Education/StatusMeetings/2009-06-04

Mozilla Education Ancillary Meeting - June 4, 2009

Concept series and Design Challenge

engage a wider audience into contribution process
where do we get innovation from
innovation coming from developer side but there is much more out there
people who want to contribute but can't find vector in because not coder
brought in guys from humanize
ui guys, not developers
concept series doesn't have a topic
design challenge find solutions for specific problems we can formulate in a question
want to engage with universities and students as potential audience
want to engage with ux community
1st design challenge targeted university students
what makes it attractive to them?
do a mentorship tutoring phase
if we do mentoring and tutorial then might as well put up videos
next design challenge easier to enter (no prototype); teamed up with ux partners
starts to become more regular program getting more feedback from university
university in australia want to include design challenge into program
school in brazil accepts design challenge as credit work
mini-design jams; we goto to university and give them one challenge and a weekend to come up with ideas and then a platform to publish

How can we help Labs through Mozilla Education?

provide mini-grants one possibility
like approach of giving students a challenge
might be of interest in non-design courses
for design not just how tech works but how mozilla project works
information like that useful for mozilla
want a repository somewhere that would help people to do things, eg. how do you build a mockup, etc...
universities in usa and europe are not looking for these kind of resources
programs are sophisticated and the basic stuff we provide they don't want
but they still want real world examples
there is a pool of ux self-taught people who look at our materials
schools in other regions use beside courseware (developing world)
people don't know full tool-chain
need a baseline of skills
eg. make mockup is like make a patch
from side of teachers they find our videos basic
20% from 1st world school or rest from self taught or colleges with less resources

Skill level for resources

found design students struggled with html in first design challenge so dropped that
lower the barrier; mockup plus video explaining mockup
need high level areas list to help flesh out structure

Synergy

students asking, can you match me with someone who can code?
how do we do match making?
coding students will work on any project but aren't equipped to do design
for example: bespin = coding + design
we can actively go together for people instead of looking for just ux or just coding people

Turning ideas into reality

concern that we create a graveyard of great ideas
how do make organization as whole adopt these ideas or look at them
would like to be able to turn stuff from concept series into something tangible but it's a complex problem
one of the ideas for getting universities involved: cut and paste competition festival; designers battle live on stage
finals, semi-finals for students
Mozilla Education matching students who want projects with project that need done
if Labs had a couple of concepts that really should be implemented we could match those with coders
want to make sure whatever meta-project we choose has support from mozilla community (is wanted)
find customers within Mozilla (processing)

Action items