CS Not Alone Project — Jenna Lateano

LGBTQ+ Youth Community Inclusivity in Rural Northern California: the Not Alone Project

Duration:

August - December 2021

Team Members:

Jenna Lateano, Andrew Clifton, Daniela Zamora, Hunter Hernandez

Problem:

There has been a steady increase in youth leaving the rural areas of Northern California to live in a larger city. The continuous outflow of people from rural regions poses many issues, including urban expansion, environmental pollution, and the depletion of natural resources.

Research

Key Findings

We realized throughout our research that our content and presentation format must be easily digestible for older faculty and staff for our service to be the most effective. There is also a desperate need for education on addressing homophobia, hate speech, hate crimes in schools. While most students today accept the LGBTQ+ community, there may be a few who believe differently. Not addressing archaic beliefs in some faculty and staff allows ignorant students to continue spreading homophobic practices.

Primary & Secondary Research

We completed seven literature reviews on understanding the current climate in rural high schools surrounding LGBTQ+ discussions. Unfortunately, we found no resources specific to the LGBTQ+ community that are readily available and easily accessible to all. Safety was another main point that was brought up in multiple readings. While one article explained the LGBTQ+ youth is equally spread across urban and rural areas, rural youth are less likely to live openly, with concerns for safety being the most common reason to remain closeted.
We surveyed the local Chico student population anonymously about their experience in high school regarding the discussion of LGBTQ+ experiences and available resources. Of those surveyed, 92% said LGBTQ+ resources were not available to them, with 85% of participants believing that these resources would benefit the greater community. When choosing to specify which resources would be most important, many people highlighted a need to define language associated with the LGBTQ+ community and how to be a supportive and accepting ally.
We included two optional directed storytelling questions as part of our anonymous survey. More than half the participants elected to participate, most outlining stories of blatant homophobia they witnessed or experienced in high school, many local to the Chico area. There were a handful of mentions surrounding suicide due to bullying that was homophobic and a lack of support.
We were able to have an LGBTQ+ Chico State student fill out a diary talking about their desires for the Chico State community. They expressed gratitude for living in a “blue bubble of college students in a red county” but wished there were more visible safe spaces for LGBTQ+ members to meet and support one another.

Service Design Tools

I was responsible for designing the layout of each slide as well as revising the content and reformatting the visual aspects of each tool included.

Our territory map is an extension of our stakeholder map that includes trends and themes that we believe to be important to our service outline.

We developed three personas who may interact with our service. The first was Allie, a closeted high school lesbian who may feel validated by our service.

The second was Ron, a conservative who believes schools are spreading a “liberal agenda” by addressing concerns of homophobia.

Last is Tom, a high school student that wants to learn how to be a better ally.

Our journey map follows our persona, Allie, through a typical high school day where she feels isolated from her peers due to her sexuality. However, as she leaves school, she sees a flyer for our presentation service being offered at her high school the following week and feels hopeful about her future.

Our scenario explores what a potential day in persona Allie's life might be like.

Our low fidelity blueprint roughly outlines the front and backstage interactions with our presentation service. We have marked potential pain points as well as several touchpoints.

We created a stakeholder map to visualize our different key constituents for this service.

My Role

I delegated work to other team members and kept everyone as on task as possible. I followed up with group members who did not do their work and had to finish uncompleted work that members refused to finish/revise most of the time.
I organized our Google Drive and created clear checklists of tasks for each member to complete.
I was often the person giving most of the group presentations and giving updates to the class.
I redesigned all of our exploratory research to be easy to understand and updated all exploratory research to reflect any feedback given by our professor or other peers. I designed our mock presentation slides and researched the content that was used. I wrote, designed, illustrated, and voiced over our first scenario.
I wrote and dispersed our survey material and analyzed all of our data from the surveys, directed storytelling, diary, and literature reviews.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was completing this group project remotely. Other group members may have felt a heightened sense of responsibility for the group's success in person. Often, members would leave our Zoom call without telling the team, and I would have to ask them to rejoin the call via Slack. I did have several group members who were incapable of completing work on time at an acceptable level of completion. This became beyond frustrating because some members would carelessly slop through work, jeopardizing the level of professionalism that the group should achieve in a project spanning an entire semester. When it was explained that their work was not up to par with the standard of achievement, they would often declare their work “good enough” and refuse to work on revisions.

Learnings

This was my first experience with service design. I enjoyed the process so much that I now consider service design one of my main career paths to explore. After speaking further with my professor about the service design industry, I learned about “wicked problems,” which my professor explained as in-depth issues without one straightforward solution. Working through wicked problems using service design tools is something I want to adjust my future career path to include.

Presentations

Group presentations for our midterm and final. I was responsible for creating the layout and design of the presentations as well as revising and reformatting the service design tools featured within both slide decks.

First Presentation

Final Presentation & Not Alone Project Content

Solution

Through our research, we found that youth identifying with the LGBTQ+ community often feel pressured to explore outside of rural communities to find acceptance. Therefore, we targeted the often associated homophobia in rural areas by creating a high school presentation service to create a safe space to have difficult conversations surrounding the LGBTQ+ community. Our service provides a presentation that educates students, faculty, and staff of all orientations about terms in the community, being a supportive ally, and providing real-world examples of homophobia today, all while validating experiences unique to the LGBTQ+ community.