Enabling all Bronx residents to
navigate the digital world
My Role
Team Member
Designer
Facilitator
The Team
Arpit Ranka
Katelynn Browne
Sophie Xu
Shrisha Patil
My Key Contributions
Secondary Research
Primary Research
Workshop Facilitation
Ideation
Co-designing
Prototyping
Design Critiques
Presentation
Tools Used
Mural
Miro
Figma
Adobe XD
Zoom
Google Suite
Duration
Oct '20 to April '21
Desktop View ONLY. Please revisit on your computer/laptop.
Process
Research
Secondary Research
Active Listening
User Interviews
Consolidation
Affinity Diagrams
Personas
Ideation
Co-Designing
Crazy 8's
User Scenarios
Storyboards
Prototyping
Design Critique
Expert Feedback
Lo-Fi Prototypes
Introduction
NYC’s digital divide – 500 K household have no internet access – had become salient with schools closing in March 2020. One of the immediate effects of COVID-19 was to uncover and potentially widen the digital divide in low-income communities such as the South Bronx. Over 150k NYC children live in households without internet and nearly 80,000 school-aged children live in households with Internet access but may lack a device from which they can learn.
Inspired by such data, we wanted to explore :
How might we bring technological equity to the Bronx?
This project has an impact beyond the pandemic. If COVID-19 has highlighted the needs of youth in the Bronx and made its consequences visible, the needs for technological equity goes beyond. It has shown that the impact of the digital divide in Bronx has been detrimental to the livelihood of many children and adults in the community.
In Fall ’20, Design for America of NYU, (a student organization, where we use human-centered design to tackle social issues and create social impact in our communities) in collaboration with DreamYard (an organization which since 1994 “collaborates with Bronx youth, families and schools to build pathways to equity and opportunity through the arts) began addressing this. In order to design “with” rather than “for” the community, and with the desire to share our passion for human-centered design, the team was composed of 4 DFA NYU students and 3 youth members (schoolkids) from DreamYard.
Definition
The National Digital Inclusion Alliance defines Digital Equity as :
The condition in which all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in our society, democracy and economy.
Research
4 of us NYU DFA students started with analyzing the situation, researching and identifying major causes of such a digital divide. The findings we found were surprising , most, if not all of it. We employed 3 methods for research :
1. Secondary Research
We started our research by perusing the internet and reputed publications for any information around
- Tech Equity in NYC
- History, economy of the Bronx
- Ethnographic distribution of the Bronx
- Govt. action responding to remote education due to pandemic
- Impact of the pandemic
- Literacy levels across ages in the Bronx
2. Active Listening
Our team started attending weekly Bronx Tech Coalition zoom meetings where people from different organizations concerned with Bronx’s transition to remote learning discussed issues they were facing.
These conversations were great sources of knowing the actual issues faced at the grassroots. We were also able to have informal conversations about the same with the people raising them after the call.
3. Interviews
We interviewed a tele-health doctor , digital stewards (IT support) and a school-kid from the Bronx to get to know the issue of tech equity from their eyes. Majority of our questions surrounded how their life/work changed after the pandemic hit , among other ones.
Consolidating Findings
Implementing the above 3 methods generated a flood of findings and insights. We affinity mapped them to uncover connections amongst the issues.
1. Affordability stands as a barrier
- The Bronx is the borough with the highest percentage of residents without home broadband, at almost 38%, which is greater than 250,000 households.
Possible Solution : The Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) Program was created by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to help households struggling to pay for internet service during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Bronx also has the lowest broadband adoption rates of any borough and the disparities are even more pronounced at the neighborhood level.
Possible Solution : Scaling local mesh networks like the Hunts Point Community Network. Beyond creating internet access, creating a community network builds power among local residents and communities to become their own tech visionaries and problem solvers. For example, the Hunts Point’s digital stewards build and maintain technologies, demystify technology for their friends and neighbors, and facilitate a healthy integration of technology into people’s lives. (We also intervewed them for this project.)
2. Misaligned help
About 26% of Bronxites don’t have a computer at home
Possible Solution : The NYCDOE is loaning iPads to NYC students K–12 who need a device for remote education.
Insight : Students find it helpful when they are able to loan a chromebook or a laptop (rather than an iPad) from a community-based lending library.
3. Generation Gap / Household dynamics
We found out that most homes at the Bronx housed atleast 3 generations of the family. Out of this , parents usually went to work or shut themselves in a room for virtual work for the day. This left the kids and the elders together. The remote academic performance of school students then also became a supervising responsibility of the elders. Also, the mental health of them both was overlooked the most, as kids couldn’t mingle with their classmates and elders couldn’t meet their friends or go outdoors.
Insight : Contrary to our assumptions, not all young kids are savvy with tech , especially those that did not have exposure to it from an early age. So there’s an opportunity to not only educate the seniors but the young ones too in forming digital habits and being able to participate in the world digitally. Most elders have basic tech issues like booking a slot for vaccination, setting up email, booking doctor’s appointment, etc. With feedback from expert NYC designers at our monthly design critiques, we sensed great opportunity in leveraging this interdependence and generation gap between the youth and the elder.
Problem Statement
Taking into consideration the insights and recognizing where our efforts would have the greatest impact, we modified our problem statement as :
How might we enable Bronx youth and older adults to gain the independence to navigate the digital world?
Ideation
This is the moment in our project when youth members (schoolkids) from DreamYard joined our team. They served as representatives of residents of Bronx and our eyes and ears for our design team when interacting with Bronx residents. Our relation with DreamYard students was both pedagogical (about Design Thinking) and collaborative (co-designing for the community). Below is the design thinking workshop I organized for them before co-designing together :
Co-designing with the school-kids , we ideated using crazy 8’s and dot-voted the best ideas forward in two ideation sessions.
Kids or juniors may be hesitant/ shy/ uncomfortable in expressing themselves in front of the entire team. When we split into smaller teams in breakout rooms, we observed greater participation from the kids and more insightful conversations.
Iterative Prototyping
Next up, we all took home the ideas generated and lo-fi prototyped them using techniques like sketching , storyboards, mockup screens and user scenarios. Then within our team, we evaluated all these ideas on how they’d affect the bottom line for : young, middle-aged and elders in the Bronx.
Our young team members – the schoolkids overtook the responsibility for testing the ideas. They rapidly prototyped, asked questions, gauged opinions regarding these ideas with Bronx residents across all age groups. The responses surprised us brought to light intricacies we hadn’t anticipated like :
- The online game idea to teach digital habits would only help those a working internet and desktop (classic chicken and egg).
- Tech potlucks would face the city restrictions on gatherings due to health hazard from the pandemic.
- Most elders need tech support that is specific and immediate.
Proposed Solution
We also had feedback on our ideas from mentors at our 5th design critique. This exposed us to possibilities on how we could merge the best elements across our different ideas. So based on the feedback received and learning from our testing, we proposed our plan of action to inculcate digital literacy. The following deliverables depict the plan :
With feedback from our mentors, we recognized it’d be a problem to aggregate people to an event or place with the pandemic going on or even enough incentives. So, with inputs from our young teammates from DreamYard who had participated in “Wash and Learn” , a summer learning program that creates pop-up library spaces inside laundromats throughout the Bronx, we decided to meet people where they are.
- “Tech It Out” Booth
With eased restrictions on outings, we observed Bronxites in public parks on weekends with their families where kids may be playing and elders resting in the shade. So for our plan of action , we decided to use this environment to set up out introductory booth with digital stewards and free-food incentives. These digital stewards are volunteer tech enthusiasts that demystify technology for the community, and facilitate a healthy integration of technology into their lives.
Bronxites across all ages will be able to receive quick help/ tech support for their tech-related problems. They will also be able to learn a new tech skill at the booth facilitated by the steward. Additionally , Bronxites will recieve a pamphlet that will encourage them to participate in the below-mentioned game aimed at forming digital habits for all types of tech-proficient users.
- “Tech It Out” Game
Here, we gamify the process of forming essential digital habits and users are paired up in teams consisting both young and old residents as well as techies and novices. The team members have to solve simple tech puzzles like finding out actors in a movie, scheduling online appointments, etc. This allows the team to level up and compete with other teams in the locality. In completing these tasks together, there is exchange of knowledge or shared discovery and learning amongst the team.
We believe this will empower Bronxites to learn about technology beyond the interactions at the booth and enable them to navigate and participate in today’s ever so digital world. We plan on implementing this plan in Fall 2021.
