Grey, Finn, Sawyer, Moss
The problem this team was working to solve was a lack of representation and safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth in middle school. The issue of hostility towards the queer community is most prominent in a school environment, making it difficult for young kids navigating their identities to feel accepted. The team approached this problem with the objective of making safer spaces (free of homophobia) for LGBTQ+ middle schoolers. To gain insight into their end user’s daily struggles, the team reached out to several middle schools with Gay Straight Alliance clubs asking to conduct empathy interviews. After meeting with several teachers and two separate communities of queer middle schoolers, the team found that the misrepresentation of LGBTQ+ culture in the media was something the students were tired of being exposed to. The lack of portrayal of queer characters in books, movies, etc. made the students feel isolated from the world and left room for their unsupportive peers to make misconceptions about them. With this information, the team began to ideate, working to create a product that would help reduce this feeling of isolation. They decided to create an LGBTQ specific coloring book featuring only queercoded fictional characters as a means to get positive depictions of the LGBTQ communtiy out into the world. They prototyped a coloring book using a list of characters they deemed as members of the queer community and presented the draft to their end users during an in-person meeting. The students were thrilled to see so many characters they held close to their hearts sharing the same identity as them, and immediately began giving suggestions for more characters to add. This reaction told the team that this was something that needed to be made a reality to better the future of queer kids everywhere. The support shown for the coloring book was immense; not only did it gain the approval of the students themselves, but it also caught the attention of the Verdi Ecoschool down in Florida. Several of them offered to buy the finished product once everything was finalized.
