Intersectional Content Strategy
How do we confront the realities of what we create and consider the consequences in an approachable manner? How do we move beyond empathy and create a culture of accountability and fair representation? Intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of one’s social and political identities (gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, etc.) might combine to create unique modes of discrimination.
My thesis advisor and I are always aware of the content since the tones and voices are significant in this product for encouraging young women to hold or even enhance their interests in engineering.
A fun story
The first thing that every programmer does when they learn a new language, this exciting moment when they see the <hello, world!> printed on the screen.
where it originally comes from?
The first known instance of the usage of the words “hello” and “world” together (without capital letters or exclamation mark) in computer literature occurred earlier, in Kernighan’s 1972 Tutorial Introduction to the Language B[1], with the following code:
main( ) {
extrn a, b, c;
putchar(a); putchar(b); putchar(c); putchar(‘!*n’);
}
a ‘hell’;
b ‘o, w’;
c ‘orld’;
Overall discussions/thoughts
My thesis advisor and I brainstormed the names of my product inspired by these categories.
Science, math, engineering terms
- hello, w
- Hello World
- Composite
- Flash Point
Famous women in STEM
- Persis S. Drell
- Provost at Stanford
Inspirational, motivational
- Path
How might we give women access to:
- Training
- Mentors
- AR good to build empathy
- A link — Melissa Teng is a civic designer who designed a VR experience to help women re-enter society after being in prison.
- Consider the whole user journey (could be useful for presentation). What happens before and after the user opens the product?
From Thesis Advisor’s words
- My current product team at work is making some considerations like your first prototype! For us, the problem is asking Facebookers to make time for career planning.
- The real nugget I saw in your first presentation was: increasing numbers of teenage girls studying engineering from age 16–23. I think this is the key issue to solve. Let’s think more about this as a how might we question.
- In the second prototype, focusing on the idea of telementoring is interesting. Access is an advantage. I wonder if you could push the AR aspect — I wonder what the advantage of using something like Animoji would be?
- I wouldn’t discard the concept of a STEM quiz quite yet. That information is engaging, and valuable data. Again, let’s think of data as part of this product.
- I hope you’ll reach conduct your own research as you work through this.
Fin.
