Design Thinking 1
I learned a lot of what it meant to think like a designer in the first design thinking course, even though it's entirety was spent at home over zoom. I learned how to balance thinking creatively with practicality and affordability; different methods that went into the design process like white boarding and empathy maps; and got my first experience working on a design project with a group.
Design Thinking 1 Project
The main project for this class was creating a means of making sure everyone at Laurier felt included. This was especially tied to the concept of EDI (Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion). Our group started this project by surveying upper-year students and professors, asking them what they knew about EDI, what their experience with EDI at Laurier was like, and if they felt included at Laurier overall. One important thing I learned during this project was how to deal with fellow group members who aren't communicating with the rest of the group and therefore aren't shouldering their part of the workload. I learned how to take on the extra responsibility.
Project for Design Thinking 2
For this project, our team worked with the City of Brantford to Design the Indigenous People's Actions Court experience. Our goal was to cater to the needs of the indigenous individuals who attend court by creating an environment where they don't feel isolated or targeted, but rather make them feel like an equal by incorporating their traditions and life experiences. There is a great need for a local court for Indigenous persons. Despite making up only 2% of the population of Ontario, Indigenous people are severely overrepresented in the justice system. When it comes to indigenous individuals, courts should consider the offender's background and consider issues of abuse, addiction, and intergenerational trauma.
Project Scope
Target Users: Indigenous Individuals in Brantford and the Surrounding Area
In this project, we aimed to create a modern court that would be used to serve the City of Brantford, the County of Brant, and the Six Nations. This court would be created to address the problems of Aboriginal people who are charged and presented with penalties using the justice procedure that can provide opportunities and improve the community. The scoping process of this project was to build a prototype connecting to the users. We tried many times to connect to an indigenous individual but could not go through a testing process with these due to time constraints and email delays. As our team grew more familiar with these issues because of the amount of research and ideation we did, we began to understand the base of our plan for our project.
Project Tasks
Complete Research and Background Information
Create an Interview with the Client (We did have just one session with them, but not all questions were answered).
Gather a Persona and Journey Map
Illustrate More Ideas with the Group
Create a Prototype
Test the Prototype (We were not able to test, as mentioned)
My Role
Software-Visuzalization and Data Analysis
I assisted the team by giving insights and doing the tasks respectfully. I developed the prototype and gave knowledgeable about the visualization.
Limitations
Reasons our project didn't work out as our group would have liked:
Time constraints
Miscommunication with Client
Lack of Resources
Access to Users / Unable to Complete Usability Testing
Sensitive Subject (i.e. Indigenous Injustices)
Schedule Limitations
Ideal Testing Methods
Focus Group
Purpose of focus group: To learn what they think about our low-fidelity prototype of the modernized court room. Does will fit their expectations/needs? How will they interact with the room? How will they want the room to look like? How they want the room to be organized?
The Focus group would have been conducted online via Zoom so that participants are comfortable where they are. As a team, we value their input in our project and our goal was to remove any barriers their overall comfort.
A focus group would have been conducted to gain insight into our design of the modernized people court for the indigenous people. Our ideal outcome from this focus group was to assist us in analyzing our ideas and low-fidelity prototype to see if our user's needs and emotions were fulfilled. The Focus group would have consisted of one moderator, two observers, and 4-6 participants.
Naturalistic & Covert Observation
We decided on naturalistic and covert observation as a usability test method. The observation methods give a chance for our final users, Indigenous People, to interact with our product and give feedback. It would allow us to observe our users acting naturally with our product without any interventions.
The Naturalistic Observation would include participants interacting with the prototype after a quick summary of the prototype and the challenge and history.
The Covert Observation would include participants interacting with the prototype with no directions or knowledge of the prototype.
Persona
Justine
Based on our research, we created our persona: Justine.
Journey Map
Justine's Court Experience
The journey map was through the experience of an indigenous individual; since it was based on the persona.
Justine’s journey through the indigenous POA court experience is based on the information we have about the Ottawa POA court, as we are missing information about Brantford’s POA court specifically.
When Justine enters the courtroom for her hearing, she is met by the judge running her trial and an elder from the Six Nations of the Grand River indigenous community. Justine is allowed to speak freely about her experience of getting her speeding ticket. She gains confidence knowing that the elder is there to support her, knowing that they understand the point of view of her people. After Justine explains her situation, the elder explains that what she did was wrong, trying to help her imagine a situation where her kids might have been playing near or on the road, and someone had been speeding past them. Justine feels remorse for what she has done, realizing that speeding is dangerous. The judge reduces the intensity of the speeding ticket but still gives Justine a fine. All parties are left satisfied and go their separate ways. However, in hindsight, Justine still wishes for more representation of her people in the court.
Prototype
We wanted to design our prototype with accessibility in mind. In our interview with the client, they mentioned some issues with wheelchair accessibility at the current Brantford Provincial Offences court building. Though the new court space may not be its own building, we wanted to include a wheelchair ramp to display the importance of wheelchair accessibility when creating this space. Our prototype also has an “accessibility centre”, which is left of the entrance. In this area, there is a space where individuals with hearing impairments can pick up over-ear headphones, which will be connected to microphones in the trial area, so that these individuals can tune the volume of the speakers’ voices to be more audible. There will also be access to an American sign language interpreter for these individuals if that is what they prefer. The headphones could also be connected to a translator so that individuals in need can hear the trial in a different language. In this area, there will also be access to a range of holy items (i.e., the Eagle Feather, the Bible, or the Koran) which individuals from different people groups can use when swearing an oath or affirming the truth. This area will also include relevant objects for ceremonies such as smudging (an HVAC system would need to be implemented as well). Finally, this area will have a screen mounted on the wall displaying queuing information as well as information on the uniqueness of the court. For the design of the actual court area itself, we have the desks arranged in the centre of the space in what is called a healing circle. In this area, we have provided desks for the accused individuals, elders, and the justice of the peace. The desks are arranged in a circle so to promote healing, rather than punishment for the accused. None of the desks are raised, to promote a sense of collaboration and community. In this space we hope to have the three parties of the accused, the elders, and the justice of the peace working together to create a healing plan for the accused. In the back left corner of the space, we have an evidence-viewing area. Here, there is a monitor for viewing the evidence. There will be described video available for those with visual impairments. Here, there will also be a strong Wi-Fi router to ensure the trial goes as smoothly as possible. The client mentioned that there were internet connection issues in the current building due to the structure of the building itself. Finally, as a group we think making a welcoming space for the users is very important, so we put a lot of effort into making sure the cosmetics of the court space reflect that. We were unable to display that in our prototype due to the limitations that Tinkercad provides (Tinkercad is the program we used to create our prototype). Therefore, I’ll just explain what we hope to have in this space in terms of cosmetics. In the centre of the healing circle, we hope to have a carpet in the shape of the medicine wheel. The medicine wheel is a symbol of healing and is something that the indigenous people’s court in Thunder Bay also has incorporated in their court space. We have also included space on the walls for local indigenous artists to display their art as well as space for artifacts that are important to the local indigenous peoples. We designed this space to have wood finishes all over as well to invoke a sense of welcoming and provide a less sterile environment overall.