Identify and Interview an Energy Poverty Expert
Identify and interview someone with firsthand experience dealing with energy poverty. Some possible starters are immigrants, charity organizations that service these areas (Doctors w/o Borders, dental care, education groups, mission work, etc.), video conferencing with someone overseas, someone they may know personally such as another student or family friend, etc. Option for instructor to identify and invite a guest speaker to speak about their experience with energy poverty issues and to be interviewed by the class.
Resources
Interview Questions PPT (Teacher Resource)
Questions Guide Worksheet (Student Resource)
The design challenge for this project involves empathizing with a user that has energy poverty experience and developing some energy generating device to help the user overcome some challenge that they face in their circumstance.
If you would prefer to use research-based clients there are numerous videos and stories available on the internet for students to identify and create their own virtual user.
Students define the client and create an audience question guide and assign interview responsibilities.
1. Group exercise
Building on their experience from the Design Thinking Primer students will develop interview questions, then synthesize the user responses in to an empathy map.
Students individually define questions for the user, then summarize their questions as a group
Part A
Teacher reminds students about interviewing guideline by showing slides on Interview Questions to prepare students to think about interview questions. Students write interview questions individually on post-it note paper, one question per post-it note. Teacher should monitor students to make sure all students have at least 3 to 4 questions that can be shared with their group.
Part B
Teacher shows slide on Summarizing a Question Guide and directs student groups to summarize their questions on the Questions Guide Worksheet.
Suggested homework
The teacher will need to decide if they want students to do interviews in class and/or as a homework assignment. Because the audience for this problem is the general public and some of the users/clients may not be part of the class** it is suggested that some of the interviews be done as homework.
**Student safety procedures should be reviewed regarding any interactions with persons from outside of the school environment (no solo interviews, bring a trusted adult chaperone if possible, choosing an appropriate, public location, making sure parents/guardians know your schedule, etc.). Developing these student safety rules as a class makes a great 15-20 minute class brainstorm/discussion where each class compiles a list of safety rules and then the following day all class lists are compared and refined into a single, shared document.
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2. Interview user/client and/or develop user profile using other user-centered activities
Resource: Developing User Profiles