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Jane Gormley

Sociology / Creative Practice for Social Change / Computer Science / Class of 2021.

As a sociology major, I spend a lot of time in my classes talking about the importance of hearing and empowering community voices. However, we rarely discuss methods for actually facilitating this. This is why I love design research! I’ve found it to be such an empowering set of tools. I’m interested in continuing to explore the intersections between design and civic engagement post-grad.

Exploring Design Through Different Roles

Part of what I love about design is how it embraces ambiguity. So, when the main context for this project was the question, “How might we help increase economic mobility and equity in our region?” I jumped at the opportunity to be involved. It was exciting to think the project could go in any direction and its focus on equity in St. Louis drew me in as an important way to continue engaging with this region I call home.

As Reimagine UCollege got started and I gained a better understanding of where the project was heading, I began to realize just how much I’d get out of the experience. Some of the best advice I’ve gotten on design is that you don’t have to be passionate about the topic at the start. If you’re doing it right, engaging with the process will make you passionate about whatever the topic is. While I’m passionate about fighting inequity, workforce development was never an area I’d thought much about. I therefore saw this project as not only a meaningful way to develop my own skills, but to really dive into and become passionate about a new way of approaching a problem space I care about.

One of the main things I’m taking away from Reimagine UCollege is the power of personal stories and so in the spirit of the work this team has been doing for the last year, I’d like to share a few anecdotes from my experience in the different roles I played.

Facilitator

I’d observed a few interviews before Liz and Annemarie asked if I wanted to lead one. I was nervous to be in charge of a 1-1 interview for 90 minutes but if they thought I could do it, then I had to at least try. It was just me and another student asking the questions, setting up the video, and filling out the paperwork. This experience really boosted my confidence, encouraging me to jump at other opportunities to engage more directly with the process. Getting to facilitate feedback sessions with students and staff later in the project continued to make me feel more comfortable with my skills. I’d facilitated discussions in student groups before but this was my first time working with professionals and those outside my peer group. If I was being trusted in this, I must have some idea what I’m doing! Having this experience under my belt has encouraged me to advocate for myself and my skills in ways I wouldn’t have been comfortable with before.

Professional

Over winter break, I was talking with an uncle about my job. He was fascinated, saying it’s exactly the kind of work he’s doing at Microsoft. As part of their education department, he said these discussions around how to make sure data education matches what the industry needs are incredibly important and he was impressed that I, as a college junior, was having conversations like these. It felt great to be able to hold a professional conversation with him and to see how my experience translates to industries like tech I hadn’t imagined myself in.

Student

I got some of the best career advice from sitting in on interviews and testing sessions. These conversations around translating my skills to different industries or thinking about lifelong learning aren’t ones I have in my everyday life, but getting to be a part of them as a team member has been invaluable as I start thinking about my possible career paths. The insights we gained were important to the project, but also to my own learning and development as a student. For example, one of our interviewees shared a story about how his lab work from grad school wasn’t seen as experience in the field he was entering and he was struggling to get hired. When a friend helped him change the language in his resume to better frame the skills he already had to fit the industry he was entering, he had much more success. I’m sure this idea of learning to spin your skills to fit the industries you’re interested in is something I could have learned from the career center but hearing it in this context really stuck and has led to me actually putting this advice to work.

Designer

I knew from embarrassingly low scores in pictionary that my visualization skills weren’t great. Therefore, when tasked to create storyboard graphics for user testing, I wasn’t confident that I would be able to get my message across. Having to convey such complex ideas with a small selection of icons challenged me to rethink how I approached visualizing my thoughts. I’m happy to say, since participating in this part of the project, my pictionary scores have gotten much better!

Researcher

The sheer amount of data we worked with for this project was intimidating. Cardboard sheets covered in multiple layers of quotes filled the small conference room we worked in for most of the year. I’d done synthesis before through projects in Design For America (DFA) but this level of detail was new to me. Nate, Victoria Grace, and I were also tasked with creating a framework for grouping some of our benchmark research. Again, the sheer volume of data here was overwhelming. I’d used 2x2’s before but never created my own. However, through working with Liz and Annemarie, I learned concrete and professional methods for dealing with this volume of data (like a trick from Liz on how to export an excel sheet to InDesign or a reframe of shifting our framework from a 2x2 to a venn diagram) that allowed me to better apply the design theory I had been introduced to through DFA.

Conclusion

After being a part of this project, I’m even more confident that I want to pursue design research as a career. It was an incredible opportunity to get hands-on experience in a field I’m interested in and confirm that it’s the work I want to do post-grad. Seeing my skills applying to something that will actually be implemented provides me with a lot of confidence going forward in my career now that I know I’m capable of doing work at this level.

This process has been incredibly impactful and I would love for other students to have the same opportunity to not only get great professional experience in an exciting field, but to feel like they are an important part of this institution and their voices are worth sharing.