In early 2020, Uplight sponsored a Hackathon with the theme of diversity and inclusion. Energy efficiency concepts can be challenging to explain to mainstream audiences. When we try to expand our message to hard-to-reach populations, this challenge can become quite daunting.
I led a team in exploring how would it look if Uplight created STEM resources to enrich kids’ virtual/in-person education that distilled complicated concepts like Demand Management (don’t touch that thermostat), disaggregation (energy scavenger hunt, anyone?), or behavioral demand response (do this, not that) into lessons and activities that were accessible to kids.
We assembled a cross functional team comprised of designers, writers, data scientists, engineers, and customer-facing folks, many of whom had never worked on a design project like this before. In order to ensure that everyone’s ideas were heard and to create opportunities for collaboration and contribution, we decided to follow a compressed Google Ventures Design Sprint approach. We started by interviewing experts in Universal Design for Education as well as STEM volunteers from the Third Grade Mission to Mars program that I’ve volunteered with. We then agreed as a group on the problem we were trying to solve, conducted a “competitive” analysis of existing materials and approaches, and loosely sketched ideas of our own.
Once we’d all had a chance to brainstorm our own approaches, we voted on the ideas we liked best and storyboarded the winner. We spent our final hackathon day prototyping our solution and getting it in front of colleagues, parents, and kiddos to gather feedback.
While our approach was specifically geared toward kids, we hoped that our curriculum could create a proving ground for new approaches to complex concepts. By approaching them more simply, creatively, and through varied media, we hoped to make them more accessible to all audiences.
Our work was rooted in the Universal Design for Learning, an approach to designing curriculum that strives to minimize barriers and maximize learning using engagement, representation, and action and expression.