Design Criteria for Clay High School
Design Goals
- We have multiple users in this situation, with both the parent and student perspective. We view the student as the customer in this situation.
- Students want to get a number of different things out of their high school experience, but every student is unique in their needs
- Certain basic functional needs must be met for students, such as having bathroom doors on the bathroom stalls, and feeling safe from fights and harassment. We will present guiding principles through the lens of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to reflect how some of these basic needs are currently unmet, preventing students from taking full advantage of their opportunities.
- The design needs to provide a result that does not mislead students, but rather helps to make Clay the best school possible, and to accurately portray all that Clay High School can offer to potential students.
User Perceptions
- There are aesthetic attributes necessary to succeed with the target customer. Clay High School needs to fix the bathroom stalls that do not have doors and they need to create a more vibrant, welcoming environments in the school.
- The Clay High School reputation needs to be improved. Clay is often perceived to be solely the Fine Arts school that does not focus as much on academics, despite them having numerous AP offerings and strong standardized test scores.
- Clay is perceived to be an unsafe school, and reports in the media suggest that fights are common.
- One perception we have discovered when talking to students is the “gay Clay” perspective. This seems to both help and harm the school at times as some students want acceptance for everyone and others are put off by the image.
Problems/Needs/Opportunities
- Our target users, high school students and their parents, have many needs with regard to their high school.
- Students may want to be challenged, want to grow, want to feel safe and comfortable, and want to prepare themselves for the future. Parents likely want their students to be happy, safe, and academically challenged.
- Current pain points with regard to selecting high schools might be informational voids, conflicting opinions from parents, negative press about certain schools, negative experiences in their current school, and negative interactions with staff or faculty.
- With the emergence of social media and online information about schools, parents might have a difficult time choosing a specific school for their child. Sometimes, too much information can lead to inaction and frustration.
- As more students explore the options of private schools, public schools as a whole are having a difficult time attracting and retaining kids, especially when they have a negative reputation due to fights, thug culture, or a lack of resources in the classroom.
Functional Attributes
- Every student that goes to high school will have a unique experience. In this sense, there will be a unique user case for each individual student.
- The primary issue relating to compatibility is the way in which a student fits into a certain school. One student might thrive in a large, busy school, while another might prefer a smaller, more personalized experience. This has to do with Clay in their ability to market themselves as a school that appeals to a large audience, rather than simply a niche group of students interested in the arts.
- Essentially, Clay will likely be appealing to a few primary groups of students
- Students who attend Clay because it is close to their home
- Students who attend Clay because of recommendations by friends or siblings
- Students who attend Clay because of its magnet program and commitment to the arts
- Students who attend Clay for reasons other than the three above (lack of uniforms, sports, CTE courses, etc.)
- Clay can either focus on improving the experience for students in these existing groups, or create a “new group” by finding a way to draw in students. This could include new program offerings or courses, but most likely it will just involve marketing certain elements of the school more effectively. It seems like the AP program could be a good candidate for this.
Constraints
- We could face constraints from the South Bend Public School district. There could be certain marketing tools or proposed changes that are not allowed by the district.
- Clay High School has budgetary issues to deal with and it does not seem that our solutions can be very costly.
- Change often takes a lot of time, and implementing it within the semester might be challenging.
- Principal Eid and the rest of the staff might not agree with our conclusions relating to the issues facing the school.
- We don’t necessarily fully understand the dynamics of the school, and although we have strong research and data from interviews and surveys, it is hard to fully grasp the complex challenges of a school in just a few weeks of working with them.