Running head: COMMUNITY ACTION PROJECT PAPER 1

Community Action Project - Smart GEN Society

Kelly Arnold, Keegan Brown, Crispin Corpuz, Toluwa Davies, Anna Diederich,

Nour Elrokhsi, Hayden Ernst, Tessa Nuismer, Luke Partusch, and Ell Waters

University of Nebraska at Omaha

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Over the past few months, our team has been working with Smart GEN Society (SGS) in

hopes of enhancing their national presence and furthering their financial success. Through our

work with SGS, we have grown as leaders, design thinkers, and teammates, working closely with

founder and CEO Amie Konwinski and her staff to determine and help solve the most pressing

challenges and issues facing the company. Our work with Smart GEN has been focused around

human-centered design to identify challenges in the nonprofit agency that we can resolve

through the process outlined below.

Smart GEN Society Background

Smart GEN Society (SGS) is a nonprofit organization that strives to impact people in the

community to make smart online decisions in today’s digital age. SGS was founded by Amie

Konwinski, mother of five and military veteran, who is passionate about making a difference by

informing students, parents, and teachers about possible dangers of social media and being

unsafe on the web. SGS was the first organization in the region to combat these specific issues

and they continue to lead local communities in the fight against unsafe practices on the Internet.

SGS seeks to impact students by surrounding them with the tools necessary to be safe and

responsible online. This includes partnering with schools, giving presentations to students at

these schools, as well as holding workshops with teachers and parents. Because of these actions,

students are able to rely on the foundation built by SGS to make smart decisions. Their mission

is to “empower smart choices in a digital world” (Omaha Media Group LLC, 2019).

SGS empowers these students to focus on their privacy and safety online without having

to sacrifice who they are in the process. They do not encourage students to stop using social

media, but rather they focus on helping students rethink the ways they are using it. Smart GEN

Society is filling a need in a community by addressing the overuse of electronics by the youngest
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generation. As stated on the SGS website, “the average screen time for kids and teens ages 8 to

18 is 7 hours a day” a statistic they are hoping to change (Omaha Media Group LLC, 2019).

They teach them to form good habits and implement these habits into their digital lifestyle.

Problem Statement

Through our design thinking process, it became apparent that the growth of Smart GEN

Society was being hindered by their lack of funding and inability to circulate their message to a

wider audience. This shortfall is largely attributed to the fact that the donors are seeking specific

data to emphasize SGS’s impact on the community before they choose to commit to their cause.

The minimal data SGS has collected from their surveys is not viewed by the donors as gripping

enough to warrant immediate action. The challenge for us was to find a way to gather and

present this data so that it is easily accessible, not only to potential donors, but to the general

public as well.

Review Design Thinking Process

The first step of the design thinking process is to empathize with those in and around the

organization. This step is crucial in proceeding to the subsequent stages of the process because

in order to create an effective solution, we must keep both the users’ and organization’s goals in

mind. For Smart GEN Society, our empathizing began when we were first introduced to Amie,

who explained to us the missions and goals of SGS. Each of us was then paired with an SGS

Board Member in order to conduct individual interviews and empathy probes. These empathy

probes prompted the interviewees to describe a specific past experience in detail, such as the last

board meeting they attended or the last time their kids were affected by social media. We then

charted their personal highs and lows as they described their experience in order to find pain

points and begin to discover what our team could do to resolve these points of conflict.
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Additionally, some of us attended an SGS presentation at Creighton University and participated

in a Ted Talk-style video recording session to interact with students. These experiences gave us

a comprehensive view of the organization and allowed us to begin thinking about how we could

positively impact SGS.

In order to organize and process the information that we gathered from our empathy

probes we conducted during our interviews, we completed point-of-view exercises which ask

who we met with, what we were surprised to learn, what we inferred from this information, and

what possible solution we think would be game-changing.

Using these empathy probes and point-of-view exercises, we proceeded to the define

stage of the design thinking process. In this phase, we analyzed and reviewed the information

we received from the empathy probes to specify the big challenge that we would create a

prototype around. There were several pain points we identified during the empathy stage that we

believed we could help with, and the numerous point-of-view exercises and empathy probes gave

us a clearer vision of which pressing issue Smart GEN Society needed assistance with the most.

Drawing from our empathy probes, we answered these questions in detail and discovered

multiple game-changers. We narrowed those down to just two: an ad campaign about the

dangers of social media (comparable to anti-smoking ads) and the creation of a more compelling

way to present data to donors. After identifying these ideas, a few team members collected more

applicable information through additional interviews with board members and some new issues

surfaced. We realized that although the ad campaign would be valuable for SGS and spreading

their message, this could not be effectively carried out without the necessary funding. Although

our team was passionate and excited about this potential marketing campaign, we recognized that

the most urgent issue, namely funding, would need to be solved before we could start to dream
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big. This forced us to slightly backtrack in our design thinking process, and we began to

evaluate the new information from the more recent interviews that we had not ideated on yet.

Additionally, the team recognized that soon, we would need to present our top ideas to Amie for

her approval and input, so we began identifying the leading ideas to include in our proposal to

Amie.

While analyzing this information, three major issues surfaced. The first was that SGS

lacks donors and funding, and that the biggest reason for this is that donors are seeking detailed,

accessible, and engaging information gathered from the consumers outlining the specific need

for Smart GEN in the community. Potential donors are looking for proof of impact from SGS,

and they especially want to see that Amie’s presentations are making a substantial difference in

the students and schools she reaches out to. The challenge for our team would be to find a way

to present information to donors in a more engaging way so they can readily see the pressing

issues that SGS is trying to address. The second issue we discovered was that parent sessions are

extremely effective in peaking parent interest, but there are little to no follow-up measures in

place to take advantage of this and collect contact information from the parents to keep them

involved in SGS. Our interviews also indicated that parents could be a potential donor source, so

to take advantage of this interest from parents would be advantageous for SGS. The third

challenge that was prevalent in almost all interviews was that there are “not enough Amie’s” and

that SGS’s goal of going nationwide is being impeded by the fact that Amie cannot cover enough

ground doing these presentations completely on her own. Although Amie is extremely skilled at

speaking and passionate about the message of her presentations, the issue of balancing her time

was brought to our attention various times throughout our interviews and empathy probes. We

presented these to Amie and asked her to prioritize and select which issue is most pressing in
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order to better focus our efforts. After an involved meeting with Amie, she indicated that finding

a way to better present data to donors was the priority for SGS.

After determining the most pressing issue Smart GEN needed our help with, we began

the ideation phase. To get possible solutions to the addressed problem, the group worked to

express their ideas loosely on sticky notes. All group members were encouraged to speak up

with their opinions and ideas, no matter how big or small. As a group, we analyzed all of our

proposals and ranked and combined them in order to formulate a better solution. We iterated

through this interactive ideation cycle as a team multiple times, discussing different points,

reviewing pros and cons, and often talking ourselves in and out of ideas. As time went on, the

possible solutions we were presenting to each other were not living up to what we considered

“game-changing.” This cycle continued with the group addressing the problem with varying

solutions as we closely approached the hard deadline with what appeared to be little progress.

We had narrowed the design down to the creation of a program that would process the

surveys to give summarized data as well as attractive graphics. This idea not only addressed a

problem that Amie Konwinski had entering data manually, but it also would help present

information in an appealing way to potential donors. We anticipated that this solution would

benefit Smart GEN Society for years to come, but there were still doubts from team members as

to whether or not this idea was “game-changing.” In an effort to get an outside opinion, a

meeting was scheduled with Dr. Shipp, our team mentor. This meeting resulted in a greater

sense of confidence in our original idea and an assurance that this solution would be profitable to

the future success and growth of SGS. To begin prototyping our final solution, we created a wire

frame for the user interface/front end as well as the back end. However, this is not the final

product, just a step to help better visualize the front end of the program.
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Once a prototype has been created, we can present it to the SGS team and get their honest

opinion on the developing program. Their feedback while testing will help determine if the

program is successful. With a rough development of the prototype we will be able to make small

adjustments as we approach the final product in order to make the process smoother. By making

adjustments throughout the creation of the project we will be able to accommodate many features

and tailor the program to SGS’s needs.

Prototype Description and Proposed Prototype Solution

The prototype will be an easily accessible data analytics program—a fully front-end and

back-end program likely developed in either Python or Java—for Smart GEN Society to easily

analyze the data that comes from their surveys and, at the same time, create a presentable

document of the data at the click of a few buttons. The technical summary, strictly of numbers

and no figures, will be given in an organized spreadsheet while the figures of this summary will

be located in a separate document in an eye-catching, easily digestible form beyond the plain,

bland graphing and plotting capabilities of a program like Microsoft Excel.

The program will have its own user interface with options to upload data in the form of a

spreadsheet, summarize data by label, and the ability to create graphs, plots, and various other

ways of representing data impressively. Moreover, the program will be able to take both

longitudinal and cross-sectional data (as available by Smart GEN Society) to show different

categories of impacted demographics (students, parents, school districts, age groups, etc.).

Specifically, this program will allow our primary facilitator from SGS, Amie Konwinski, to

download the data from her surveys from her normal routine, upload it to this data analytics

program, and gain both a numerical and figural summary of the data, both of which will be in

presentable form to donors, students, schools, etc.

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Anticipated Impact

The anticipated impact of providing a data analytics program for Smart GEN Society is to

allow the CEO, Amie Konwinski, to have an easier way to collect data from presentation

surveys. This will give Amie more time to focus on other tasks within Smart GEN Society when

the data can be collected and displayed with ease. The expectation for this program is that it will

gather data from pre-presentation surveys and display it to students during the presentation, so

then they are able to reflect on their own responses throughout the presentation. The program

will allow more accessible and easily transferable visuals not only for the presentations but also

for the website and app. Having the graphics present on the website will allow donors, parents,

and anyone interested in learning more about Smart GEN Society to have the ability to see the

impact the organization is making on the community based on the up-to-date and informational

data. The data will help to bring in donors who will fund their mission and help spread SGS’s

message to make a larger impact. By collecting the data and presenting it in an attractive format,

the process will be more concise and manageable. This data analytics program is expected to

allow for an effortless conversion from data to graphs.

Next Steps to Implementation

Once we have a completed program to analyze the data in a presentable way, we will

provide program access to members of the Smart GEN Society team so they can begin

implementing it in their presentation. We will give the SGS team a tutorial on how to take the

data and upload it to the program as well as show them the unique features within the program.

From here, Amie will be able to take data from any survey and input it into the program to track

their progress. From the given surveys, she will be given an easy-to-read report that she can then
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share with the school to give them immediate results. This engaging data will also be critical in

donor acquisition because Smart GEN Society’s impact will be evident.

Summary of Group Process

Our team worked cohesively utilizing each team member’s strengths and abilities to work

towards innovating our design challenge. Crispin was our designated communication line

between Amie and our team. Additionally, he took minutes during our meetings to formally

document group ideas and motions. Anna effectively offered constructive feedback and ensured

that everyone’s ideas were conveyed accurately to the group. Her writing strengths were

especially critical in leading the compilation of the group’s ideas and concepts into a formal

document. Tessa was especially efficient in bringing a sense of empathy to the group and

initiating a “yes and” ideation in every meeting. Her assessments of the nonprofit and her

interview with her board member were significant to the furthering of the group’s success.

Toluwa’s positive attitude contributed greatly to group morale, and he was always the first to

volunteer to attend events or complete tasks for the group. Our prototyping phase was heavily

supported by the technical skills of Keegan. His experience and knowledge in technology

greatly influenced the progress and creation of a detailed wireframe. Luke brought many

innovative ideas to the group and fostered an atmosphere of positivity during our meetings. He

was quick to add on a plethora of new and creative thoughts to the ideation phase and helped us

analyze the pros and cons at each stage. Hayden initiated the empathy stage by conducting the

first interview with his board member, which allowed our team to get a jump start on the design

thinking process. Nour was able to empathize and use personal experiences to greatly contribute

to the ideation stage. Her communication skills were greatly appreciated by the team when she

updated us on the SGS presentations. Kelly greatly enhanced the overall team communication
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by helping to organize meetings and ensure all members were accountable for their group work.

Her dedication to the group was apparent in her constant and meaningful contributions. Ell was

instrumental in the creative aspect of the creation of our prototype and brought unique

viewpoints and ideas to the ideation stage.

Our team ran cohesively and worked towards our common goal of helping Smart GEN

Society to further their mission. We equally distributed responsibilities and used each group

members strengths to positively progress the project. Each group member gained leadership

skills as well as a deep understanding of design thinking by applying it to a real life scenario. As

a group, we were able to commit to weekly meetings so that we were all informed and on track

for our deadlines. Our team was driven by our passion for Smart Gen Society’s mission and our

personal connection to the change they are making.

References

Omaha Media Group LLC. (2019). Smart Gen Society. Retrieved from

https://www.smartgensociety.org/.