SOAR workshop
Planning for potential resistance
When a new education non-profit needed help planning how to approach the communities they want to work with, SOAR turned to the Institute of Design to help them get actionable about where to start and get ahead of potential problems
Workshop focus
SOAR is at the beginning of developing its services, and they recognize that they will be working with communities that their founders are not members of. SOAR wants to make sure it understands the communities they plan to work with and approaches the communities in a culturally sensitive way in order to customize their approach.
SOAR, test prep for all
SOAR is a new non-profit that aims to provide free one-on-one college test prep tutoring to underserved high school students. SOAR plans to pilot its tutoring services with students on the south and west sides of Chicago. Since the founders of SOAR are from the northern Chicago suburbs, they were aware of the potential resistance they may face when approaching these communities.
Process
My team took SOAR’s founder and ID student participants through an exploration process with divergent and convergent phases. We decided to tackle the potential problems head on with a Triz activity where you first ideate problems by coming up with ways to make the situation worse. Then with all the problems and anxieties on paper, we reverse the language and ideate potential solutions for the problems.
Prototyping
Once we explored potential solutions for the problems, we had our teams develop their ideas further by prototyping their potential solutions. We provided the teams a range of materials to work with, and we ended up with three valuable conversation pieces. The one pictured above is essentially a 3-dimensional storyboard of how to learn from other community partners over coffee, build trust with students, and engage the broader community through events.