Science, technology, engineering, art, and math—commonly referred to as STEAM—is a growing industry, offering lucrative employment opportunities. STEAM occupations provide greater stability and higher salaries than non-STEAM positions and are therefore often viewed as pathways for financial security and independence.
While demand for these jobs continues to steadily grow, representation in the STEAM workforce remains unrepresentative of America today. A Pew Research Center analysis of 2017-2019 IPUMS data reveals the persistent gender, racial, and ethnic gaps exist in those occupations. Black and Hispanic adults continue to each make-up less than 10 percent of all STEM jobs, despite accounting for a combined 28 percent of all jobs in the U.S. Likewise, males are disproportionately concentrated in higher-paying STEM jobs like computer science, engineering, and architecture, while women are disproportionately overrepresented in lower-paying health-related STEM occupations.
This lack of diversity in the STEAM field prompted ToyzSteam to develop a program to cultivate a diverse workforce in this industry. Programming entails a multipronged approach, offering an experiential learning-focused college course, mentoring, and an app to encourage students to engage with STEAM concepts and cultivate self-identity through culturally relevant virtual superhero role playing and toy design.
About the client - TOYZSTEAM
A social enterprise that engages students in creating, selling, and storytelling superhero toys based on themselves. It provides pathways toward certification in various fields such as AI, coding, 3D modeling, 3D printing, animation, game design, sensors, podcasting, creative writing, and entrepreneurship.
Project Planning Dashboard
After our meetings with the client and researching the company/industry, we have narrowed our scope to identify ways to extract data for every initiative ToysSteam carries out along with bridging the gap between the marginalized communities and potential employment opportunities. Continued meetings and user research has helped us to narrow our scope further, identifying emerging themes from which to ideate. As we iterate solutions towards an MVP, we will work with our client to refine our project and scope. Our deliverable plan is chalked out below:
| Phase | Timeline | Action Items |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Research and Data Collection | 11/07 - 11/11 | • Industry practices research |
| • Identify prospective employers | ||
| • User interview recruitment strategy | ||
| • User research preparation | ||
| 11/14 - 11/18 | • User Research | |
| • Employer interview | ||
| • Field expert in workforce development | ||
| • Field expert in education program | ||
| • College student interview | ||
| • Client’s operation team interview | ||
| • Synthesizing user research | ||
| 2. Ideation & Prototyping | 11/21 - 11/28 | • Ideate |
| • Create prototype | ||
| • Testing Preparation |
◦ Define testing criteria
◦ User testing appointment |
| 3. MVP & Testing | 11/29 - 12/05 | • Complete the prototype (MVP) • Testing with Users | | 4. Final Deliverables | 12/06 - 12/12 | • Final delivery (MVP) • Final documentation • Project handoff |
Audience
There are four main audiences impacted by this project as follows:
1. Students of Color
This is our main target audience. We want to identify what are the challenges and roadblocks to success this segment of the population faces and what could enable them to pursue a STEAM education and/or career. Understanding their backgrounds and stories will allow us to ideate a solution which will resonate with them thereby increasing success rates.
2. Employer
This user group is the group that experiences difficulties in recruiting and filling in STEAM-related job positions. The representative is the one whose job position is related to human resources or is a manager who manages team members, preferably for middle to large sized companies.