ABAMATH
Design Strategy
Project Overview
Abamath is a youth robotics and coding camp that works to show youth that coding and STEM careers can be for people of many backgrounds and abilities.
Abamath decided to expand their programming and wanted to reach and attract more students. Additionally, Abamath was not engaging a lot of girls or students of color, and wanted to change this to better fulfill their mission.
Methods: Deep Dive, Affinity Diagraming, Rapid Prototyping, Stakeholder Interview
Tools: Keynote and Microsoft Word
Deliverables: Design Strategy and Timeline.
Review - interviews, and diving deep
The design team began this project by interviewing the founder of Abamath, from this interview we were able to get a greater sense of his goals and what he wanted to accomplish. We also learned a lot about what he had already tried, and what he didn't want to do.
In an effort to learn more about what exists for kids in the coding space, each member of our team did a deep dive. I did this through reviews of Abamaths social media, and website, as well as reviews of direct and indirect competitors.
From this I was able to determine:
Gaps in offerings and potential areas for improvement
Themes and norms for the industry
What was being done well at Abamath
Rapid Prototyping - the narrow down
After compiling our deep dive learnings and reviewing notes from the interview we prioritized potential strategy objectives and brainstormed ways to tackle each of the objectives.
This was extremely helpful but also left us with a lot of options. We knew we had to narrow things down, but didn't necessarily know which direction to go.
Rather than focusing on narrowing our scope at that moment, we focused on rapid prototyping. Prototyping parts of the experience allowed us to envision how certain strategies may fare. This gave us a greater sense of direction.
A critique from other UX professionals also helped shape our strategy.
Strategy - partnering by design
Our final design strategy for Abamath - Partner. A strategy that didn't resemble what one might expect for design strategy. However the way in which Abamath partners has direct effect not only on who Abamath users are, but how those users experience Abamath.
We believed by partnering with a Minneapolis or St. Paul youth organization to host meet-ups and coding events in the summer. Abamath could achieve the following:
Create a way for Abamath to extend their reach beyond the metro suburbs and potentially connect with more kids of different backgrounds.
Create an opportunity for a youth organization to host a coding event and expose participants to code or more coding.
Create an opportunity for more kids to learn about coding, and create an environment for them to PARTNER and connect with other kids while doing it.
Create an environment where parents can PARTNER, and connect with parents around the competition and coding.
Create an environment where alumni can engage and PARTNER with other students.
Next Steps - the timeline.
Due to scheduling conflicts we were not able to meet with our client, so we provided the client with a video presentation.
Additionally, I created a timeline to showcase how Abamath could move forward with the stragetgy.