Discovery and Proposal

Discovery Research

Originally this project was media based. Upon meeting the client and talking through their goals and desires, I requested a week to conduct discovery research which would help clarify our client’s need, but also provide contextual knowledge to ourselves. However, while conducting this research it was clear, that if RACPD wanted to achieve their goals, a service design would be better suited to its needs.

The discovery research consisted of a week of in-person observations, embedding myself in the student’s experience as well as the service providers. This was followed by solo and group interviews to develop a rich understanding of the stakeholder’s needs and current environment.

Challenges

• The end user base is incredibly complex; a range of technical skills (Maths & English), cultural backgrounds, relationships with education, and attitudes

• The client has a low operational budget

• Functional Skills course ran over ten working days, with a very tight schedule

• a minority of RACPD tutors seemed entrenched in teaching practice and showed negative reactions to the project at the beginning, the project will have to create buy-in within the tutors.

• Need to ensure tutors (service providers) have good agency and buy-in with the project if the long-term impact is to be delivered.

• Ad-hoc approach to organising learner classes due to the pace and nature of the Royal Artillery

Discovery workshop with service providers

Environment

• RACPD operates around 15 sites nationwide, at various locations.

• Classrooms are ‘Roughly’ set into a higher and lower set, but one bottom set to the next will have a massive range in skill

• RACPD is based on RA military sites, which means site-visits have to be more calculated than before