IDSN 540: Process Book

M Y W O R L D .

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

New Semester, New Innovation.

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

My brain definitely grew...

...but after I was brain dead for a few days LOL.

This project was intense. It challenged each and every one of us and although at times I felt like I wanted to give up, we pushed through. It’s these moments that lead to the best outcomes. I truly believe that now.

This final evaluation period lead to more work than we initially anticipated. There were things that needed to be fixed and further elaborated and there were also things that needed to truly make sense to us before we presented anything.

Needless to say, this week consisted of plenty of sleepless nights. 

During the final stretch, we all got together, played to our strengths and finalized Building Bright Minds. 

Allyssa worked tirelessly with the designs and ensuring all our needs were met. 

Mohammed helped with the personas and financial slides.

Brittny and I helped gather all the data and put the final narrative together to ensure our presentation would flow seemingly.

After it was all said and done, the sigh of relief was massive, but the amount of knowledge consumed was immense. I love this group and I love the work we did... I truly felt like a Superhero presenting.

I truly believe that Building Bright Minds could be big for our education systems. I also think that we could create something much much bigger than we could have ever imagined with what we did together as a blueprint for success. 

Who knows... Maybe we could even partner with prisons...

...maybe... just maybe... *insert thinking emoji*

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

We are truly going to be Building Bright Minds...

If there’s one thing I could say about these past two weeks: no matter how much you have figured out, there’s much more that you have to do. Always.

We met over our conference call per usual and we had a lengthy conversation because we after evaluation, we still had so many ideas - but no ideas that could work for our project. We struggled with our implementation because we didn’t know how to translate everything we knew. It was all in our brains, but never on paper. 

“We researched, interviewed people, lined out what we wanted to do, and spent so many hours on trying to come to a conclusion for our solution.”

We also struggled because we were not offering a product, we were offering a service. Before logging off the call, we decided to do a flow chart on how the process would work after a school partners with Building Bright Minds.

Oh, yeah - we did that! We named our Non-Profit! Before selecting our name, we went back to the brainstorming phase. We gave ourselves a few minutes to each individually come up with names. I had so much fun with this and was happy that the team chose one of my ideas!

It felt incomplete though, we knew that we would have to work much harder before our final project to truly package everything together. We decided to divide the slides so that we could focus on our strengths and become experts of our knowledge. 

Brittny tackled the statistics/research, why this would work, and the narrative phase.

Mohammed tackled the financials, what’s at stake, the solution, and the narrative phase.

Allyssa tackled the design.

I tackled how this would work, what this program would look like for the school, the instructor and the student, the timeline for BBM and the narrative phase.

We had to truly evaluate our service, map it out again after going back to the drawing board, and add all our knowledge onto our presentation. I am confident that we packaged it together and this service could truly work in the real world.

Be happy. Be well. Be centered.

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

Building Bright Minds

(The BBM Project)

Building Bright Minds is a nonprofit that seeks to replace detention with meditation programs in schools and ultimately impact communities to help lower prison rates in areas of need.

What does BBM do?

BBM replaces detention with meditation. BBM connects aspiring yoga instructors needing hours for their licenses with schools looking to replace detention with meditation sessions in hopes to reduce detention rates.

Assumptions:

New instructors will be willing to provide meditation classes for free in exchange for licensure hours.

Instructors will be willing to provide meditation classes for free in exchange of tax write-offs.

Schools with high detention rate will be willing to replace detention with meditation classes.

Kids will like meditation more than detention.

Hypothesis:

We believe that meditation will improve the kids’ behaviour and mindfulness.

We believe that meditation will improve the kids’ performance at school.

We believe that meditation will decrease the chances of the kids going to jail in the future.

Minimum Criteria for Success

Detention rates for kids who go through the program will be decreased by 20%.

Adding five schools to the network in the first month.

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Here’s a quick snapshot of our Business Model Canvas for our Prison Prevention Education.

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Non-Profits FTW!

I’m definitely writing this after Thanksgiving because I was too full to think properly.

For the implementation phase of our project - we all met as a team to see how we were going to bring our idea to life. We want it to become something that impacts, is intact, and influences others to do the same. 

Our biggest challenge was not allowing blueprints to have much of an influence in our decisions. We wanted to make this our own and we wanted to add our touch, but we are most definitely using their examples to help guide us in the right direction. We also struggled with the idea of wanting to be For-Profit or Non-Profit. Ultimately, we came to the realistic conclusion that if we wanted this to happen, we would have to be our own staff and would truly have to host fundraisers and put forth our full efforts - so we went with making this a Non-Profit organization.

I then developed three different survey’s that were sent out to people who replied to my Facebook status looking for yoga instructors, teachers and student teachers. Once we gathered insight from them, we were able to get a feel to exactly how we wanted to impact and implement. We felt these discussions allowed us to generate our own understanding from people who are already working in this industry. 

“We wanted to dream big with realistic intentions.”

What I learned from talking to people:

1. It takes many hours to become certified as a yoga instructor.

2. There are more schools that don’t implement detention (more so than I anticipated).

3. Many teachers are under the agreement hat detention needs to be changed or revamped. The intentions don’t meet the outcome.

4. Detention effects students differently.

5. Detention standards are not universal. Sometimes they are left to the teacher’s discretion.

With this data, we decided to become a Non-Profit Organization that will allow Yoga Instructors to obtain their hours with schools that decide to on-board our replacement of Detention. We truly believe that replacing detention with mindfulness programs will tackle the question we initially asked ourselves: How can we change early education systems in the U.S. to decrease prison rates within racial minority groups?

I believe we can make this bigger than we initially anticipated - BUT we still have some things to sort out and take into account. It’s nice to see that we are seeing the end results come to fruition though.

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

What if we Meditate instead?

This week was one of the most challenging weeks, hands down.

We truly didn’t know how to begin. Shout out to my teammate Mohammed who always comes through for us during these process sessions. He has the most experience with them and his guidance is appreciated. We decided to select three criteria that will set the tone for how we will select which ideas we want to implement next week.

Solution is something that can be realistically implemented over the next couple of weeks.

Solution should target minority groups.

Solution is rehabilitative and creates dialogue.

Over our conference call, we started seeing how we could start tackling our crazy ideas, while also reducing them to a maximum of 20 ideas. None of us found 20 we felt fit our criteria, however, we found the similarities that we all wanted to implement during this session and narrowed it down to about six categories.

Once we found the similarities, we each voted from the six categories to see which one we truly wanted to tackle. Of course... Brittny and I voted for Yoga Classes replacing Detention and Mohammed and Allyssa chose to create a network of companies that provide free education, mentorship, and other forms of support.

I believe a few of us had some hesitations because we felt many of our selections weren’t the best ideas. But one thing we lost sight of when narrowing it down to one, was our question: How can we change early education systems in the U.S. to decrease prison rates within racial minority groups?

After we realized that, we were able to combine the selections into one idea in a way that we felt answered our question. Our focus will now be in creating a network of studios and schools to replace detention with yoga, meditation, and mindfulness sessions for free. We want to target areas of need and minority groups and gather data from prisons to help us formulate the most effective and compelling case possible.

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

Find Your Cape

This week during our ideation phase, we decided to utilize Excel on Google since we have to do this project remotely (it’s my fault since I’m in Colorado). With the Excel sheet, we decided to break our topic into a few categories: 

Culture Exchange/Travel

Curriculum Education

Punishment Reform

Personality Building

Support for Families

Online/Print Campaign

We wanted to give our self time to dissect each of these and write the first thing that came to mind, whenever it came to us. We limited our time to ensure that we did not go overboard, but we did allow ourselves to think B I G .

I believe at this point we feel good about our topic, but we are definitely feeling the anxiety of wanting to chop this list down further. We still know how challenging it is, but we are finding our superhero capes along the way. 

We still need to discuss our findings a bit more in depth and our choices on the document. Many of our ideas overlapped so we had to condense that. We are still very much in the sharing articles that are relevant phase. 

One of my favorite categories - the one that I am interested the most - is the punishment reforms. I truly believe that developing something for this would be crucial because most common detention experience is sitting in a room for an extra hour or two. You could do homework or just sit in silence while a faculty member watches you. 

But what if we made detention about learning? I mean... that would be a punishment for some students who don’t enjoy learning as much as others. We could also look into meditation for detention or have less police offers in schools to ease the anxiety students face when they go to schools with that environment.

I can’t wait to start getting into more “juicy” stuff...

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

Education, we’re coming for you...

We've honed down on a focus and it feels great to get to this point. I was able to enjoy Halloween to the fullest! The conversations that lead to the problem definition ultimately allowed us to feel comfortable tackling one avenue - and giving it our all.

Three of the hardest things I felt I had to deal with during this definition phase was:

1. Not holding on to my idea. 2. Cutting down to a focus because there is so much interesting data. 3. Realizing we can't help everyone.

This is not an easy subject - and that's what attracts us all to it so much. I know the group ultimately felt that the raw discussions show the importance and the passion within each one of us.

We're dreaming big and we are going to keep dreaming. I’m excited for the ideation phase and to see how different we all decide to tackle this.

Oh, I still have my mustache because I want it to be Halloween every day.

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

Conjunction Junction

My Mustache

My mustache is thick and dark brown. The five-o’clock shadow is coming in and making the mustache grow. My mustache is raising awareness for Men’s Health (Movember) and it’s not only for men. 

My mustache is thick but dark brown. The five-o’clock shadow is coming in, but making the mustache grow. My mustache is raising awareness for Men’s Health (Movember) but it’s not only for men.

Conor McGregor

Conor McGregor is the Muhammad Ali of our generation and he’s Irish. He is a dual champion in the UFC and makes the most money out of anyone in the roster and also fought once in professional boxing against the best boxer of our generation. His fighting nickname is Notorious and his son is a Jr.  

Conor McGregor is the Muhammad Ali of our generation but he’s Irish. He is a dual champion in the UFC but makes the most money out of anyone in the roster, but also fought once in professional boxing against the best boxer of our generation. His fight nickname is Notorious but his son is a Jr.  

Beats

Beats are the best headphones and you can get them in multiple colors and they also block out noise. Beats are great to use in class when it’s hard to hear other people talking and they are also great for recording music. I love wearing my beats to class because of Dr. Dre and we never get to meet him. 

Beats are the best headphones but you can get them in multiple colors but they also block out noise. Beats are great to use in class when it’s hard to hear other people talking but they are also great for recording music. I love wearing my beats to class because of Dr. Dre but we never get to meet him.

iPhone

My iPhone is white and has a case black case. It charges fast and one is able decrease the lighting so that it charges faster and you can also decrease the blue light. Having an iPhone is convenient during group chats and you can even rename your group if everyone has an iPhone. The new iPhone group chat feature is awesome and reminds me of Facebook’s new features.

My iPhone is white but has a case black case. It charges fast but one is able decrease the lighting so that it charges faster but you can also decrease the blue light. Having an iPhone is convenient during group chats but you can even rename your group if everyone has an iPhone. The new iPhone group chat feature is awesome but reminds me of Facebook’s new features.

Frosted Flakes

Tony the Tiger made me love Frosted Flakes and I eat it almost every morning. I currently have a box next to my desk and it’s almost finished. They are sweet and taste great with my 2% milk. Not all people like them and they’re GREAATTTTTT!

Tony the Tiger made me love Frosted Flakes but I eat it almost every morning. I currently have a box next to my desk but it’s almost finished. They are sweet but taste great with my 2% milk. Not all people like them but they’re GREAATTTTTT!

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

Problem Definition

My Definition:

How can we develop a vocational curriculum that is relevant and aids in reducing recidivism rates in U.S. prisons while increasing employment for former inmates?

I chose to tackle this avenue after extensive research on the subject. I grew extremely passionate about vocational curriculum after reading an article published on PBS that highlighted the need for vocational schools that teach “dying” trades. More than ever, there’s a need for welders, masons, plumbers, and electricians; and with America focusing on STEM, we lost the focus for these types of professions. Combining this research with what I know about the U.S. prison system and it’s education, they go hand in hand; especially with the work labor prisons provide to self-maintain. As we kept researching, more statistics came to light about how many people go back to jail after leaving. We also found statistics of programs that do well, however need to be implemented in ALL prisons, not just some.

Ultimately, I was inspired by an article Brittny sent out to the group that tackled this avenue. The document had statistical data to demonstrate the need for more education systems in prisons. 

I believe my definition/avenue was appreciated by my group. It offered another spin to Allyssa’s problem definition. My definition did offer a solution to the problem, which I believe made us rethink everything since we did not want to discuss the outcome. That is always a challenge. 

Group Definition:

How can we change early education systems in the U.S. to decrease prison rates within racial minority groups?

If you take a look at everyone’s individual problem, you’ll notice they are all very similar. We all wanted to tackle education and prison. We all also wanted to decrease prison rates. I believe that Brittny and Mohammed had more of a racial spin to in. Allyssa and I wore more of an education hat. We wanted to educate prisoners so that they could: 

1. Be able to better their lives after being incarcerated. 

2. Become educated so they don’t come back.

Together, we combined our definitions to tackle race, education, and decreasing prison rates. In hindsight, they all play a pivotal role to our problem and all intermingle somehow. If we do this, recidivism rates reduce and employment rates could increase. 

Make sure to take a look at everyone’s individual problem definition: 

@brittflint . @mobehairy . @allyssamoscotte

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WOAH.

After this week’s research, it was amazing to see how many options of education we have in place for prison systems. I think this motivated us more because we realized two things:

1. We have education in place that needs to be better.

2. There IS a problem and now we need to look into it.

Mohammed brought up something interesting in his reflection that I wanted to highlight. 75% of people who went to jail, go back to jail. This is something that is truly shocking to me and something I feel we need to deep into further to see exactly why they go back.

The Morphological Analysis was a great tool to challenge us in finding the route of what we wanted to tackle for this project. I think right now; with the bigger picture in mind, it’s hard to take these step by step approaches. We were challenged as a group to make sense of this Analysis.

All in all, I think we have a great starting point. Now, it’s time to beef it up with some research before putting on our superhero capes.

I know we can pull this off. It’s challenging, but we can do it.

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

Morphological Analysis

This week, we decided to break our problem down into two categories: Education Systems and Correctional Facilities.

Here’s our Google Spreadsheet for a better view of the table and its content: https://docs.google.com/a/usc.edu/spreadsheets/d/1MIjLNR8qPLXBATSmzbQi30gmOCGtsRAyPugfLynN5j0/edit?usp=sharing

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I Wonder...

...why people go to jail? But it stems beyond that.

The more and more I research, the more I see the impact we could have on something that is rarely talked about. Why do we not feel education is important? I DON’T GET IT. Its truly frustrating. 

Now I’m seeing the impact education could have on prisons and I get aggravated. There are so many inmates wanting to pursue education during their incarceration who are not able to because of a lack of funding.

How many more facts do people need to understand this is a problem? Today, an estimated 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the United States. 

Yet, budgets seem to get cut.

Look - I get it. You probably think there are other things that need more attention. At first, I wasn’t the most excited to research this topic. But now, I see the importance. 

Let me paint a picture for you.

If we focused on educating our prisoners, we could easily lower the recidivism rate, increate employment, and reduce violence. Don’t believe me? I found a website that tailors to expanding educational opportunities for inmates in 12 California correctional facilities. 

http://www.prisoneducationproject.org

Their Reintegration Academy consists of courses in Academic Orientation, Life Skills, and Career Development. These are done in modules and allows the participant to receive a certificate upon completion. During the 9th week, the program hosts a job fair--inviting 25 local employers to meet, greet, and interview the participants.

We need something like this worldwide. But I need to continue to answer the many “whys” that will come after that. I also need to accept my frustration. 

Vent over.

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

Success at First...

If I ruled the world...

Imagine that?

...prisons would have adequate access to education to reduce recidivism. We’ll see reductions in crime, savings to taxpayers, and long-term contributions to the safety and well-being of the communities to which formerly incarcerated people return.

“The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) reported in 2011 that nearly 7 in 10 people who are formerly incarcerated will commit a new crime, and half will end up back in prison within three years.“

These facts alone are motivating factors. If you think about it, people eventually rejoin society. So it is absolutely crucial that we develop programs and tools to effectively.

What can be gained from accomplishing this?

Increased Employment

Long-Term Cost-Efficiency

Violence Education

Better Lives for Families

Our group would feel insanely proud after all the hard work, dedication and research. Ultimately, we would gain a sense of fulfillment, as this topic had ties to each and every one of us on a personal level. Our one goal discussed when first looking at this project was ensuring that we would tackle something that was meaningful enough to make an impact in the world.

Success achieved.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

[joelisacoolkid-blog]

Contingency Management

Limits:

We are all not extremely knowledgeable on the subject at hand, however, have personal experiences that ties us to this problem. 

Different time zones - hard to collaborate.

Personal lives.

Capabilities (collective & individual):

Social awareness

Open to tackling a difficult subject

Business & Design backgrounds

Research

Adaptability

All have individual motivations

Intention:

Learn what the current state is and how it can improve. Then tackle potential solutions.

See how our research can impact or influence our direction.

Gaps:

Knowledge --> improve with research.

Access to powerful influences of these institutions.

Goals:

Allow ourselves time for research and for idea to sit with us.

Understand what is truly happening and how people get themselves in these situations [prison / education].

Learn from other Countries.

Map out our process.

Stay on the same page.

Be involved in entire process.

How we will be successful:

Keep each other in the loop with schedules.

Time zones and job hours play a pivotal role to ensuring our success.

Meet deadlines set for each other.

Create and adhere group calendar.

Understand that there will be sacrifices we have to make.

Also means that sometimes one person won’t be able to make it. Let’s fill each other in and still meet whenever needed.

Communicate regularly.

Stay in it. Keep researching.

During our busy weeks, let’s help each other out.

Sharing resources.

Having each other's back.

Reward:

Free time.

Consequences:

Shouldn’t happen.

If it does, we will be honest and have open conversation.