Blog

Sep 30, 2011

Lessons From Middle School Girls

Wednesday, I spent time with 8th grade girls at East Lake Academy for Fine Arts. I was their guest professional for their class. East Lake has partnered with Girls Inc. to run a program called Build IT. This program helps young girls increase their understanding of technology and design. Hopefully, armed with more knowledge about these topics, young girls are able to view the fields of technology and design as career path options.

I was asked to talk with the girls about my career path. I was also asked to engage with the class about the design process, iteration, and new users. The class was in process of designing a “hangout room.” I was asked to create an activity that they could participate in and that would support their design process. The activity needed to include the concept of meeting the needs of a “new user” into the design of their room.

What I learned during my presentation:

  • girls of all ages want to be superheroes;
  • these teens have never read comic books;
  • students like it when you move around and dance a bit during a presentation;
  • if given permission, students will stand up and move around to keep awake and engaged rather than sitting still and falling asleep;
  • these girls have everyday superheroes in their lives: moms, sisters, and even their math teacher;
  • both students and teachers enjoyed Glenda Sims’ photos that use Lego people to show the design process;
  • sharing that I was the graphic designer for a Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig film increased students attention immediately; and,
  • students really love to learn.

For an activity, we worked on creating personas for people that might actually use the hangout room. The activity is based on this InterACT curriculum project.

What I learned during the activity:

  • students liked having a handout of the Lego people slides and the slide with the keywords for the persona activity;
  • students were concerned that everything needed to be “perfect;”
  • the girls liked drawing the person in the persona (by hand);
  • TXT(ing) is a hobby and is spelled without an “E;”
  • Facebook is a hobby;
  • for every persona, the person loved to dance and/or to sing;
  • the goal for some of the imaginary persona people were to graduate high-school and become a dancer and/or singer; and,
  • the group with the two girls who were most engaged with my presentation created a persona person who had the goal of becoming a PhD and an engineer.

Other takeaways…

Eighth grade girls can be very honest and can say things without a filter. In many ways, this isn’t much different from college students. Although, Wednesday was the first time that I can remember a student saying, “you look scary.” I was pretty excited and I bet I was channeling my inner Rock which can be pretty intense. 

I thought that these 8th grade girls would be the toughest audience and class that I would engage with this year. However, they were a great group of learners. They asked a lot of wonderful questions. They were really engaged. Their completed personas were solid.

I am fortunate to have had these young ladies allow me to be a part of their lives and afford me the opportunity to learn so much from them. 

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