Design Workshop: New Options

Instructor

Chris Conley

Exposure - A Real World Prototype of a New Options Solution

In many large cities, the percentage of kids who do not finish high school has reached 50%. Even in suburban high schools, the numbers are astonishing -- 20% in many cases. While our perception is that high school drop outs are troubled kids, drug dealers, dumb or lazy, the reality is that they are just like you and me. In fact, they may be your sibling or cousin. And they are full of potential.

The W.K.Kellogg Foundation thinks the same and their determined to innovate. They are investing $30 million over 10 years to figure out a new option for these kids that society has failed. Kellogg would like to create a path and credential for these kids that get them back on track and on the course to a successful career.

This course is an implementation workshop that will build on the research and prototyping conducted over the past seven months under the research grant awarded Professors Conley & Kumar. It will focus on the design and execution of Exposure in the real world. Exposure is a concept for an experience and credential for out-of-school youth to help them pursue their interests, discover their strengths, and identify jobs and careers that align with them.

The course will design and execute the Exposure concept with real businesses and out-of-school youth and use this real world prototype to take Kellogg's idea one step closer to reality. We will be working closely with Matter, a design consultancy in Atlanta founded by an ID Alum. Matter is the Kellogg Foundation's strategic design advisor on the New Options Program.

Format & Grading

The format of this class will be mission control for a project being implemented in Chicago. There are no lectures, no presentations, and hopefully few team meetings. There will be status updates, task planning, and a lot of design and coordination with businesses and youth external to ID.