In "Engagement Lab," by Professors Kevin Patton and Angela Stepancic students address a challenge posed by a community organization using interaction design. Focusing on social, environmental, and community impact, students collaborate with community stakeholders to create tools, and design new systems. Students have worked with a range of organizations, including Roosevelt STAY Academy and the Library of Congress.
Each semester, the core of the IxD MA program takes place in the Engagement Lab. Students have opportunities to take their design skills into the world to practice design with a focus on social, environmental, and community impact. Students work with faculty to gain a systemic understanding of challenges and investigate the histories that have led to the current moment. The teams then engage community members as partners in the process of designing tools and systems that can address those challenges. Students will focus on prototyping responses while evaluating from an at-scale perspective based on goals and metrics identified in conversation with the community partner.
Professors: Angela Stepancic, Kevin Patton
For information about Community Engaged Scholarship at GW: https://go.gwu.edu/cesc
Spring 2023
Professor: Angela Stepancic
Students Reporting: 2
Times Reported: 2
This year, Engagement Lab is working with Roosevelt STAY Academy. RSTAY has relocated to a new building in a nearby neighborhood, from Petworth to U Street. The administration sees this as a pivotal opportunity for their school community to look back at their successes and look forward with possibility for a new future, learning from the past and creating a plan for our new normal. RSTAY is looking to define itself for itself in this new location with the school community - students, staff, parents, faculty, admin, community partners, and alumni - as the voice.
Students worked with RSTAY to analyze CTE options against workforce need and student interest with recommendations for future programming, developed branding and updated logo options for the school as it shifted locations, generated social media campaigns with templates for stakeholder communication, and helped to evaluate the impact of RSTAY with past students for benefits and opportunities for growth.
