Author: Calvin

Elizabeth

Date: 3/29/17

Type: Individual Interview

Location: In person

Team Participants: Conducted interview alone

User Characteristics:

-Attends Clay High School

-Caucasian

-Competitive dancer

-15 years old

-Only child

Memorable Quotes:

“I usually only go to the club if my Dad gets off work early so that he can take me…which is only about once a week.”

“I used to love going to the club when I was younger and not as involved with dancing, but now I devote a lot of my free time to dance.”

Top 3 Learnings:

1. The older the kids get, the less of a priority it is for them to go to the club.
2. Other aspects in teenagers lives take precedence over going to the club with a bunch of little kids.
3. Kids with extra curricular activities are less likely to attend the club.

Key Insight: Transportation to the club is still a struggle even when the child comes from a steady household with stable parents. The club needs to find a way to attract older kids to come more often and offer more non-academic resources.

 

Marcus

Date: 3/29/17

Type: Individual Interview

Location: In person

Team Participants: Conducted interview alone

User Characteristics:

-Attends St. Joseph High School

-Mexican

-16 years old

-Struggles with math

Memorable Quotes:

“I love going to the club. I try and go at least three times a week.”

“My friends and I usually carpool and switch off who drives to the club each day.”

Top 3 Learnings:

1. The kids realize as they get older that the club acts as a great resource if they’re having trouble in school.
2. Having access to a car on a daily basis is a significant contributor to their attendance at the club.
3. Creating strong relationships between the volunteers/employees and the kids is very important.

Key Insight: Connecting the kids with one another that attend the same school could greatly help the transportation issues that many kids have. They are able to carpool and not rely so heavily on their parents every night. Also, keeping a good balance between fun and school is key in keeping the older kids interested in going to the club.

Sophia

Date: 3/27/17

Type: Individual Interview

Location: In person

Team Participants: Conducted interview alone

User Characteristics:

-African American

-14 years old

-Oldest of seven siblings

-Loves to paint

-Attends Thomas A Edison Middle School

Memorable Quotes:

“Most days I can’t go to the club because I have to stay home and look after my little brothers and sisters.”

“I wish I could go to the club every day but my mom is too busy driving around my siblings to their activities to drop me off.”

Top 3 Learnings:

1. The Boys and Girls Club is not a top priority to busy parents.
2. Access and transportation to the club is a tremendous obstacle for many of the children.
3. The club needs to act as an “after school program” where parents can take all of their children of multiple ages at the same time.

Key Insight: The club needs to articulate its importance to the overall development of the children. This will entice parents to bring their children to the club on a daily basis. However, if there was some sort of transportation for children who cannot drive themselves, this would allow many children regular access to the club and not have to depend on their parents’ schedules.

This workaround is helping solve the problem of not having a vase for flowers in my friend’s room. Instead, she used two empty beer bottles filled with water to place them in there, while it also providing a fun alternative to a vase. It also utilizes the length of the stem that could topple over a smaller vase, a problem that the long neck bottle solves.

“High school kids that do not have consistent after-school commitments and/or supervision need a way to get to the Boys and Girls Club to engage in purposeful and fulfilling activities.”

 

What will you test and how?

 

• Test the idea of having school buses alter their route in order to accommodate for teens from the high school to the Boy’s and Girl’s Club. How we will test this is to get a map of the current school bus routes from the various high schools and see if there are routes in which the school bus could take and the costs associated with adding a stop.
• Test a small 3 on 3 basketball tournament to only one high school to be hosted by the boys and girls club and then depending on the success, open it up to the other high schools in the area.
• Prototype a Boys and Girls Club Ride app that has the current position of the vans or buses that would be used to pick up teens. They would have the app and see the position and the estimated time of arrival of the ride.
• Similar to the

 

We will begin testing at the O.C. Carmichael Center, the Boys and Girls Club Flagship site. First running through the teens currently at the program and then possibly promoting it through the various high schools and getting feedback face to face with the teens through renderings of the app and whether they would be interested in the tournament.

 

The plan would be to develop a rendering of the app, showing a view of the screens that would be shown in its very infant stages.
Also, the plan is to attain the routes of the buses in the area coming from the high schools and show the routes that could be done in order to accommodate every student the best.

1. Give me a safe place to go after school

Offer an environment that allows teens to have a safe place to go after school when they are usually unsupervised. Give parents peace of mind knowing that their child is tended to and safe when they are not around.

Teen 3:  “I get bored at home by myself, Boys and Girls Club allows me and my sister to have fun after school until our mom gets done”

2. Provide me with a way to get to the club

Provide a bus service or pick up with the local school buses that will drop off at the Boys and Girls Club after school. This would give children an effortless option and place to go after directly leaving school, verses walking or getting a ride with someone.

Teen 1: “I ride with Camille in the van from Adams but I know others that go to different high schools would go if they had a ride to the club”

Teen 2: “It would bring more kids to the club if the school bus dropped off at it every day”

3. Surround me with friends 

Promote the club so that teen attendance will grow exponentially as more kids join the club because their friends start going there.

Teen 1:”I wish more of my friends came here to play basketball after school”

Teen 2: “I might stop coming now that I’m older and non of my friends are here with me”

Teen 3: “I come just because some of the boys and my other friends come here after school”

4. Give me a place to do my homework and get help 

Hire tutors or volunteers that would be able to assist the teens with homework while also motivating them to excel in school. Having the right resources that the teen wouldn’t normally have at school or home at the club.

Teen 4:”I’m glad there are people here to help with school work sometimes when I need it”

Teen 2: “I don’t usually do homework after but I know if I need to there is always a computer I can jump on”

5. Give motivation to stay out of trouble 

Motivate the kids to the idea that being in a safe place, rather than out on the streets unattended, gives them a better chance to do well in school and not get caught up in bad situations.

Teen 1: “I don’t want to be home by myself”

Teen 3: “Some kids already do sketchy stuff after school and I don’t want to get caught up in that”

Cal Petersen interviewed Eric Petersen, President of the Waterloo, Iowa Boys and Girls Club from 2000-2005

Date: 3/5/17

Type: Phone interview

Team participants: conducted interview alone

 

User Characteristics: “influential expert”

President of Boys and Girls Club from 2000-2005

Male, age 56

What this person is about:

-Driven to make a difference in the community and give back to the city he is from and currently lives in

What is this person’s biggest point of pain?

-trying to do his best to help every kid possible, seeing kids in troubling situations

Memorable quote from interview: “unless you live down there, a parent
isn’t going to go out of their way to go downtown and bring their child there”

Top 3 Learnings:

1. Both parents and the kids choose the Boys and Girls Club to enhance personal well-being for themselves or their children
2. Having friends there is important to the kids, attendance goes up
   or down in multitudes
3. incorporating a meal for the attendees at the Boys and Girls Club enhanced attendance across all ages

Key Insight: 1. Roughly same number of teens attend the club regardless of location in the US, difference is how do you enhance the experience for those there. 2. Waterloo club charged $5 a year and provided transportation from grade school-high school to the club and provided a meal, also was open until 9 pm M-F and till 6 pm on Satur
ay. 3. Teenagers want “monitors” and not authority when they go to the club