Introduction
The Center for Creative Change (C3) periodically puts on an
ÒOpen HouseÓ. The Open House is a
2-hour presentation to prospective graduate students, to both answer their
questions and to excite them about the opportunity that C3 provides. While the current Open House is
adequate there is a sense that it is could be better.
Toward this goal, the clients have engaged the design team to facilitate the development of ideas that will reinvigorate the Open House presentation. As clients, Wendy Olsen and Farouk Seif represent C3 and Antioch. Design Team2 is comprised of John Bell, Scott Traynor and Michael Beaton. The team met twice with the Wendy Olsen and once with Farouk. The clients and the design team used collaboration and lively discussion to develop design goals, criteria and constraints. The design team used these goals, criteria and constraints to develop the following proposal.
Design Process
The design team worked to identify characteristics of the current Open House through conversations with the clients about the Open House, the design teamÕs own student experience and focus groups that had been conducted in a previous quarter. Elements of the existing Open House and of the Antioch experience were taken as examples from which specific qualities could be discerned. These specific qualities were goals, criteria and constraints that the design team explored during the design process. The design team entered the collaborative process with an experiential, ethnographic approach.
Designer-Client Conversations
During our conversations we explored the open house as it
currently is presented as a basis for inquiring into the intent and purpose of
the Open House. Two overall design elements, that inform our entire project,
were derived. These are information and excitement.
Information
The open house should provide information. The primary way
this would be done is to anticipate questions and attempt to develop design
elements that best supported that purpose. Another aspect of providing
information that is often overlooked is to help participants develop and
articulate new questions they may not have known to ask. In many cases it will not be possible
to answer all the questions for each student in the 2 hours available for the
Open House. It is important to
provide direction on how to get answers to those questions.
Excitement
An important goal of the open house is to general excitement
for the participants. The potential students should be excited about Antioch
and the opportunity to enroll. Further, the faculty and staff should be excited
by the chance to do something worthwhile during the open house presentation.
Constraints
The design team identified several constraints
á Time
– The open house happens on a single day, in the same week as other
presentations. There must be some activity for the 2 hours scheduled.
Activities before and after are possible.
á Place – The open house happens at Antioch, in room 100. Some open house presentations use breakout rooms.
á Budget
– There is not unlimited funds.
There are funds available for Ôone timeÕ expenses. There are additional C3 specific funds
available, as well as the budget provided by the University itself.
Criteria
á The presentation must feature C3 as a whole as well as provide information about the specific degree and certificate programs available.
á Service as marketing
á Concise
á Linking / framework / themes
á The open house should give the participants an idea of what they would experience as a student.
Desired Outcome
From conversations with the clients, the implied purpose of the Open House is to present enough information so attendees are able to
á get
their questions answered, or have the resources to do so.
á decide
if Antioch is the school for them
á filter
out those for whom Antioch would not be a good fit.
á ÒPresent the C3 program for what it isÓ
á The
overall event is a marketing event – this needs to be kept in mind
– the desired outcome is excitement in the attendees so the right people
are motivated to apply.
Design Elements
We developed several elements, three of which we will
particularly highlight, and several which we have included in this proposal.
These design elements have been used to develop a proposed agenda for a dynamic
open house that creatively fulfills the requirements articulated by the client.
Further iterative dialogue would provide the finishing touches to the proposal.
Room Use – Program Dividers and Breakout Rooms
In order to address the constraint of time and the quantity
of information that needs to be presented we suggest reorganizing the
presentation into three separate rooms. The intent of this is to allow the Òmain stageÓ to
present the most critical information while offloading other information to
other rooms. This addresses
the issues of presenting the most interesting and essential information,
supporting the goal of maintaining audience interest, while still having all
the information available and allowing us a more effective use of the
time.
-
Break
the presentation into 3 main spaces/rooms
o
Maximize
information presentation in the time frame allowed
o
Creating
multiple places for participants to move – allowing choice in how to get
information and questions answered
o
Offload
less essential information from the main presentation to maximize the
effectiveness of the time for the essential information.
¤
Do
more with less time
¤
Allow
for different approaches to communicating the information. I.e. not just lecture or passive
participation
-
Main
Room
o
Main
presentation.
o
Incorporate
wall posters – or hang from ceiling in space.
¤
To
help bracket the room. Create a
more intimate space
¤
Surround
the screen with the program information.
See Below.
o
Program
Tables
¤
Arrange
the tables that facilitates ease of movement around the information
á
Allow
for 3-4 staff to comfortably be in each program location.
á
Staff
the program table with a Faculty member, student, Alumni, and possibly someone
representing the work community.
o
This
supports the idea of having information and resources available to address the
student at each stage.
I.e.: Pre Student
Life as a student
Post Graduate Work.
¤
Add
a back panel at each program desk
á
Like
a cubical divider panel.
á
Creates
a defined space for the program.
Creates a different space than simply a desk.
á
A
place to present art and other information unique to the program
á
Lighting
on each panel.
o
Highlight
the program information
o
To
make the space more inviting than the ambient fluorescent room lighting.
o
Add
a concierge person to handle the logistics of scheduling appointments
¤
Wendy
indicated that sometimes she gets too involved in logistical details when she
should be circulating throughout the room making sure each attendee is getting
their needs met.
¤
This
also supports the notion of providing attendees students with a next step while
they are in the room.
- Media Break Out room
o
Create
a looping power point presentation
o
Possibly
a looping movie.
The
idea being to have a place where interesting information is being presented in
a multimedia forum where participants can come and go at leisure. Content of this presentation could
include faculty interviews, a deeper history of the university, perhaps in
depth interviews with employers and clients of Antioch graduates.
-
Experiential
Room
o
Place
where participants can experience Antioch as a student
¤
Interactive
¤
Sample
of a class or lecture (each less than 15mintues
¤
Life
as a Student
¤
Case
Study Presentation
¤
Change
Project Presentation
¤
Allowing
for easy in and out movement.
The overall idea behind these three rooms is to have a layout and relationship between the rooms that are compelling/inviting to for participants to want to visit. It should be easy to move in and out of these various rooms. This means that participants should feel comfortable entering or leaving these rooms at various intervals that allow for their participation in other activities. One way to facilitate this would be to have the looping media be short enough that there are opportunities to join or leave. Other activities in the experiential room should have structural breaks such that one would not feel rude entering or leaving at some frequent interval.
Presentation – PowerPoint and Video
In the existing open house, most of the content that fills
out the structure is fluid. The static content is comprised of a PowerPoint
presentation and a video. Therefore, these are the point when the most
consistent information is provided. Any changes to the open house must preserve
this function or find another method to provide consistent information.
During our meetings with the client, we identified that the
PowerPoint presentation currently contains a very important element. The video
interview with an employer is an element to which many participants pay close
attention. Any changes to the open house must preserve this element or devise
another method for developing the same combination of excitement about
possibilities and information about life after graduation from an Antioch
program.
The team identified several overlaps in content in the
PowerPoint and video. There was video in the PowerPoint, even though there was
already a video component to the presentation. The PowerPoint presentation also
included elements that were repeated in other parts of the overall program,
such as quotes from students. Furthermore, the quotes from students in the
PowerPoint are flashed on the screen and the audience is left to read them
individually, which is less exciting and engaging than other opportunities for
communicating with current students.
The design team approached the PowerPoint presentation with
special care. As a group we are especially sensitive to the way that such
presentations are often misused as a primary focus instead of being an aid to
the presenter. Our groupÕs observations of the status quo open house included
points where the participants were asked to read the slides themselves, where
the presenter merely read the slide aloud and where the slides did not appear
to fulfill the intention of providing information and generating excitement
about Antioch. Each slide was examined for intent. This intent was then used to
evaluate if the slide fulfilled the purpose it was created.
The design team determined that the presentation could be
both shorter and richer in content.
One of the elements that we have enhanced overall in the
dynamic open house proposal is the collateral information provided. Some of
this will be described in the next section, but we determined that the place
for information about the overall structure of C3, and the framework for the
course schedule is in the PowerPoint presentation. We want to highlight the
section of the presentation on which we focused the most.
The design team and clients together recognized that there
were a number of topics of overall C3 design that were not being communicated
as well as they could be. In our meetings, we determined that very little was
being said about the case study, change project and thesis. Further, the
relationship between then classes was not being shown. The design team took the
class schedule slides as a primary place where re-design could help with the
overall goals of the open house.
We developed a new, more dynamic, way to display the 2-year
program that highlights the themes of the quarters:
The new design also displays links between the classes and the primary projects of the degree, such as linking RP1 to the case study and connecting the classes that are components of the 1st certificate:
The video interview with an employer consistently draws the
attention of the participants. In our conversation, we were able to abstract
from this specific instance the need to highlight what graduates of the
CenterÕs programs do after graduating. In the previous design element we paid
particular attention to increasing the chance for participants to interact with
alumni, employers and RP2 host site representatives. We further support this by
including alumni at each degree table.
Graphics – Large Scale and Flyers
During our conversation with
the client we have also identified that there are
important elements to the whole student career that are not well represented.
There is a framework of relationships between the classes that is not well
expressed by the current materials. These interconnections are an important
element of information that can be provided, but is not currently well
represented. Further, a well-developed and concise presentation of the
framework for the student experience is likely to increase participant
excitement for the program as a whole. In focus groups, the interdisciplinary,
collaborative nature of the program is often mentioned as important for current
students. Further, presenting the whole, instead of just components, in the
presentation will model a primary element of the Antioch experience: Wholism.
The client also stated that there have been times with
participants would want to see the Power Point Presentation again for more
details. This process is very time
consuming and requires a staff member to focus a large amount of time to one
participant. We suggest one new
design and a redesign of existing visual aids.
The new design would be a wall mounted poster listing the
quarters and classes needed for completion for the C3 Program. This poster should be large enough to
see from any where in the room. It
would act as a visual aid when explaining each phase of curriculum, including
the classes, case study, change project, Thesis, Certificates, Caucus,
Reflective Practicum and the themes for each quarter. This would allow multiple people to view the poster at the
same time and free up one staff member.
Our next suggestion is to improve the flyers that we
currently have and redesign them.
Our team identified several improvements that were identified in
conversations with our client. We
would suggest the following flyers (see appendix for examples):
- Center for Creative Change
- Whole Systems Design
- Management
- Environment and Community
- Organizational Psychology
- Graduate Certificates
- History of Antioch
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Case Study & Change Project
The C3, WSD, GMP, ENC, and OPP would all have the same
information about the first year of classes including RP1, Caucus and the Core
Courses. They would also list the
requirements for the Case Study and the themes for each quarter.
The rest of the flyer will list program specific information
including sample of classes that are required. They will have information related to alumni and where you
might go after completing this program.
The Graduate Certificate Flyer will have information related
to these programs, including alumni and what benefits you might gain by having
these certificates
Our client specifically talked about the lack of information
they have about the history of Antioch.
The history is rich and very worthy to share with the participants. This flyer should address that information
the client would like to share.
While each program could include an FAQ tailored to fit
their flyer, we feel that there are common questions being asked across the
programs. This flyer should
address those FAQ as well as information about the school. This flyer should/could go hand in hand
with the C3 flyer. Information
tailored to fit the entire C3 program.
One of the main topics not discussed in detail is the Case Study and Change Project. In our conversations with the client, we also determined that little emphasis is placed on the case study and the change project during the entire open house. These are important elements of information, and likely to be the catalyst for excitement from the participants about the program as a whole. in focus groups, the practical component is one element than many current students cite as important in their decision to attend the university.
