randy and Jess around the community.