QUEST Alliance is a not-for-profit that focuses on research-led innovation in education and vocational training. QUEST has launched Livelihood Connect as a platform for multiple and varied stakeholders in the area of employability training and livelihoods, to connect and share knowledge with each other and collectively ideate and collaborate to come up with relevant and innovative solutions. The platform will manifest through a web portal, workshops, seed grants, summits and print publications.

We spent time in the field for two months observing and documenting what people  (students, facilitators, organizations, employers) had to say about their experiences in various livelihood contexts. This evolved into specific insights and a livelihood journey which provided inspiration and direction for the innovation workshop, as well as seed content on the knowledge platform in the form of video, stories, profiles and discussions. During the workshop we also ran a co-design session with stakeholder groups in order to build stakeholder-relevance into the platform.

We worked with QUEST on multiple aspects of the Livelihood Connect platform including:
-    Research, experience design and facilitation for an innovation workshop
-    Synthesis of insights from the field and workshop to create an innovation workbook for field practitioners
-    Setting up the content structure and technology architecture for the knowledge sharing web platform
-    Branding and identity

Stills from the Innovation Workshop

User Personas used to facilitate ideation

Video from the Workshop

The workbook that was developed synthesized challenges into eight vital areas of intervention for vocational training institutes.
Within each of these areas more specific challenges along with some sample actions and solutions were detailed out. The intent of the workbook is to seed discussion and provide a framework for thoughts, experiments and reflections.

The portal is currently being developed for the stage-one launch. This includes setting up the content structure as well as branding and technology back-end. We are also helping build a road-map and an interaction plan for the platform.

The various manifests of the platform are not stand-alone interventions but a combination of multiple processes that aim to enable and inspire a diverse group of practitioners, policy-makers, program implementers, innovators and donors to connect with the vital group of young people in India today who could become valuable assets for future growth and development of the country.

Interaction Storyboards for Livelihood Connect Portal

Quicksand was brought in as the design research team to evaluate the unique aspects of Indian education, including constraints on rural schools, teachers, children, parents and infrastructure. The research in turn led to design recommendations on:

• Suitable collaboration platforms between various stakeholders
• Concepts for content delivery, interaction and system interfaces at each consumer touch point for phase one of program implementation
• A future blueprint of the program with respect to new technology & human interventions
• Internal & external communication necessary for system roll out
• Tweak existing user interface making it relevant for the new context of education

Following are some design & research artifacts from the project.

The program was piloted at district Bardhman, four hours from Calcutta. A week long ethnographic research established some key personas, concerns and paradigms that would govern the design of the Education Helpline. The work consisted of observational studies, in-depth interviews, group discussions as well as photo and film documentation – all aimed at moving towards a richer understanding of the current context.

A short film on teachers sharing their concerns and opinion on the existing education paradigm

Synthesis of the research data led to preliminary identification of user concerns, which provided an indication of the level of complexity that would be demanded of the system. Some key findings are shown below:

The next stage of the study involved developing interaction concepts that were tested with users to establish:

• Program positioning
• Training & Capacity building amongst stakeholders
• Usability of existing interface
• Database management & build-up

SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT: Illustrations of possible scenarios from point of view of teachers, field workers and knowledge workers

CALL FLOW SCHEMATIC: An illustrated depiction of how a call generated travels through the system and the key stakeholders at each stage.

SYSTEM SCOPING: Feature specification of the system in its short, medium and long term manifest

Finally, the Quicksand design team did an audit of the existing web based user interface, navigation and database structure and made simple visual design changes that would enhance its usability. This was important from the point of view of pilot implementation and was used to brief the technology development team.