Imagine New York City Schools is an initiative to empower students and communities to play an active, central role in creating the future of education. This initiative is the first of its kind in New York City – a student-centered, community-driven approach to creating bold, innovative, academically rigorous school options.
The existing K12 education system was designed by professional educators, while the students' voice and needs were largely overlooked. It was insufficient in preparing students for future challenges, therefore causing inequity in education. The New York City Department of Education sought out a design team to propose ideas for new schools as a way of prioritizing equity and inclusion.
Please note that all imagery is zoomed out and low resolution to protect the privacy of this project.
First, we preformed desk research to understand the scope of the project by mapping out the context, stakeholders, and the ecosystem. We found that several organization were already taking on similar approaches in the realm of education that address a range of problems. We learned that localized and specific approaches were needed in the extremely diverse context of New York City.
We conducted stakeholder interviews with the Department of Education staff, current students and educators to hear their thoughts. We found that there is a gap between marginalized communities whose kids go to schools and city officials who sit in the office and make the decisions. Now, the NYC Department of Education wants to hear the youth voice and in-turn, design a new public school system with them.
In the process of prototyping an Equity Checklist and Learner Goals Activity, we recruited students and conducted user tests to measure how our prototypes work. We invited current students and recent graduates to our study, talked to them, and guided them through our first drafts of both prototypes, and observed their reactions. After the session, we found that the majority of youth did not understand the content, which was based on information from professional educators.
The Learner Goals Activity ended up being most successful, where the design was meant to generate content through rapid ideation, and spend time exploring possibilities. It aims for participants to compare their learner goals with educators' ones, identify alignments, and conflicts.
Co-Designers: Daphne Luo, Jenny Lin, Kehan Zhang, Mickey Ferrara, Neil Jia, Ruike Pan, Zahra Bukhari.