BRYANA SHIELDS
Visualizing
FUTURE
Military Families
A ten week collaborative design project with Deloitte and SCADpro. Our goal was to improve visualization of U.S. modern military families and create compelling proposition for the Department of Defense to alter it's development of policies to better fit modern military families.
Our Task:
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Visualize modern military families using existing research.
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Create a compelling proposition that policy programs must evolve to meet the needs of modern military families.
The Breakdown:
The Team:
My Role:
Duration:
A team of ten designers across multiple disciplines working collaboratively with Deloitte and SCADPro.
As Coordinator and Project Manager, I organized and synergized a team of ten multidisciplinary designers to a project timeline, monitored deliverables, and supported project team members with assigned tasks.
10 Weeks
Tools:
Figma
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
SOLIDWORKS
Keyshot
Miro
The Problem:
Current policies for military families only accurately represent the nuclear family; a heterosexual marriage, with typically the man enlisted in the military, and two children. Policies however, do not represent the ever-changing modern, and future military families.
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Military Families
Modern
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The Public
Milennials, Generation Z, Generation X
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Policy Makers
Department of Defence Workers, Pentagon Workers
Three Target Audiences:
The Process:
Research Methodology:
Surveys
In-depth Interviews
Affinity Mapping
Wireframes
Prototyping
My approach began with creating a research plan to set achievable timelines and then conveying this outline to stakeholders to align them with the project goal.
We did secondary research on the different military branches, fan overview of the Department of Defense, typical makeup of military family life, and existing military spouse programs, to name a few.
Key Insights
Empathy Map
Creating Empathy maps helped the team truly understand who we were designing for and why.
Persona Development
From emerging patterns in data that we collected and our emerging insights, we pieced together some modern persona to create an understanding of who these future military families are in order to move forward in our ideation process.
The Ideation:
Four Initial Concepts
The team developed four potential concepts that could be moved forward with to address multiple needs within our target audiences.
Client Feedback
Final Design: SPEX
SPEX is a two-part ecosystem
made up of SPEX System and SPEX Series
01
A digital plugin that uses modern and future day trends to assist DoD policymakers in collaborative policy change.
aims to...
Provide the DoD with a human-centered design process and a new perspective through collaboration that they will use to create policies that can be applied to modern and future military families.
A Three-Step Process
01
Study
In the study phase, policymakers review all relevant data for their agenda, both quantitative and qualitative, to condition them to keep the human at the center of their decisions.
01
Plan
In this phase, policymakers are creating personae from qualitative data that the DoD has collected. SPEX System has pre-built personae ready for policymakers to apply and edit, or they can create from scratch.
They build up the persona’s profile by adjusting all aspects of their life (ex. personality, soft skills, etc.)
01
Evolve
Here policy makers apply scenarios and existing policies to their persona profile. They are then able to see the impact that policy has on the personae's life, meaning the personae are no longer just visualized statistics but a representation of a real human being.
02
Spex Series are digital interactive stories highlighting the value of military members and their families.
aims to...
Provide younger generations with an accurate understanding of what military family life is like through interactive visuals.
01
Evoke empathy and foster relatability from the public, encouraging the DoD to push forward right agendas for modern military families.
02
Highlight the 90% of military jobs that involve career opportunities other than open combat.
03
The Story...
Based on the personae we created, the first SPEX Series story details the life of Mateo, a researcher in the navy, and his wife Sakura, a doctor in the army.
is a...
Scalable.
Interaction.
Digital.
The message "We're all in together" appears at the end of every story.
It leaves the audience with something to think about after they've seen the story and aims to break down barriers between the military and civilians by educating the public on the value of the evolving military and creating a connection through relatability.
Takeaways:
The Impact:
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Helped encourage the DoD to increase their current and future recruitment numbers with the help of SPEX System.
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Broke down barriers between the public and the military through SPEX Series's storytelling.
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Provided information to the public about innumerable military careers apart from just warfare, with the help of SPEX Series.
Reflections:
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Gained experience in leading an industry-level project and aligning team members from diverse backgrounds with the project goal.
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Clearly articulated design decisions and recommendations with the team and stakeholders.
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Wore many hats and took the responsibility of a Visual Designer, creating pitch decks for stakeholders.
What could be Improved?
I would have conducted user interviews with people from the public to hear their side of the story and bridge that gap, as well as spent more time on usability testing.