Kai Night

Project

Addressing well-being is becoming a significant goal to focus on improving among many universities and organisations. The AUT Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies (DCT) are striving towards supporting the well-being of their staff and students by creating a supportive, safe and inclusive culture inside the classroom environment. In response to this goal, we were commissioned by DCT to explore ways on how we can support student and staff well-being.

Goal

Deepen our understanding of students and staffs perspectives on well-being. Develop our understanding of ways to create positive connections between students and staff that support both overall mental health and well-being.

Process

Define - Discovery - Interpret - Ideate -
Design - Refine - Deliver.

Role

  • UX Researcher
  • Visual designer

Team

  • Erica Turner
  • Morgan Cassidy
  • Cameron Jones

Define

Define overview

The goal of the define phase is really to grasp the goal from DCT and to understand what we know. In this define phase we used a couple of tools like Te Whare Tapa Wha, Assumption mapping and case studies. By using these tools we looked for trends to form a challenge statement.

Te whare tapa wha

Te Whare Tapa Wha

Te Whare Tapa Wha gave us a starting point to define key elements that contributed to a healthy well-being. The activities listed in each category of Te Whare Tapa Wha gave us insights into what AUT is currently doing to promote well-being and tap into what we, as student know to have a healthy well-being.

Challenge Statment

"How might DCT provide a safe environment to support the students and staff well-being?"

How

Through our define phase there was an emphasis on environment. This was informed by our case research and also what we assumed. It appeared that providing a supportive environment can potentially affect staff and students well-being positively. Thus we re-framed the challenge in our following statement.

Discovery

Research plan

  • Case study
  • Generative sessions
  • Interviews

Interview

To develop our understanding of the challenge, we gathered qualitative research data by doing empathy interviews and conducted generative research activities with DCT staff and students. The purpose of conducting these activities was to uncover both explicit and tacit knowledge from DCT staff and students.

Generative research approach

The Use of empathy mapping

From our generative research we were able to collect data like things they've said, drawings and written document. We used empathy mapping to unpack all the data we had collected. By using this tool it gave us the opportunity to put them into categories giving us themes, needs and insights.

Empathy mapping

Themes

  • Empathy and emotions
  • Motivation from within
  • Time/balance
  • Trust
  • Worries and stresses
  • Industry wants and needs
  • Collaboration
  • Team involvement
  • Technology

Needs

  • There needs to be more transparency between student and staff.
  • For students and staff to connect on a personal level.
  • Have social support and connect beyond academic projects.
  • More information on resources available to support mental health and wellbeing.

Insights

  • Limited comfortable physical spaces for students and staff to meet.
  • There is a lack of awareness of the available resources and services AUT provide.
  • There is often a lack of trust between staff and students.
  • First year university students find it hard to adapt to the university life.

Quotes to support insights

  • “My lecturers office seems intimidating.” - Student
  • “I feel helpless, I don’t know the resources available if a student approaches me.” - Staff
  • “I don’t want to get roasted by my lecturer.” - Student
  • “I didn’t really make friends until the end of the second semester.” - Student

Persona one

Persona two

Opportunity for change

  • There is an opportunity to build stronger connections between staff and students, as both are often reluctant to discuss their personal issues/ challenges due to the fear of being judged or criticised.
  • There is an opportunity to improve DCT students and staff wellbeing by raising awareness of the available resources and services that AUT offer, due to not being advertised effectively.
  • There is an opportunity to build a community within DCT because first-year students find it hard to adapt as they often do not have a support group in their first semester.

Opportunity statement

How might DCT build connections between staff and students at the start of the university experience?

The opportunity statement lets us narrow the scope of the problem. We chose this opportunity statement due to the heavy emphasis on building trust and approaching for help.

Ideate

Kai Night

‘Kai Night’ is a social event where students and staff are invited to share food, drinks, and engage in activities before the semester and orientation week properly begins. This brings students and staff to come together to meet in a casual, social and relax setting.

What informed our decision?

“When I saw my lecturers having a beer and food in open studio night, was the first time I saw them as people.”

“Back when i was a student at university we didn’t introduce each other in class. A weekend before class we would be at the pub meeting everybody, so by the time we were in class we knew each other”

Protoype

Email

The email serves as a quick guide for students to feel inclusive and for them to join. The email was designed to give the first-year students a warm welcome to AUT. It was key for the email to have a casual and energetic tone to create excitement but not to overwhelm students. This process was another touch point for our audience to become aware of Kai Night.

Talking one on one

We facilitated a role-play exercise with students to understand whether they would feel comfortable. For this exercise, we placed a whiteboard between them. The purpose was to disconnect them from face to face communication and imitate an online conversation.

Through several iterations, we learned that students would not want to show up alone to the event. Our first set of testing was done student to student in the same year group. We found putting two people that are in a similar situation made things awkward and even more uncomfortable. What worked more efficiently was pairing first-year students with student mentors/ambassadors. Implementing an individual that has already experience something and shares their advice gave the first-year students value and comfort.

Group setting

For our final prototype, we needed to see if students and lecturers would find it beneficial and take value from Kai Night. We held a focus group of three, first-year students, and two AUT mentors. We placed food in the middle of the table for everyone to eat and enjoy. We gave the mentors instructions to facilitate the conversation and introduce everyone. What was interesting was that there was the 'copy cat' effect. When the mentors dug into the food first, the students slowly followed after. The more the mentors opened up, the first years became more vocal about their concerns. The win that we gained was the continuation of their conversation after the session had finished. It felt like the first-year students found a support group and were able to uncover any mysteries about being at University and utilising their time.

Design

Visual Identity

It was important for Kai Night to have a visual identity for students and staff around campus to recognise what Kai Night offered. We wanted to keep AUT's colour palette as they convey enthusiasm, future, and safety. From our user personas, Kai Night is about building a better future, a place of safety, and encouraged students to be enthusiastic about what they're learning.

The design of the logo came from the inspiration from our co-design session. From our co-design session, there was an emphasis on bars and social settings being a relaxed environment. Our logo was inspired by the light box signs that are seen outside of bars, restaurants, and comedy clubs. The symbols resemble a silhouette of a person talking as Kai Night encourages our students and staff to have conversations.

Visual identity

Mock up

Collaterals

Thompson Pools

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Draftlab Digital 2020