Outline
Individual Idea Generation
How might we help young girls to feel confident, comfortable, and safe while skating at skateparks
30 ideas included bellow
New Warm-Up Game
The outline for my improve game is as follows: Have a group sit in a circle. Give them a title for a story “End of the world”, “Talking dog”, “Best worst day ever”. Instruct the group to start and end the story in one round — each person contributing one clause. Then instruct the group to develop the story with two and then 3 rounds.
Every member of my group was already somewhat familiar with each other. This helped set a familiar tone where no one was super concerned or creatively inhibited. The improv game still seemed to help loosen everyone up. From start to end it took 12 minutes.
Session Organization
Group participants
Marisol
39 year old professor of philosophy and gender studies at Metro State University. Avid roller derby player, new to ramp skating but aggressive learner. Very kind, generous, accepting, and sympathetic.
Brett
26 year old medium sized male. Mechanical engineer with degrees in Physics, Applied Math, and Mechanical Engineering. Fluent in Russian and double kickflips. Skateboarder since the age of 10, refuses to wear a helmet but is otherwise sound of mind. Kind, intelligent, generous, mildly concussed.
Eliza
Badass roller girl, jammer for the Rockits (catch her at the next MNRG bout!). New to ramp skating but very confident on skates. Joined the debutaunt roller girls before she knew how to skate. Works in marketing. Happy, kind, gifted skater, strong willed.
Maddie
Sophomore studying electrical engineering at the UMN. Minnesota roller girls hopeful with strong jammer prospects. Soft spoken, kind, great hair. No portrait, see bellow.
It felt that the universe did not want the meet up of these 4 wonderful people to happen. The initial meeting was scheduled for 2pm at the Roy Wilkens auditorium before derby practice started at 3:30pm. We were informed at 1:30pm that day that the Roy would be closed prior to practice due to a junior derby practice. As per the suggestion of one of my teammates, we decided to move the meeting to a Dunn Bros down the street. After contacting the brainstormees about the change I called the Dunn Bros to make sure that they had room for us only to learn that they were planning to close at 2 that day. Every other day they close at 5, but that day they were closing at 2. I asked the Dunn Bros employee if he had any recommendations for coffee shops nearby that had room for a group of 5 people, he recommended Hygga coffee which was just a couple blocks down. I recontacted the brainstormees about the second change and all seemed to be right with the world. Brett and I went to Hygga with thank-you donuts for the brainstormees only to find Hygga locked up for planned construction that was conveniently not listed on the website. Quite distressed we still met up with everyone in front of Hygga — it was a pleasently sunny Sunday afternoon — and then walked over the Union Depot with the hope that there would be no way that it would be locked. We ended up holding our session at the restaurant near the front entrance of the Depot much to the disgruntlement of our waitress. The entire session (improve, personal commentary, brainstorm) took approximately 1 hour.
Before conducting the brainstorming session and after the improv game I had each person describe their connection/experience with the problem at hand. Everyone had a pretty distinct experiences that were interesting and helpful to hear about before the brainstorm. The following topics were recurring within the personal commentaries of these women skaters and a man who skates with women skaters.
- Feeling comfortable taking up space in a male dominated environment
- Feeling like they are representing all of women when they skate (lots of pressure to be good, no space to learn/mess up)
- The importance of recognizing success and celebrating personal victories
Sorting and Voting
The final categories were physical products, experience based services, and female visibility. Although the ideas in the physical products category were really the only ideas that would be use-able moving forward, all of the ideas were useful in helping to better understand the issue.
The voting process that was used was similar to the method used in class — two colors of stickers. An image was regretfully not captured of this part of the process. The top ideas are listed bellow in the next part of the blog post.
Top Ideas
Timeline
10/17 — Start working on individual idea generation, get at least 10 ideas down! Spend some time making those sketches, this is something you’re passionate about don’t skimp out!
10/18 — Finish up idea generation, plan warm up game, reach out to CIB Minneapolis to try and get a brainstorm group together. Bribe with beer+candy. Aim for the weekend.
10/19 — Finish finishing up idea generation + plan brainstorming session
10/20 — Plan brainstorming session, gather brainstorming session materials
10/21+10/22 — Run brainstorming session, be sure to record what happens in great detail! Take at least 20 pictures.
10/23 — Consolidate/sort brainstorming session data. Start blog post EARLY.
10/24 — Rank top ideas — detail them in design notebook. Maybe come up with some sketches
10/25 — Finish blog post ❤