Developing Positive Identities in Teenagers to Drive Purpose

Abstract

This paper explains the design objectives, processes, and rationale behind creating Aura, an app aimed at developing positive identities in teenagers to drive a sense of purpose. Aura focuses heavily on Bill Damon’s research around how teenagers develop a sense of purpose. The app targets the following areas of need: access to role models, discovery of interests, and connecting interests to actionable items in the community or world. Through prototyping, user feedback, and research, we explore how to best target these needs and present our initial findings.

Keywords

adolescent development, identity, purpose, educational apps

Design Objectives & Significance

What is Aura?

The design question driving Aura is, “How does purpose develop in youth and how might we foster it?” From this, our smaller design goals for Aura became to provide users with a sense of agency and control in developing their own passions and values, to connect users with role models that share similar traits or values, to suggest meaningful ways to engage their interests with the community, and to help users discover resources to continue fueling their passions and interests. The overarching goal is to help teenagers find a sense of purpose that positively drives other parts of their lives, whether that is school, hobbies, or future career paths.

From these design questions and goals, we ideated a mobile application called Aura. We chose the name “aura” because an aura is unique to a specific person, and we wanted our users to feel a sense of ownership over their personal profiles or auras. Aura’s main features revolve around a user profile with traits and interest “bubbles” that the user curates him or herself. Clicking on one of these bubbles leads the user to role models, friends, or resources that relate to that trait or interest. An entrance quiz and optional, fun quizzes are aimed at gathering more information on the user’s interests and traits to suggest back to the user. Finally, a “discover” feature serves to connect users with resources such as blogs, local opportunities, programs, and so forth that relate to a user’s interests. Although our hi-fidelity prototype was developed as a mobile app, we also envisioned it as a website application during our brainstorms to increase accessibility.

Who is Aura For?

Aura is aimed at teenagers of all genders between the ages of twelve and sixteen. We are most interested in middle school and early high school students (6th to 10th grade). We are focusing mainly on students who attend some sort of formal schooling rather than home-schooling because this is applicable to the majority of teens, though we are unsure if school setting matters. In particular, we designed the hi-fidelity prototype for a 9th grade public school classroom in order to collect a large amount of user feedback. Thus, school setting is a potential area for further research. The app itself is intended for use outside of a classroom or during leisure time since we are most concerned about self-discovery and personal development, which can happen outside of a formal classroom setting.

Why Aura?

Adolescence is an important time for self-reflection and self-discovery. Developing a sense of purpose brings a lot of benefits, which we will elaborate on further in the research section of our paper. Aura draws on other online quizzing systems like Buzzfeed that are already very popular amongst our target audience. However, other online quizzing systems like Buzzfeed are temporary and do not maintain a record of interests that is then reported back to a user to help them learn more about themselves. Interviews regarding goals, actions and plans are often easy for students to focus on yet allow them to indirectly carve a path towards the more difficult and abstract concept of purpose (Reilly et al).  Thus, Aura proposes a fun alternative to helping teenagers self-reflect and identify these pathways to purpose. Although the app does not necessarily involve parents, it is something that parents would encourage their teenagers to use because it offers a “productive waste of time.”

Form and Function

Our design goal is to help teenagers develop a sense of purpose by connecting them to role models, relevant resources, meaningful ways to engage their interests with the community, and by providing them with a sense of agency in creating their personal “auras.” With these design goals in mind, we created our first lo-fi prototype, pictured below.

This lo-fi prototype was presented to Bill Damon, a Stanford professor and expert on adolescent development. He provided feedback on what features he believed would be most valuable in guiding teenagers to develop a sense of purpose. We incorporated his feedback, and then used KeyNote (design) and POP (interactions) to create a hi-fi prototype for target user testing. Below is the hi-fi prototype that we created, which was sent out with a scripted video and Google form for feedback.

High-Fi Prototype

As seen in both prototypes, Aura focuses heavily around the user. The user is encouraged explore quizzes, role models, or nearby opportunities, all of which are meant to be relevant to the user. Upon downloading and opening the app for the first time, users are prompted to take a short welcome quiz. This quiz seeks to gain background knowledge about the user that is relevant to our design goals. From there, a user is presented with an initial set of suggested traits and interests (as seen in Screen 8 of the hi-fi prototype). A user has complete ownership over the “bubbles” that make up their aura. If they agree with a suggested trait or interest than they can choose to keep it or remove it otherwise. This supports the user’s sense of agency in personal development. Furthermore, a user’s aura can be expanded by taking fun Buzzfeed-like quizzes (Screen 10).

        If a user wants to learn more about a specific trait or interest in their aura, then that user can click on that corresponding bubble. This will lead them to Screen 9, which displays a suggested role model that the user can similarly accept or reject. There will be an option to learn more about that role model to maximize the possibility of our user finding a role model that he or she relates to. We would like to include not just celebrities as suggested role models, but also local community leaders and politicians to make this feature as relevant to the user’s life as possible.

Finally, users can either interact with this app on their own, or seek to connect with real-life friends who are also users of the app to find common traits or interests. Users can additionally choose to keep their profiles anonymous or share it with friends. We will facilitate sharing quizzes with friends to both encourage social interaction through this app if desired and to encourage users to keep using the app.

Design Rationale

Why purpose?

The final design of our application was informed by extensive literature in positive youth development and the benefits of youth establishing a sense of purpose. Our initial curiosity in adolescent development was the construct of identity and how it is developed. According to O'Connor, during adolescence, youth “begin to test goals, values, and beliefs at this stage” and if they can establish these constructs, they “resolve identity confusion, are more connected to their surroundings, and are better able to foresee and plan out their futures.” (11-12) Yet Bill Damon, an expert in Adolescent Development, reveals

“disengaged youth…report an inner life of anxiety and a sense of feeling trapped in a life that is not under their control. They feel disappointed in themselves and discouraged by what life has offered them thus far. They despair at the emptiness and meaninglessness of their daily activities.”

Evidently, many youth are running into obstacles resolving this identity confusion and, as a result, find themselves disengaged and trapped. We saw a clear need in the youth development space to facilitate engagement and foster meaning into daily life. Damon’s research has found that instilling a sense of purpose in youth can create this necessary engagement and lead to numerous additional positive benefits. He found that youth without a purpose lack a sense of direction. In this critical age of psychological development, a lack of direction can lead to anxiety, depression, cynicism and feelings of helplessness. Such negative emotions can, in turn, lead to destructive behavior such as substance abuse, eating disorders and reckless behavior (Damon et al., 2008). Yet he found that instilling a sense of purpose in youth can lead to increased prosocial behavior, increased motivation to grow, increased involvement in the community and a desire to impact others and future generations. Bronk et al. found that “[purpose] orients life goals and daily decisions by directing the use of personal resources, such as time, energy, and effort, toward prosocial aims” (133).  In our research, it became clear that purpose is paramount to fostering engaged youth. Yet the term purpose is fairly general. To brainstorm the idea for our application, we first had to define purpose.

What is purpose?

In Damon’s research, he defines purpose as a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is meaningful to the self and leads to productive engagement with some aspect of the world beyond the self (Damon et al., 2003; Damon, 2008). Ferreira de Araujo et al. believe “one’s purpose is integrated in the person’s identity and may motivate and guide actions and reasoning“ (127). Additional research in this area defines four cultures of purpose; supported, strivers, givers, and disciples. Supported focused on the meaning and knowledge they could gain from others. Strivers focused on career success. Givers solely aimed to help others. Disciples felt certain about their faith-focused purpose to serve God (Moran). In a similar trend, the Youth Purpose Project made a powerful statement about the steps to developing purpose in youth:

“A lack of access to role models who exhibit purpose is an obstacle; without narratives or role models, young people struggle to envision purpose. They cannot see how they can help other people or their communities. Good mentors therefore help kids to develop a sense of agency and a sense of control over their own lives, which helps them progress toward fulfilling their purpose. Young people also need exposure to heroes, who they can strive to emulate”

Research on at-risk youth programs found that the most successful programs focus on developing a “career plan” and building the program around “competencies to be attained by participants” (Druian et al.). Furthermore, successful programs for at-risk youth matched student needs and problems, and took advantage of student interests and strengths (Wehlage). This research suggests that providing a visible pathway of growth centered around a personal skillset is extremely beneficial for disengaged youth.

In analyzing this research, three distinct themes emerged in the process of developing purpose in youth. First, positive development stems from role models and support systems. Role models provide a framework of success and a distinct example of possible life trajectories.  Additionally, they can be a symbol of hope for the creation of new narratives. Second, purpose is driven by a personal skillset. By acknowledging and utilizing individual strengths and interests, we can form a refined self identity that can provide a sense of agency and, as a result, foster long-term engagement. Lastly, purpose is heavily fueled by the ability to help the surrounding community. Through developed skillsets and established identity, youth can begin to contribute to the community and even develop leadership roles, which are the building blocks to a path of purpose.

 Our design started and ended with these three research principles in mind. Our final prototype aimed to connect youth to role models, refine their self-identity by emphasizing skillsets and provide the platform to engage with community. We will dive into our research on these three principles and how we emulated them in our design.

Role Models

In our initial design, we intended to have celebrity role models as the main component of our app. While celebrity role models provide example narratives and paths to success, they do not provide the direct mentorship that seems to be key to establishing purpose. As Eggert et al. state,  “teens need to know that adults understand and appreciate their interests, their work, and their contributions. At-risk youth expect criticism but they need positive reinforcement, warmth, and acceptance” (130). In our next iteration, we concluded that real role models would be a much more powerful feature.  If we could provide a platform to connect students with local role models that they could actually interact with, we would provide this positive reinforcement that is crucial to purpose development. As a result, our final design aims to incorporate both celebrity role models and local role models to provide a wide array of inspirational narratives and actionable resources.

Skills and Competency

Youth development literature laments the current language surrounding young people. Clary et al. eloquently admit:

“Characterizations of young people as problems to be managed or as primarily in need of fixing reflect both a deficit approach to human development and a belief that there is some shortcoming of character or personality that leads youth to become involved in risky or negative behaviors” (20)

Evidently, it is important to embrace the positive attributes of youth rather than hone in on what is absent. This research informed our Aura skillset feature. Through visual auras of personal skills and values, we encourage youth to embrace their distinct skillsets. Additionally, positive developmental pathways are fostered when adolescents have developed a stable identity (FYSB). By providing a visual mosaic of the user’s skills and talents, we aim to create a more refined and stable identity, more importantly for when the user has not been able to define it yet himself. Furthermore, research shows that it isn’t enough to simply tell students they are good at something. It is much more meaningful to facilitate their growth in addition to the recognition. Lerner et al. state, “if the strengths of youth are aligned with resources for healthy growth...the systematic promotion of positive development will occur across time” (8). This discovery led to our addition of the resources feature. By providing links and curated information for each skill, we hope to encourage extended self-exploration and engagement, which will lead to an empowered sense of purpose.

Community Engagement and Volunteerism

Lastly, we wanted our application to encourage interaction with the surrounding community. Barber et al. found that “simple participation – including participation in individual hobbies and athletics – was predictive of community engagement as a young adult” (16). This led us to incorporate another kind of resource for each skill and core value; community resources. For any given concepts, we aim to provide resources that connect you to local communities that revolve around this concept. The Family and Youth Services Bureau found that “peer interactions based on mutual respect and reciprocity foster development of a sense of connectedness because it is through these interactions that individuals develop empathy and intimacy” (15). If we can facilitate these peer interaction, we can begin to establish an increased commitment to the community. Through accessible resources such as web-forums or local events, we can allow youth to not only expand their skillset and grow, but also connect with others to conquer the final component of purpose development.

Design Process

We began our design process with the knowledge that we wanted to build something for teenagers. As a time of discovery about oneself, the teenage years seemed like the period of one’s life when assistance in understanding one’s identity could be especially helpful. We began researching around identity and during that process came across Bill Damon’s work around purpose and the importance of a sense of purpose in teens. Perhaps the greatest thing about designing for adolescents is that we were teenagers not too long ago. We had first-hand knowledge of what it meant to be in the world of our potential users because we were and in some ways still are surrounded by the age group Aura could assist. We capitalized on our own experiences and the knowledge we gained from research in order to begin brainstorming.

During our brainstorming process we developed many different ideas for products to assist teens in better understanding their own identity and develop a sense of purpose. We first discussed the idea of “an Instagram for purpose,” where users could share pictures of their passions to receive feedback and have social interactions around these passions. This led to the concept of creating a self-portrait of the user, a video spotlight or storyboard of who they are. We then discussed ideas around connecting teens to potential role models; a Match.com for role models was a potential concept.  It was here that the idea around quizzes to understand the user and match them to role models arose. Incorporating the concept of a self-portrait, we came up with an idea called Mosaic that had the concept of mixing different appropriate role models in order to create a picture of the user’s identity. Finally, we took elements from all of these different stages in the brainstorming process to create Aura, a product that provides the user with a self-portrait and a set of role models by utilizing quizzes to learn about who they are.

After creating this concept we began storyboarding.  See our storyboard on page 3 under Lo-Fi Prototype. This shaped our understanding of how we desired an individual to interact with the Aura and what were the different pages they would potentially interact with.  This sense of understanding around what Aura would look like made it possible to create a high-resolution prototype, which can also be seen on page 4. This prototype was then sent out to high school freshman for user testing. The video of our prototype was viewed by 45 freshman from San Leandro High School in Oakland. They then were asked to fill out a Google form to share their thoughts about Aura with us.

We received encouraging feedback where about 50% of those that viewed our prototype said that they were either Likely or Very Likely to use Aura. Students also responded the following: “I would find my role models and learn more about my personality,” “I would use it to find what resources I can get for my interests,” and “It emphasizes your identity and strength. Then it can help you become the best of who you can be. Unlike those manipulative fashion industries.” We also received excellent feedback that we would want to implement into our next round of prototyping and user testing.

                As a result of the quotes, “They should make an activity list for your traits such as goals you could do a day and etc.” and “I would probably forget that I downloaded it,” we decided that it might be necessary to add push notifications to the app to keep users engaged, such as a Quiz of the Day or a Goals list that users could fill out and complete.  Additionally, the pie chart to the left demonstrated to us the interest in being able to connect with friends on Aura, so we have discussed including a messaging and share component on the app. We have also discussed adding privacy settings after reading the following quote- “I don't see anything I would want otherwise, but maybe an anonymous setting because you’re an introverted person.”  Lastly, we received feedback about diversifying and expanding the starter quiz that can be seen in our first prototype, we also intend to do that.

        Regarding working as a team, we split up the work where necessary but often worked collaboratively throughout the process. Megan was an excellent resource in finding research to consider in our design and Monica’s meeting with Bill Damon was invaluable. We mostly worked together throughout our brainstorming and storyboarding process and then split up the prototyping and user testing. Megan designed the Low-Resolution Prototype, Monica created the High-Resolution Prototype and Nicole created the prototype video. Nicole also set up the user-testing and collection. We worked together in analyzing the data and creating redesign choices as a result of it. The collaborative process assisted us in ensuring we had a shared and clear vision for Aura.

        The research and user-feedback were certainly the most fruitful aspects of the design process for us. We were able to use the research to motivate decisions and user-feedback to gain ideas for potentially redesigning the app. Additionally, the design readings also demonstrated to us the importance of research in our design. We also realized the possibility of using a google survey as a need-finding or user-research tool through the reading on need-finding. Research and gaining insights through our survey’s were incredibly important pieces of our design process. They provided us with the ideas and insights necessary to move forward.

Reflections on Designing for Children & Families

        Perhaps one of the most important things to keep in mind when designing in general and particularly for children is that no assumptions should be made. Everything should be backed either by academic research or user interviews. It is very easy to believe something will benefit a user but it is also very easy to be wrong in that assumption. Therefore, research into how a product may actually affect development is important. This should be done by looking at academic research about the area of interest. There is often research with interesting insights about the affects of products on children and therefore, academic research can be incredibly useful in the design process. Additionally, user-interviews are invaluable in assuring that you are designing with your specific user in mind. This is absolutely critical in order to make a product that users will actually use. On that note, in thinking particularly about designing for children it is important to keep in mind that there are many different users involved in a child’s ecosystem. There are the children themselves, the parents, and the child’s educational supervisors, like teachers and administrators. Often as a designer one must assure they are pleasing all of these stakeholders. Therefore, it is important that user interviews are performed with every type of user that would be involved with the product.

In order to make this process easier, it may be helpful to include academics on a design team. These academics may have insight that users may not have regarding what actually helps development and what types of solutions actually meet the needs of users. Additionally, including educators on design teams that are building products for schools is critical. Understanding the classroom environment as an outsider it is very difficult. In designing if there is anyway to make it easier to understand your user or their environment in a feasible way, those steps should be taken. Therefore, including experts on teams with insights into the world of children and education is invaluable to the educational toys and games designer.

Annotated Bibliography

Barber, Carolyn, Conrad T. Mueller, and Sachiko Ogata. "Volunteerism as Purpose: Examining the Long-term Predictors of Continued Community Engagement." Educational Psychology 33.3 (2013): 314-33. Web.

Barber et al. take Damon’s conceptualization of purpose and study the relationship between long-term participation in community and development of a sense of purpose. They build upon Damon’s work on youth intentions of future participation as a framework to analyze voluntary community engagement. They examined how organizational membership and parent and peer influences can increase exposure to community activities and result in continued engagement through adulthood. Using data from AdHealth, they were able to analyze activity engagement of students between 12 and 18 and formulated possible factors that promote long-term voluntary engagement. Their findings proved useful for our design when deciding what types of resources we could provide our users to encourage service activities with the surrounding community.

Bronk, Kendall Cotton, W. Holmes Finch, and Tasneem L. Talib. "Purpose in Life among High Ability Adolescents." High Ability Studies 21.2 (2010): 133-45. Web.

Bronk et al. focused on high ability youth and the prevalence of a purpose in life among this population. The goal was to distinguish if high ability youth had a higher propensity for purpose in life that more typical youth of the same age. Through in-depth interviews, they found that purpose was equally present among high ability youth and typical youth. These findings were useful for our design as it reveals a sense of purpose is possible to achieve for all populations of youth, including our target population of disengaged youth. They also highlighted important positive effects of purpose that provided additional fuel for our design goal.

Clary, Gil E., Rhodes, Jean E. "Mobilizing Adults for Positive Youth Development." The Search Institute Series on Developmentally Attentive Community and Society (2006). Web.

The central exploration of this paper is adult action and what adult behaviors promote positive youth development. They dive into the language that American parents, teachers, policy makers and even youth themselves use to describe modern youth. They lament that the vocabulary frames youth development as the removal of negative and undesirable behavior. They outline a new, strength-based vision and vocabulary for discussing America’s youth. This outline was very helpful for us in refining our design goal and ensuring that our aim was to highlight positive attributes as opposed to eliminate negative attributes.

Damon, William, Jenni Menon, and Kendall Cotton Bronk. "The Development of Purpose During Adolescence." Applied Developmental Science 7.3 (2003): 119-28. Web.

Damon et al. explore the psychological implications of purpose and how it encourages personal meaning and self-identity. They aim to formally define purpose with respect to youth development and analyze whether or not today’s youth are finding a long-term sense of purpose. They review prior research on youth meaning and find concrete tools to elicit purpose in youth psychology. Their analysis of literatures confirms the centrality of meaning and purpose in adolescent lives. We utilized their research to refine our definition of purpose when designing our end goal for adolescent users.

Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free, 2008. Print.

Damon identifies and outlines the sequence of steps that youth took in achieving a sense of purpose - communication with people outside of immediate family, observation of meaningful work in the world around them, self-identification of skills and purpose, and so forth. From these steps, a young person’s personality begins to shift and positive capacities such as “resourcefulness, persistence, know-how, and a tolerance of risk and temporary setbacks” are gained. These lessons can transfer over to many other aspects of a person’s life and therefore have long-lasting effects. This research helps us focus on features of aura that are most directly related to and impactful for long-lasting purpose.

Druian, Greg,  Butler, Jocelyn. “Effective Schooling Practices and At-Risk Youth: What the Research Shows” School Improvement Research Series (1987). Web.

Druian and Butler answer the question of whether the conclusions reached by the effective schools researchers are in line with the techniques shown to be effective with at-risk youth. They explore whether there is a population of youth requiring a different kind of educational experience and strategies are most successful for at-risk students. Their research helps us build a framework for how to approach at-risk users and best cater our design for their needs. We centered our features around the components of at-risk youth programs that they concluded were most successful, mainly centering programs on the individual skills of each youth and the career paths that fit into those molds.

Eggert, Leona L., Elaine A. Thompson, Jerald R. Herting, and Liela J. Nicholas. "Prevention Research Program: Reconnecting At-Risk Youth." Issues in Mental Health Nursing 15.2 (1994): 107-35. Web.

Eggert et al. describe the Prevention Research Program and summarize the search findings of two funded projects within the program. They studied approximately 1,000 students from five separate high schools through their intervention programs to understand the causes of behavioral problems and identify the crucial psychosocial needs of high-risk adolescents. One of their conclusions was that a key factor in behavioral change was the support provided by group leaders. This conclusion was the inspiration for our role models feature and gave us valuable data on the importance of adult presence and leadership.

Ferreira de Araujo, Ulisses. “Youth purpose and life goals of students engaged in community and social activities” Revista Internacional d'Humanitats 30 (2014): 119-128. Web.

Ferreira et al. explore Brazilian youth engagement in purposeful activities and overall satisfaction with life. The paper aims to design new and efficient education strategies to increase citizenship awareness and youth engagement in the development of a society based in social justice and solidarity. The results of the study concluded that socially engaged Brazilian youth are more identified with “beyond the self oriented person” and displayed a higher satisfaction with life. We utilized this research and findings are additional fuel for the design component of community engagement in our application.

Lerner, Richard M., and Rainer K. Silbereisen. "Approaches to Positive Youth Development." (2007). Web.

Lerner’s book dives into the positive youth development perspective and defines a framework centered around the literature of developmental science. They discuss the history of the PYD perspective and provides an overview of the applied perspective of research into positive youth development. The book provides a valuable description of developmentally attentive communities and reveal how the human development infrastructure has to do with the the flow of community attentiveness to developmental needs and milestones. Our design aimed to internalize this idea of developmental attentive communities by connecting users to local support systems based on their personalities and skillsets.

Moran, Seana. "What “Purpose” Means to Youth: Are There Cultures of Purpose?" Applied Developmental Science 18.3 (2014): 163-75. Web.

Moran explores further definitions of purpose and build upon the framework provided by Damon et al (200). This study interviews youth to determine a trend in the cultures of purpose defined by youth themselves. The study concludes that there are four prevalent cultures of purpose that provide insight about how purpose manifests itself in youth experience. We used this study as a guiding framework for the definition of purpose that we landed on as our design goal.

O’Connor, Blake. “Does Volunteerism Shape Adolescent Attitude and Behavior?” UNC Chapel Hill (2014). Web.

O’Connor collects data on 10 to 14 year old students to examine the relationship between volunteerism and outcome of attitude and behavior. The study found that adolescents exposed to charitable behavior through volunteerism or community service develop empathy and increased self-efficacy. These traits can lead to positive attitude and behavior. The research findings were in line with our design goal and heavily informed our decision to include community resources and opportunities for service activities in Aura’s design.

Reilly, Timothy S., and William Damon. "Purpose: Understanding Purpose through Interviews." Activities for Teaching Positive Psychology:  A Guide for Instructors.: 45-52. Web.

Reilly and Damon developed this guide to ground students’ intellectual understanding of purpose by encouraging students to unravel their own purpose through self-reflection. They emphasize the conceptualization of purpose as a set of values, goals and actions, tie these concepts to student experience and convey that these ideas can interact to create a lasting sense of life purpose. The interview questions provided in the guide were useful for us in designing quizzes that motivate reflection. We used this guide to ensure that the language used in our quizzes can facilitate both entertainment and self-reflection.

The Youth Purpose Project. “Exploring the Nature and Development of Purpose in Youth.” Stanford Center on Adolescence (2002-2009). Web.

The Youth Purpose Project held a conference to bring together researchers and experts with unique perspectives on purpose. The goal of the conference was to explore the concept of purpose and provide a deeper understanding of the different roles, forms, types and sources of purpose for adolescent youth. This report summarized the different viewpoints of the academic participants and provided significant grounding for the elements of purpose driven development that shape our application design.

United States Family and Youth Services Bureau. CSR, Incorporated. "Understanding Youth Development: Promoting Positive Pathways of Growth." US Department of Health and Human Services (1997). Web.

The US Department of Health released this report to provide a model for understanding youth development and how to promote a successful transition from childhood to adulthood. They propose that development occurs through dynamic interactions between youth and their surrounding environment and provide a summary of constructs that foster positive development. They outlined detailed characteristics that encourage prosocial behaviors that mirrored the themes found in Damon et al. In particular, they emphasized that adolescents with a stable identity are imperative to positive development into adulthood. The characteristics outlined in this report provide useful concept goals for our application. Our final design aimed to develop these characteristics in our users.

Wehlage, Gary G. “Reducing the Risk: Schools as Communities of Support.” NASSP Bulletin 75.513 (1989): 50-57. Web.

Wehlage’s study aims to develop a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between at-risk youth and their respective schools. The study gathered data from 14 schools based on dropout prevention programs. The research findings that were most useful to us were that successful prevention programs matched student-specific needs and highlighted the individual strengths and passions of each student. These findings informed our design of a user-centric application that embraced the individual traits of the user.

Appendix A : Prototype Video Script

Appendix B: User Testing Demographics

Class 1

Class 2

Combined Classes