Youth (middle and high school students) often want to create an impact on their community but find it difficult to do so. They struggle to connect with other youth, lose motivation to create change in their community, or don't feel confident that what they're doing has an impact. During the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, participation in community-centric programs hosted by the YMCA was really low.

I worked collaboratively with my team on the research and concept development stages (i.e. leading a section of each interview, writing sections of the insight report, sketching out and talking through ideas on a chalkboard together). At the wireframing stage onwards, I took ownership over the networking and project pages, providing feedback to other pages in team critique sessions. I also took the lead on branding by designing the logo.

Transforming youth into more confident and community-centered changemakers is a massive feat—through desk research (articles and internet sources) we acquainted ourselves with the problem space to break down the problem into something more tackle-able. Personally, I define a problem as "small enough" when I find it easy to brainstorm comprehensive solutions.

We used this breakdown to narrow down questions to focus on in future research:
• How can we make students feel like it's their program, give them initiative and a sense of ownership?
• How can we connect peers with similar interests?
• How can we connect the interests of youth to tangible community programs/organizations?
• How can we increase access to transportation/resources for youth to continue participating in programs?

We wanted to hear from those involved, but connecting with youth involved in changemaking programs such as those hosted by the YMCA proved to be difficult due to waivers, parental consent, and struggles with recruitment. We problem-solved by shifting our focus to the next-best group: the adults who interact with the youth in the environment in which youth are thinking about creating change. We chose these mentors because they were were likely to have insight into the students' thoughts.

We interviewed staff at 6 YMCA locations (to get a more inclusive sample from a variety of demographics) throughout the US who engage in youth programming.

Some example questions from the interview include:
• What are the primary goals of people who go to the YMCA?
• What areas do students tend to gravitate towards?
• Are there any reasons you’ve identified for why students may discontinue participating in programs?

We modeled our research into personas to consider the goals and motivations of different types of users so that our ideation could be guided by these themes. Visualizing our qualitative data as real people also helped us understand the nuances of a potential user's circumstances.

The problem statement was still pretty broad at this point, so we used our analysis of our research and modeling of our findings to rewrite our problem into three new how-can-we statements to guide our ideation and design process.

In order to not limit ourselves, we began by brainstorming a variety of possible solutions that can address our design goals. Here are some we came up with:

We decided to create a mobile app because the target audience, youth, use their phones a lot. A digital platform can mitigate potential COVID-19 threats, which was often brought up in interviews as having a major impact on participation in programs, making the solution more accessible to interested youth. A digital platform can also accommodate a combination of our ideated solutions (profile matching. digital feedback, and newsletters).

Understanding design trends through comparisons — Before beginning to build a prototype, we took a step back to familiarize ourselves with our problem space in the context of a digital platform. I looked at other social media apps to identify what elements might be beneficial or detrimental to our own app. Using other apps as a basis also helped us keep certain features and elements similar to commonly used social media apps, ensuring familiarity between our users and our app. Specific search filters, cards, the ability to bookmark and other elements stood out during this process.

Thinking about purpose after the analysis — We considered the idea of stories (i.e. from Instagram) in contrast to posts as an alternative way to share updates. This sparked discussion around the purpose of sharing updates in our problem space related to creating change:
• Do we want to encourage long-lasting change through permanent updates or constant change through temporary updates?
• Is the purpose of sharing accomplishments only to motivate?

Analyzing the intents in other apps prompted me to think more about our own purpose and intents with our solution.

My purpose in using wireframes was also to get feedback from our users about the concept and if it accomplishes our design goals through testing. The visual representation and high content and breadth fidelity help our users gain a deeper understanding of what the app does, and the low visual fidelity invites more critique.
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For wireframing, I took ownership over the project and networking pages and assisted with others.

I tested our wireframes as a low-fidelity prototype with youth currently involved with YMCA programs through Zoom. Some of the changes we implemented based on their feedback include:
• Aligning project categories with primary youth interests
• Enabling youth to find organizations and peers based on distance
• Eliminating newsletters because newsletters and posts have the same function

Some suggestions sparked discussion but weren't implemented because they didn't align with current behavior among users or our design goals identified based on our research. For example, group chats for project groups weren't implemented because we justified that youth engage more through chatting in more common messaging apps. On the other hand, enabling youth to find organizations and peers based on distance was implemented because it directly relates to our design goal of facilitating connection and increasing access to mentorship.

The contrasting, bold colors give a sense of impact and urgency, which aligns with the type of change we want youth to create: impactful. More particularly, our visual design choices align with our design goals:

I explored multiple versions of each page, so here are a couple of examples of some of those explorations and what I prioritize when deciding on which visual design to move forward with.

We received a lot of positive comments from our youth users. Some notable ones include how Wave combats performative activism on social media by providing a platform for real change, and also how the app provides easier access for younger students since it's difficult to find such opportunities for them.

To assess the success of our app over a longer period of time, we identified two main measurements that could give us insight into how well we accomplished our design goals.

In addition to presenting our work to the YMCA through check-ins (about research, the initial prototype, etc) and a pitch at an expo about the final product, I helped create an implementation guide to ensure YMCA could continue our work through a seamless transition. The document includes guidance around future user testing, app development, marketing, and all the people required to continue Wave after handoff.

I included my thoughts throughout the case study. Here's a reminder: