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DESIGN THINKING AND INNOVATION FINAL REPORT CLIENT: COMPASS YOUTH CENTER

Bharadwaj, Anirudha Bhinderwala, Yusuf

Biswas, Sushmita Karda, Jugal Rhee, Jintae

Wie, Yuan

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................... 2

Learning by doing ...........................................................................................................................2

Compass Youth Center and FIRST competitions: ..............................................................................2

Team Apollo 13’s recommendations: ..............................................................................................2

Background on the Problem to be Solved ............................................................................... 3

School to prison pipeline ................................................................................................................3

FIRST Competition ..........................................................................................................................3

Background for company and Ethnographic Interviews: ..................................................................4

Selection of Stakeholders for Interviews: ........................................................................................4 Mr. Philip Liu: ........................................................................................................................................................ 4 Dr. Woods-Weeks: ................................................................................................................................................ 4 Dr. Mary Hemphill: ................................................................................................................................................ 4 Mr. Scott Hawkins: ................................................................................................................................................ 5

Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 5

Porter’s six forces ...........................................................................................................................5

Drucker’s Discipline of Innovation ...................................................................................................6

Recommended solutions and expected outcomes ................................................................... 6

Build Human resources ...................................................................................................................6

Create awareness ...........................................................................................................................6

Raise donations ..............................................................................................................................7

Proposed Metrics and Plan to Measure Success ..................................................................... 7

Next Steps ............................................................................................................................. 8

Appendix. ............................................................................................................................ 10

Website Links referred in recommendations:........................................................................ 10

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Executive Summary Learning by doing: In the book “Learning to Improve”, the authors talk about how in the late 1990s, a

lot of education change makers believed that public schools in the U.S. were ‘too big and too impersonal’.

An immediate effect of this was high schools failing a big chunk of students – especially those who hailed

from disadvantaged backgrounds with minimal financial means to further sustain their educational needs.

As a result, exceedingly high number of such students dropped out, and those who braved the storm and

did persist to graduation were grossly underprepared for higher education or work. Policy advocates and

educational reformers thus started emphasizing on how to create truly engaging learning environments,

and how having smaller school communities particularly benefitted students from economically and

socially disadvantaged backgrounds the most.

Compass Youth Center and FIRST competitions: Since Compass Youth Center’s inception, they’ve

helped transform the lives of more than 400 students in over 10 schools. The medium that Mr. Wilkins

adapted for this transformation was through FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and

Technology) competitions. Mr. Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST, says, and I quote, that the “mission of FIRST

is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators, by engaging them in

exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills, that inspire

innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and

leadership.” 1 However, participating at such high-level competitions along with building robots that can

perform complicated tasks is a costly affair, and heavy on human capital as well. To address these

shortcomings and to uncover the actual job to be done, Team Apollo 13 did a Design Sprint over the last

9 weeks, interviewing multiple stakeholders and getting their constant feedback on the various

assumptions in the process. Our attempt in this document is to put on paper everything we experienced

in the process – right from our learnings from the stakeholder meetings to performing an analysis on our

recommendations to ensure their high impact and feasibility with minimum risk.

Team Apollo 13’s recommendations: Our recommendations are three-fold. The first talks about

Human Resources, wherein we talk about leveraging volunteers from the FIRST alumni association, from

Duke University, NCSU, as well as the state of North Carolina. Moreover, we even surveyed the association

here at Duke to gauge their willingness to volunteer with Compass Youth Center. We also plan to leverage

volunteers from the Graduate Christian Fellowship here at Duke and expand more upon how faith-based

communities can play a critical role in solving Compass Youth Center’s volunteer woes, considering that

all the associates with CYC have zero financial incentives.

Secondly, our aim is to increase the overall awareness of the cause CYC is working toward, as well as the

efforts they’re taking and opening it to a platform for like-minded changemakers. We spoke to Dr. Mary

Hemphill, the Director of Computer Science & technology Education and tried to understand the different

resources available for such non-profits. We also briefly talk about using social media as a platform to

engage with a wider audience that resonates with CYC’s work.

Thirdly, we focus upon raising donations for CYC, starting from resources they can easily leverage from

here at Duke, including grants and funds, as well as school supplies.

1 https://www.firstinspires.org/

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Background on the Problem to be Solved

School to prison pipeline School to prison pipeline begin with the limited education resource in schools, such as crowded

classrooms, less qualified teachers. With the zero-tolerance policy of schools, teachers’ decisions on

students’ punishment could push students out of classrooms, and such students are more likely to end up

breaking the law and be punished to the prisons.

Figure 1: Biggest problem faced by public schools2

The best way to reduce the school-to-prison rates is to keep those at-risk students within the classroom.

One reason that students leave school is that the class is relatively boring. With more extra-curriculum,

students will engage more in the school’s program. However, as the chart below shows, the biggest

problem for most of the public schools is financial problems. Most schools have limited financial sources

to develop the extra-curriculum programs.

FIRST Competition The FIRST competition is a mentor-based robotics program for K to 12 students. As Dean Kamen of FIRST

said, “FIRST is more than robots. The robots are a vehicle for students to learn important life skills. Kids

often come in not knowing what to expect – of the program nor of themselves. They leave, even after the

first season, with a vision, with confidence, and with a sense that they can create their own future.”3

The FIRST competition is one of the best practices to improve student’s engagement. However, with the

financial limits as well as lack of experience in the robotic industry, public schools show a low ability to

implement the mentor program. As a result, lots of non-profit organizations play critical roles to offer

mentorship to enrolled students.

2 https://pdkpoll.org/biggest-problems-chart 3 https://www.firstinspires.org/about/vision-and-mission

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Background for company and Ethnographic Interviews: Compass Youth Center provides educational opportunities and services that are designed to empower

and engage the youth. They deliver this by maintaining their central focus on the creation and the

successful delivery of quality socioeconomic and community-based programs.

Compass provides pathways out of poverty to the youth with the aim of equipping an individual with

improved self-awareness, stronger workforce/economic development, healthier living and improved

relations between communities, businesses, local leaders and government agencies.4

The goal of the company, achieving which would constitute success, is to assist the at-risk youth

population of the country. Along with this, they are also focused on combating the school-to-prison

pipeline and promoting personal/professional development for all.

Selection of Stakeholders for Interviews: After the preliminary interview with Mr. Wilkins, we created an empathy map based on our ethnographic

observation (Refer Appendix). Also, as we came across the issue of School to Prison pipeline as the primary

reason for Compass Youth Center’s existence, we looked for the persons most affected by the activities

of Compass Youth Center and identified certain individuals as stakeholders in this Design Thinking process.

The key stakeholders for observation and ethnographic interviews were the following

1. Mr. Philip Liu

2. Mrs. Woods-Weeks

3. Dr. Mary Hemphill

4. Mr. Scott Hawkins

Mr. Philip Liu: The problem identified through the first interview with Mr. Wilkins was centered around donation as the

only major issue faced by Compass Youth Center. This led us to further dive deep into the challenges faced

by the NGO and we identified a need for interaction with a team member who has been a part of the

FIRST competition to better understand the situation at hand. Philip Liu is a FIRST alumni himself, and the

captain of his high school’s FRC (First Robotics Competition) team. Currently, he’s a sophomore at Duke

University and an active member of the FIRST alumni association at Duke.

Dr. Woods-Weeks: Another aspect of the problems stated in the first interaction with Mr. Wilkins was about schools and their

willingness to make students participate in competitions like FIRST and the potential roadblocks. We

identified a need for interviewing some principal/dean at schools for finding out about their perspective

to the problem Compass Youth Center is aiming to solve through their activities. One reason for identifying

Dr Woods-Weeks was the perception of school management towards the “zero tolerance” policies and

the school-to-prison pipeline.

Dr. Mary Hemphill: A need for understanding the issue from the administration's standpoint, moreover from an authority

who understands the importance of fusing education, empowerment, & leadership together, was

4 https://compassyouthcenters.org/

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important to identify the pain points and reason for these problems. This led us to connect with Dr.

Hemphill, who is a Director of Education for Computer Science department for North Carolina.

Mr. Scott Hawkins: Community outreach programs and promotions play a major role in increasing the outreach for an NGO

and donations. For this, we identified Mr. Scott Hawkins as an influential person, working with the Duke

Chapel’s international house. Identification of Mr. Scott as a stakeholder stems from the fact that faith-

based communities would be willing to help Compass Youth Center’s cause and it can be leveraged to

come up with new ideas for pain points such as transportation and logistics.

Analysis After conducting initial interviews with the stakeholders as well as the clients, we tested our assumptions

of our roadmap and analyzed it through certain frameworks to ensure a robust recommendation

grounded in reality.

Porter’s six forces By using Porter’s six forces, several factors affecting Compass Youth Center has been determined. Threats,

compliments and those with power were identified and analyzed to find the amount of impact each force

has on Compass Youth Center. After identification and analysis, Supplier Power was found to be the most

affecting factor. Donors are one of the biggest sources of funds for Compass Youth Center and they have

the power to choose other organizations which makes them very important in our ecosystem. Focusing

on identifying new donors and retaining current ones were made priority over other forces. Also

compliments, identified to be different tech companies and manufacturing industries, was also on high

priority as they can they can have collaborations with Compass Youth Center to support their cause by

supplying parts and volunteer services. Threats of substitution, industry competitors and threat of new

entrants was not as high priority, as these three forces were recognized to be not as impactful in NGO

organizations.

Figure 2: Porter’s forces on Compass Youth Center

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Drucker’s Discipline of Innovation Using Drucker’s Discipline of Innovation has helped us think and ideate as an inside member of Compass

Youth Center. By analyzing the seven opportunities of unexpected occurrences, incongruities, process

needs, industry and market changes, demographic changes, changes in perception and new knowledge

has helped up build ideas that led to our recommendations. One area that helped build our

recommendation was analyzing the process needs. The team had been focusing on the donors and getting

financial help, but after analyzing the process needs the team recognized that the greater need is having

additional manpower to handle responsibilities. Also, looking into the changes in perception, we have

learned that we could possibly look at other sources other than education and technology fields to gain

resources. The idea of targeting faith-based communities was one of the results of analyzing the changes

in perception.

Recommended solutions and expected outcomes

Build Human resources The FIRST Alumni at Duke has agreed to give on an average of 3.6 hrs./week. The team of 30 is split as 10

members to train CYC’s students in soft-skill development and rest 20 train them technically. The meeting

of student mentors and school children will happen virtually starting from Jan 2020 and possibly meet

once a month. The same roadmap can be extended to other FIRST alumni organizations such as FIRST

alumni of NC [2], FIRST alumni at NC state University [3]. CYC should have a couple of FIRST alumni as

board members in the short term and have CYC Alumni as board members in the long run. Faith based

communities will be a major source of human power and donations, CYC should thus make strong

relationships with the church-based organizations [4].

Motivation: FIRST alumni will be seasoned in making robots and can bring their expertise to the table.

They can also empathize better with the students and help bridge the gap between donors and students.

Additionally, leveraging the power of faith-based communities CYC can have adult volunteers who can

monitor the kids during training and transportation or could be a technically proficient industry expert

who could potentially create a platform to pitch to their company and get donor funding. The strong

church base in the area and faith-based organizations play a major role in helping in the sense of giving

back to the community.

Create awareness Building relationships with the NC state dept of education will very crucial in getting better visibility,

getting an insider’s view and connecting with similar organizations [5]. Dr. Mary Hemphill, Director of

Computer Science and Technology is a great resource that CYC should tie-up with as she can play key roles

in providing a platform for CYC to showcase its unique work. Rebrand NC initiative is one such organization

where all the people who are working for similar cause including principals of schools meet up and discuss

solutions for pressing needs. This is a great platform for CYC to pitch its idea and collaborate and

potentially get funding. CYC should also aim at updating its website and its social media handles by

collaborating with CYC alumni and the public schools that it is currently funding. Branding CYC’s social

media accounts with hashtags can increase the organic reach and build its community. Ms. Debbie Vu can

help CYC make a documentary video of the students building robots, thus helping them create more

impact when they pitch their idea to donors [6]. Additionally, CYC can also seek help from influential

people and promote its cause by them.

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Motivation: Government agencies could expand the network and could help get in federal funding, it may

also open new doors in meeting potential sponsors. The delegates of such conferences are people who

are working for a similar cause and this could lead to having collaboration with different schools and

similar NGOs to fight for a common cause. Online presence is of utmost value in today’s world, as people

do an internet search and gather information before offering help of any sort.

Raise donations CYC is working for a unique cause unlike many other NGOs and they must leverage this fact and pitch it

to donors. There are many organizations in an and round RTP which donate for various causes. Duke

University has been a constant supporter of philanthropy and has donated $658,212 during 2018. The

funds range from $1000-$5000 in various giving areas including schools to healthcare [7]. Duke has given

nearly 9000 different office supplies including computers in the last year, these supplies could help CYC

improve the quality of tutoring [8]. The same idea can be extended to other philanthropist organizations

which are cited in appendix [9].

Motivation: Donations are the core of any NGO and CYCs cause is huge and the funding is not sufficient.

Donations need not be money always; it could be human capital or office supplies or even robotic parts.

CYC is running short on human resources and monetary inflow. CYC should delegate the work of pitching

the idea in front of potential donors to the student themselves, as this will have more impact, lesser efforts

on one single person and help students grow technically and soft-skill development.

Proposed Metrics and Plan to Measure Success After performing extensive brainstorming and analysis to dive deep into the root cause of the problem,

we have proposed three approaches that will address the problem. However, metrics and method to

measure success must be put in place to validate if the proposed solutions are effective.

The first recommended approach is building human resources. Compass Youth Center has been always

short-handed and needs volunteers to mentor students. It can ultimately be deemed successful when

Compass Youth Center fills all the position needed. However, it may take a long time before the positions

get fully filled and Compass Youth Center may grow, and more positions may open. It may be difficult to

put a strict metric on success, but metrics and timeline has been proposed based on analysis to validate

the effectiveness.

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Figure 3: Proposed timeline to validate building human resources

Creating awareness is a crucial part of the other recommendations and plays in hand to hand with them.

Awareness is the most complex solution to place a metric as it is very volatile and difficult to predict.

Building relationship with NC State Department of Education and Rebrand NC Education will be accounted

to be successful if one agency reaches out to Compass Youth Center to share their resources. Currently

on social media, there is only a Facebook page active with only 11 followers. Initial proposed metric to

validate the increase in awareness through social media is to ensure the Facebook page and Instagram to

be updated at least every week. The next goal is to increase the followers to 100 by the end of 2019.

Donation is important in assuring that the students have all the resources they need in order to compete

in FIRST competitions. The majority of the cost comes from providing teams with the robotic components

as well as a place to work and food to eat. It was found that average cost to support each team is

$30,000/team for FIRST Robotics Competition, $5,000/team for FIRST Tech Challenge, $1500/team for

FIRST Lego League and $1,000/team for FIRST Lego League Jr each year. There are additional costs

involved, but the initial proposed metric to measure success is to maintain $100,000/year donations to

cover the cost for the teams involved with Compass Youth Center (2 teams in FRC, 8 teams in FTC, 2 teams

in FLL and 1 team in FLL Jr.). Financial board meetings should be held every year to budget the costs and

plan for gathering donations (if not filled already). Every quarter meeting should be held to verify the

current cash flow and develop action plans for the next quarter in case the target donation amount has

not been met.

Next Steps The FIRST Alumni at Duke are willing to coach CYC’s students starting from Jan 2nd week. CYC should follow

up with the Alumni association at Duke and co-ordinate the coaching classes. FIRST alumni at Duke wants

a pre-fixed schedule or a notice before in time so they can plan their schedule. CYC should aim at

transporting the kids to the Duke foundry at least once a month so that the student mentors can meet

the students physically and offer physical inspection of the robots. They should also introduce the industry

mentors (If any) to the student mentors and help them co-ordinate.

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CYC should follow up with the FIRST Alumni at NC state and get help with student mentorship. They should

divide the schools and have Duke alumni coach for some and NC state Alumni coach for some depending

on the proximity of the schools. CYC should co-ordinate with the FIRST alumni at Duke to have a couple

of board members on the team. They should also seek out to CYC alumni who are at NC state and Tufts

and seek help in any way possible.

CYC should co-ordinate with Dr. Hemphill and try to tap into her connections by being a part of the NC

Rebrand organization and participate in the shifting the conversation initiative. Furthermore, by attending

these events, they can build the relationship with other government agencies and collaborate with people

who are working for the common cause. As churches are a great place to get human resources, they

should aim to pitch their idea by showing a documentary video and make kids speak up for themselves.

Additionally, should allow students to pitch for themselves and help them develop their soft skills too.

CYC should tie-up with a social media curating companies and get their website up and running. They

should also leverage the help of CYC alumni to help create and run social media accounts mainly

Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. They will play key roles in helping CYC gain visibility and this would be

a fantastic way to give back to CYC. They can also reach out to celebrities to help promote their cause and

make school to prison pipeline a highlight.

CYC should currently reach out to Duke funding agency (Link given in Appendix) and apply for funding,

also try to build connections there. They should also try to reach out to other organizations who give

funding for similar causes (a couple of them are given in the appendix).

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Appendix.

Website Links referred in recommendations:

[1] : FIRST Inspires: https://www.firstinspires.org/about/vision-and-mission

[2]: FIRST Alumni at NC State: http://www.firstnorthcarolina.org/alumni/

[3]: Aditya Balaji, President of FIRST Alumni at NCSU: abalaji2@ncsu.edu

[4]: 1) Congregation at Duke Chapel : http://congregation.chapel.duke.edu/get_involved

2) The Triangle non-profit volunteering and leadership

http://www.thevolunteercenter.org/tp42/page.asp?ID=139712

3) Duke Community service department: https://community.duke.edu/

[5]: Rebrand NC Education: https://www.rebrandnced.com/

[6]: Ironworx Media: https://www.ironworxmedia.com/

[7]: Duke doing good in the neighborhood: https://doinggood.duke.edu/

[8]:Duke donations: https://today.duke.edu/2019/11/second-life-office-

furniture?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Get%20Free%20Office%20Furni

ture&utm_campaign=WatDukeEmma

[9]: 1) Triangle Community Foundation: https://trianglecf.org/nonprofits/grants/

2) Reynolds : https://rjrt.com/commercial-integrity/community-involvement/guidelines-for-giving/

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Drucker’s Discipline of Innovation

Customer Personas We created a few customer personas to understand the key traits of a large segment of our different

stakeholders. These customer personas helped us better understand the problem and identify the key

pain points of the stakeholders.

Dr. Jenny Longwood Principal, Age- 52, Educator, Industry- Education, Job Title-Principal

Her personal goals- She wants to create an opportunity for education for all the kids in the area, because

she believes that education will help them to get the bright future

Her best skills are managing people, Active Listening, Empower Others, Delegate More Tasks, Act

Decisively, Motivate Change, Communicate Clearly to parents and students

Her professional goals- To make sure her school is the best in the area, providing all the necessary facilities

to the students

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Dr. Sarah Lancaster

Government Professional, Age- 60, Retired

Her best skills are Leadership Coach, Educational Innovator, Motivational Speaker inspiring women

Her professional goals- She wants to inspire children and women to have a limitless lifestyle. Her hope is

to help discover people’s best self through leadership tips, lifestyle advice, & motivational inspiration to

help create & sustain their lifestyle.

Mr. Stephen Hicks

Social Worker, Age- 52, Community Volunteer, Industry- Social Services, Job Title- Campus Director

His personal goals- He wants to give back to the society by arranging volunteering events and believes in

bringing together all communities for betterment of the society. He believes in a higher power guiding us

to contribute for improving the conditions in the society

His best skills are managing people, interacting with people, sharing his stories for motivation, arranging

various events for bringing in people from different cultures together.

Her professional goals- To make sure incoming students from any part of the world feel welcomed and

have minimal issues adjusting to this new environment.

Mr. Joe Carpenter Student, Age- 22, Tech Enthusiast, Job Title- Student

His personal goals- He is a tech enthusiast and thus is always working on some project/ coursework and

is an overachiever in every domain he participates. He likes to work a lot and help others to bring out the

best in them

His best skills are technical expertise in a wide range of subjects and experience in building robots

His professional goals- To build a career in the technology industry while establishing relationships with

alumnus from all the organizations he’s been involved with.

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The Design Thinking Process

Fig: Customer journey map

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Fig: The Design-thinking sprint of ‘What If’

Fig: Impact vs feasibility chart of ‘What Works’

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Fig: Story Boarding

Fig: Prototype of a brochure for alumni engagement

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Defining the problem Background: Compass Youth Center is an organization aimed at providing education and other facilities

to get children excited about STEM based education system. Their goal is to reduce the number of

children going in School to Prison Pipeline.

Problem Statement (Client): Developing a process to enhance volunteer and donor management, increase

corporate engagement and process for online giving with employer

Interview: As per the interview with the client, we created an empathy map to determine the link between

his verbal and nonverbal cues.

Jobs To be Done (Ultimate Goal of Compass Youth Center):

Decrease in number of children going in “school to prison pipeline” and make the underprivileged kids the

technological leaders of tomorrow by giving quality STEM education at the crucial age of k-12.

Refining the problem By “What If” analysis of the pain points as per design thinking methodology, we did the following activities

Conduct interviews: Interviews with key stakeholders namely Philip Liu (FIRST Alumni Association at

Duke), Josephine-Dobbs Clement Early College Associate and Lorenza Wilkins, Board Members, Donors

and Parents.

Brainstorming: We have identified the preliminary problem as associated with insufficient money, clashes

between ideas of board of members and money management. Also, we plan to evaluate the interview

feedback and market analysis for better problem understanding.

Concept Development: After brainstorming, the identified pain points would be addressed with the

metrics indicated below.

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Validating Understanding the concept of “What Wows”, we plan to test and refine the proposed niche solutions

For Validation and prototype testing, we plan to execute the strategized solution by selection of a single

school to check, prototype and test

Prototype testing for improvements in any services related to the Board of Members would be done by

Napkin Pitch

Pitch 1

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Pitch 2