Undergraduate design thinking students engage with the local community

Client
Lafayette Adult Resource Academy (LARA)

Project Duration
8 weeks

In the Fall 2023 semester, I created a service-learning experience through the Service-Learning program at Purdue. In my years of teaching Design Thinking, I’ve found that students sometimes have difficulty empathizing with the people involved in different problems because the problems don’t seem significant, are too large to conceptualize, or aren’t “real”. With that, I’ve come to understand that Honors students do not want to simply write another paper or just do more work in their Honors courses. They want to create and have an impact. In the Summer of 2023, I was able to recruit community partners to engage with LTHC Homeless Services and Lafayette Adult Resource Academy (LARA). Students addressed many issues, including LTHC’s inefficient check-in process and LARA’s challenges with HSE program retention, showcasing graduates’ work, digital literacy for older clients, and implementing a natural playground.

Students engaged with stakeholders through observation and interviews, developed problem statements, brainstormed ideas, and prototyped solutions, iterating with partners. The projects required weekly progress reports, professional communication, time management, and project coordination. The outcomes included functional prototypes, design journals, and video documentaries, one of which was sent to the State Office for Workforce Development by LARA. The project involved adapting assignments, coaching students on professional stakeholder interaction, guiding through challenges, fostering diverse perspectives, and encouraging creative problem-solving.

The example video was from a group of students that addressed retention issues at LARA.