MOVEMENT CHURCH CASE STUDY
Researching The Setup & Teardown Process
Nicole Showalter- Visual Communication Design
Team Members: Madison Moore, Mryna Lewis, Jordan Beveridge, Khanya Keswa
Client: Movement Church
Team Members: Madison Moore, Mryna Lewis, Jordan Beveridge, Khanya Keswa
Client: Movement Church
AbstractThis project shows the generative design research done with Movement Church and the third year design students. Movement Church is a portable church that meets at the Hilliard YMCA every Sunday. Being a portable church, volunteer teams must setup and teardown the stage, lighting, sound, signage, and everything else the church uses. As a co-design project, we worked closely with the leaders of Movement to design a solution that would improve the setup and teardown process. Throughout the project, the focus shifted from looking at the process of setup and teardown to the communication of the process to new volunteers.
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The ProblemMovement meets in the gym of the Hilliard YMCA every Sunday morning at 10am. Due to the fact the movement is renting the space, people have to setup and teardown each morning and each afternoon. At first, we had thought that our problem would reside in the efficiency of the process, but through observations and surveys we came to the conclusion that the problem was actually how the process was communicated. When a new volunteer joins the team, the team lead, in this case Josh Howard, talks with them and explains the process and expectations. Josh sends each new member a PDF that lists the times that tasks need to be done, but not how to do each task. When a new volunteer comes to setup, they have no idea what to expect since the setup is all done before the congregation gets to service. As co-designers, we decided that our objective was to improve the communication and understanding of the Setup and Teardown process for incoming and current volunteers and to help create a more organized system for storage.
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The ResearchOur first approach to finding our solution was to conduct secondary research. Our main findings came from portablechurch.com. Portable church provided a variety of articles that discussed ways of improving a setup process and how to delegate tasks to volunteers. These articles gave us better understandings of what other churches have done that have been successful. Our next step was creating surveys that got sent out the whole team, and observe the process first hand. Both of these methods showed us that our objective needed to shift from process to communication.
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Generative Design/ Make ToolsFor our generative design research we did a couple make tool sessions with our co-designers. Our first co-designer was Mark Artrip, lead pastor at Movement. Our second co-designer was Josh Howard, creative arts director and setup team leader at Movement. For make tool one we asked our participants to draw a map of movement that showed the ideal order they would want for setup. Both Mark and Josh put emphasis on the stage area being the first to be setup. For our second make tool we gave our participants a selection of blocks that were labeled to represent the different items on the setup sheet they gave to new volunteers. We asked Mark and Josh to show their ideal setup and teardown process with the blocks. During this study we found out that one of the main issues they face is with the way that the storage closet gets packed and unpacked and how inconsistent it is form team to team. This supported the idea of the need for better communication even more.
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DeliverablesWe decided that a simple solution to not being able to see the process before doing it was to show them the process through a time-lapse video of the entire process. Another way to communicate the process was developed using the maps of that both Mark and Josh drew. Using their maps, we were able to pull out the key concepts and locations that needed highlighted in order to convey the process to new volunteers. As a team, we developed a process map of the building with the order of operations and drop zones that will be given to new volunteers and old in order to create a consistent and simplified process. In order to give the closet a consistent packing system, we developed signage that would clearly convey where the different objects should be located, that way it is the same each time even with different teams.
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