What if we put students in the driver's seat of a new kind of R&D to transform education? One that provided a platform for engaging students more fully in a real world effort that also involved faculty, advisors, school administrators, mentors, role models, parents and community members. Could we improve a student's education experience? Could we take it a step further and create an entirely new education system?
The Business Innovation Factory’s Student Experience Lab explores how good design can improve the quality of experience for students by not only listening to the voices of the students but also engaging them in the conceptual development of wholly new educational experiences.
Using BIF’s student-centered participatory design approach we:
The Student Experience Lab uses a human centered approach and rapid experimentation to identify opportunity areas that will affect broad based change across the education system. We rely on the real world to provide both powerful new insights and the appropriate conditions and environments for experimentation with transformational ideas.
The Lab embodies BIF’s mission to connect, inspire and transform through four areas of activity: projects, gatherings, knowledge bases and storytelling. Projects are the activity hub of the lab. They allow us to research, design, prototype and test new models of education. Gatherings bring together local and expert communities and allow us to engage them in collaborative innovation. Knowledge bases provide tools for others and us to use in assessing or influencing individual and community student experiences. And, storytelling allows us to share what we learn with the world.
The underpinnings of the approach as we practice it are modeled largely on design thinking, a way of thinking that’s been core to the design process for many years, and more recently, has begun influencing everything from Fortune 500 companies, to top business schools to social change.
There are a host of good reasons why we model our approach on thinking like a designer:
We believe that transformational innovation begins with a deeper understanding of the human needs within a system. With a human-centered focus, we gather multiple perspectives and bring them to bear on the problems at hand. With a human-centered focus, we generate powerful new insights. We also involve the people - in our case, students - at the center of any experience in the solution development process itself.
We get students directly involved in improving their own college experience. This "participatory design" technique engages students in an ongoing innovation process that is both interdisciplinary and action-oriented. And it's an important example of how organizations can proactively put students in the driver’s seat of their own internal R&D activity.
As the Student Experience Lab thinks and builds a substantial body of knowledge, we also think it’s critical to do. Our thinking informs our doing and our doing informs our thinking. We don’t start with the answer in order to prove we’re right. Instead, we experiment, try things, learn what works, apply it and measure its impact.
We're always recombining things that don’t normally go together. We borrow from different fields and disciplines and apply them in new ways and in new domains.
Our process works reliably, no matter what issue we’re investigating.
Design is one of the best ways we know to shift the way a problem is understood, to generate new insights and options and to create new value.
Chris is BIF's student experience lab director. She also serves as a member of the senior leadership team and and has been with the organization since its inception in 2004. Additionally, she curates BIF's annual Collaborative Innovation Summit, named by Mashable as one of the 'Top 7 Places to Watch Great Minds in Action.'
Drawing on multi-disciplinary skills in human-centered research and iterative design, Christine Costello leads work in the BIF Experience Labs. Christine came to BIF from Razorfish, where she most recently served as the Associate Research Director in Razorfish's strategy group. Part sociologist, part design thinker and part futurist, Christine believes that the transformation of experiences starts with a search for meaning — making sense of the logical and emotional connections that people make in their lives as they work, learn, and communicate.
Jeff is responsible for all aspects of BIF's online identity. His work includes interactive design, development and strategy for the main BIF website, the Nursing Home of the Future and Student Experience Labs project websites, BIF's monthly online correspondence, and new digital commuications initiatives. In addition to his work at BIF, Jeff is an adjunct professor in both the FAV department at the Rhode Island School of Design and the film studies department at Rhode Island College.
James is BIF's Multimedia Producer. He creates audio, video, and print pieces for BIF’s Innovation Story Studio and helps tell the stories of the participants in our BIF Experience Labs. In addition, he also serves as a Research Assistant to the Experience Lab teams.
Katherine Hypolite comes to BIF to help further engagement in our rapidly growing community. She believes in the power of innovation and how it produces change in our world. This sentiment will be instrumental to her new position as Community Engagement Manager.
Sam is a recent graduate of Johnson & Wales University where she completed her bachelor's degree in Computer Graphics & New Media. While attending JWU, she served as a tutor and teaching assistant, as well as Editor-In-Chief of the campus newspaper. Game for anything and able to switch gears at any moment, Sam will help bring BIF's digital storytellin to life through various multimedia channels, in print, and on the web.
We believe in the power of a platform that allows for real-world experimentation and are focused on:
In the conversation about innovation in education, the voice of the student is often underappreciated, if not totally overlooked. Yes, we want the best for our students. But when do we take the time to listen, to observe, to embrace, to understand? Bringing the first-person perspective to the table is critical and we are bullish about building our work around the students whose experiences deserve a whole lot more.
Design can discover, challenge and prototype new terrain. The best design identifies and develops new possibilities, new opportunities, and new solutions. The Student Experience Lab embraces the process, the mindset, the journey that is design.
Innovators are experimenters. We tinker. We understand that good ideas evolve and get better with time and tweaks. Sometimes we seek a little change and sometimes we just want to blow things up and start again. Our education system is in crisis and we must be willing to trying more stuff.
We love the grey space between disciplines and those environments on the edge of systems where freedom to explore is clear sailing. Sometimes all it takes is a brave soul willing to create a “duty free” zone where small groups of people and students can try new stuff. (see #3 above) This is the home of the Student Experience Lab and we are always looking for new places and partners with the same determination we have to change the world.
Not to put a damper on subject matter expertise - which we wholeheartedly embrace – but we also believe that you don’t need to be an education expert to be an education innovator. Diversity of perspective is big in the lab.
Storytelling is magic. It changes perceptions and gets people moving, motivated, active, and present in the world around. Our stories are about students and our lab is built on networks that carry their voice, distribute their needs, activate their wishes, fill their voids and bring them to listeners in search of ways to help, to innovate, and ultimately transform.
We value your feedback. Please leave us a message.