Our mission was to help UNICEF Project Connect create a global, live map of school locations and their internet connectivity to eliminate the digital divide and increase opportunity in underserved communities around the world. Our main goal was to garner participants to help in mapping schools. Through research, we found a need for rewards to incentivize motivation and willingness, a target group that related to the identities incorporated within the project, and targets with access to the internet--which led us to students and connected schools. 

 

Challenge

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Our interpretation of UNICEF’s brief took on crowdsourcing efforts as the main goal of the project. In taking this approach, our greatest challenge resulted in identifying the right potential contributors as well as finding the most successful way of targeting them. Our research led us to identify this potential contributor as students and the channel by which to reach them was their (connected) schools. A challenge stemming from this was the creation of the correct incentive to garner the adoption and participation of both parties.

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Outcome

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The conclusion to our challenge was to have students map schools for a time in order to fulfill their volunteering and community service hours. This generated a benefit to both the school and students through the ease of implementation and incentives. We’d do this by partnering with already connected schools worldwide to assist Project Connect in mapping. 

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Key Words

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Design, Social Impact, Prototyping, Mapping, Crowdsourcing

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