HANDMADE IN HYATTSVILLE SPRINT - 2017

CONTRIBUTIONS: SERVICE DESIGN
PLATFORM: DESIGN SPRINT
TIMELINE: 1 DAY

THE PROBLEM

My design thinking class (IDEA258A at UMD) and I spent the day trying to solve the problem:

How might we engage the artistic community in Hyattsville with University of Maryland students?

DISCOVERY: IMMERSING IN LOCAL BUSINESSES

Hyattsville's art district is down the road from University of Maryland. It is made up of small tight-knit artist community with many local businesses. 
Some of the stores within the arts district include:

• A few restaurants

• A park

• A general store

• A spacious coffee shop

• A vintage art store

• A fabric store

Only the coffee shop had a large pool of visitors due to its large social media presence.

Our team knew going into our sprint that we wanted to help the Hyattsville art district better connect with students on campus. Without any prior background knowledge, we decided our first step was to go talk to local businesses. Some of the questions we asked were:

• What are your business goals for the next year?

• Who do you feel is your current largest customer base?

• What do you feel is the challenge in connecting with students?

RESEARCH: WHAT WERE LOCAL ARTIST MISSING?

Building Empathy

We started by putting ourselves into the shoes of the business owners.

Many of them mentioned that their largest customer base were:

• long time Hyattsville locals

• people who had recently graduated college and moved to Hyattsville

They also had been business owners for a long time. For example, Franklin's restaurant had been open and repurposed for over fifty years. Their conceptions of how to market to young people might be much different than our perceptions as young people. Many of the business owners mentioned that their biggest challenge was appealing to young people. In addition, Hyattsville is not walkable from College Park. Students have to take a bus, which can be time consuming, or have a car, which is not a given for on campus students.

IDEATION: FROM IDEAS TO CONCEPTION

Brainstorming Ideas

We began brainstorming ideas on how to approach the problem we had found: getting students on campus to come to the Hyattsville art district! We did both a free brainstorm and a brainstorm with a constraint to see if we could pull out any new ideas.

After an initial brainstorm, we headed to the coffee shop (Vigilante!) and began asking strangers to add to our brainstorm. We thought it would be a fun interactive way to get more diverse ideas from people who actually frequented Hyattsville. The two people who contributed a sticky note (the pink one in the picture) were students, which was even more helpful!

PROTOTYPING: BUILDING THE CAMPAIGN

Synthesizing to a Prototype

When we got back to Polka Dot Park from the coffee shop, we began building the prototype for our marketing plan. We created a mockup of a flyer we would distribute digitally and through print using various materials we brought from class. Our goal was to accentuate the variety of stores and shops in the Hyattsville Arts District through the question: why Hyattsville?

EVALUATION: FEEDBACK AND FUTURE ITERATIONS

So what did we learn from user testing?

• Many businesses were invested in our campaign! A few restaurants even handed us physical promotional materials.

• Local businesses wanted to build partnerships with programs within The University of Maryland but did not know where to begin. Some were technologically savvy but some were not. We would have to consider this for future iterations.

What improvements can still be made?

• We could set up events specifically for Hyattsville business owners and students to meet and network with each other through a marketing campaign.

• We could design a real campaign around #handmadeinhyattsville