Visioning | Facilitation | Experience Strategy | Change Management

Role: co-facilitation, ethnographic research, experience strategy, graphics

Each year Gensler employees participate in a pro-bono partnership with City Year, an education non-profit organization that partners with public schools around the U.S. As one of the Experience & Strategy team leads for the Gensler team, I helped lead the visioning, experience strategy, and change management components for a media lab space we designed for P.S. 96M, an elementary and middle school with 270 students in East Harlem. The project involved facilitating workshops with both students and City Year corps members (young adults embedded within in the school), synthesizing information learned, enhancing the experience by working with City Year to implement a media program, planning a Reveal Day event, and developing guide materials on how to use the space.

Visioning

Two vision sessions were held to envision the future of the media lab space, one with the City Year corps members and one with the students. The corps member session involved using a journey mapping exercise to understand a typical day in the life of a corps member, as well as a card exercise to understand the culture of P.S. 96M. For the student session, we used an exercise that involved the students designing and creating their own type of technology based on prompts we had developed. They then presented their inventions and were filmed in an Instagram or YouTube frame. This exercise gave us insight into the way the students work together, what they are interested in, and what they value.

Key Takeaways

1. Variety in Classroom Settings - Physically changing the room helps the students focus.

2. Student Interests - Students are tech-saavy (coding, video production, social media), have a strong interest in the arts, and are confident and comfortable presenting.

3. Collaboration - Students value mentorship and cross-grade interaction.

4. PS.96M Culture + Identity - P.S. 96M brands itself as a STEAM school, incorporating both technology and the arts.

Design

Change Management

To help acquaint students, corps members, and teachers with the Pixel Lab, we developed a media program to be implemented as an after school offering within the existing City Year after school program. The Pixel Playbook was developed to describe how to use all of the technology, how to develop content for a story, and how to film and produce a story.

Reveal Day Experience

To host an engaging reveal day experience for the new media lab space, we created a variety of stations within the room. The event consisted of a green screen photo booth, a live Instagram feed linked to a still photo booth, and a scavenger hunt to find lion decals (the school’s mascot) we had hidden throughout the space.