From Prototype to Existing Service
Prototype image on the left, shipped version on the right
During my time with the NYC Mayor’s Office, I worked on Growing Up NYC. I helped expand it from a service for parents of small children to a service for young adults. In order to make this happen I talked with and co-designed with young people ages 15-24+. In these sessions, I learned about their perspectives on finances, mental health and how they wanted to explore what NYC has to offer. Our team (fellow digital designers, our deputy design design director and PM for the project) went over their feedback in debrief gatherings where we mapped themes and patterns. After mapping themes and patterns, we explored how these items might look as resources that could live in the expansion of Growing Up NYC.
One piece of the expansion that I am particularly proud of is Inspirations. It is a concept that I designed and built for testing in Invision. Inspirations started out as Featured New Yorker but became Inspirations through feedback in our co-design sessions. Inspirations highlights various paths that a young person might take. I created it because the people we talked to mentioned that they would like to hear stories and advice from their peers. In the prototype, I created stories based on stories that were shared in previous research sessions. During our testing sessions, I enjoyed hearing the feedback of our workshop participants and learning what resounded with them.
While relaying research findings and sharing a content strategy draft with Growing Up NYC product manager, I mentioned that a peer should nominate another peer to share. While I am not sure if the peer nomination system has been implemented, I am happy to see that Inspirations exists as a resource within Growing Up NYC and to see some of the youth I talked to featured!
Please check out how the youth of New York are sharing what they know by exploring Generation NYC.