INTRODUCTION
Buds is a management and control application designed for guides in informal organizations with a permanent group of youth.
THE PROBLEM
Bureaucracy = Time and Energy
Highly skilled guides, selected for their exceptional training abilities, find themselves tangled in bureaucratic tasks and information gathering. This unfortunate situation harms both the youth's experience and the guide-trainee relationship.
Why is this relationship so important?
This relationship goes beyond the transfer of knowledge;
a guide can make a significant difference in the growth and development of the youth.
Pain points
Guides are loaded with a significant amount of administrative tasks
A lot of information about the youths is undocumented and lost
Before, during, and after the activity, various tasks arise and some are forgotten
Lack of colleagues learning
THE RESEARCH
Collecting information by questionnaires
Through the questionnaires I discovered that guides currently experience an overwhelming amount of information that they struggle to manage. This negatively impacts their effectiveness as guides and their educational process.
Additionally, the research found that guides expressed
a desire to learn from the experience of other guides in resolving educational dilemmas.
The criteria for participants in the questionnaire included guiding a group of youth who do not change for a year with more than four youths for at least one year within the last two years. The questionnaire was answered by 30 instructors from different organizations.
21 female, 9 men
60% are in a paid position
83.3% meet with the instructors between once and twice a week
Let's get to know the users
Age 20-30
They have an educational background from the army and their youth
Driven by a strong sense of purpose
They have difficulty organizing
High emotional intelligence and care for others
Work in temporary job before or during their studies
THE SOLUTION
Sort by groups
Since most logins to the application will be
done to perform an action related to the youth
and will also require a quick transition between
groups, the menu was divided into two rows:
In the top row, these are pages that the guides will most likely access from a relaxed place when they invest time in improving their training.
In the second row are the groups and the diary. The guides will enter to these pages before, during, and after the activity, from different places, and therefore access to them must be easy, immediate, and with an effortless exchange.
In addition, the number of groups varies from guide to guide, the application supports up to 5 groups.
Each group has other youth, other activity hours, and sometimes also different content.
46% pointed out that they had cases where youth did not bring parental permission for an activity that required such permission
29/30 guides said that they deal with things related to the group beyond the activity hours
The youth is in the center
Buds allows the guide to see the big picture in a simple way, which helps identify points that require attention.
The youth share a lot of information about their personal lives in personal conversations, phone calls, feedback, etc, with their guide and the app makes it possible to record this information easily.
46% do not record the personal conversations they have with their youth and 60% don't record phone calls
57% testified that they forgot pieces of information about their youth
26/30 said that the individual progress of their youth is important to them at level 7 or higher (out of 10)
Multitasking superheroes
Guides are required to be superheroes and deal with a wide array of tasks and events. Buds allow them to do everything in one place and thus prevent mistakes.
60% testified that one of their youth had a birthday on the day of an activity and they didn't know it
70% testified that they forgot to prepare aids for the activity
29/30 testified that when they forget a task related to one of the youth it makes them sad at level 7 or higher (out of 10)
Game pool
A diary
Learn from the experience of others
Different guides in parallel groups often encounter similar challenges. The peer learning feature allows the sharing of educational dilemmas between guides in the same organization.
6.0 (out of 10) is the average indicating how much the guides consult with their colleagues regarding an educational dilemma
8.6 (out of 10) is the average indicating how much the guides would like to consult with their colleagues regarding an educational dilemma
VISION
Make it bigger and smarter
Buds is an application with a horizon for development.
In the future, with the use of artificial intelligence, it will be possible to offer the guide relevant features in real-time, such as updating attendance at the start of an activity.
In addition, this technology can identify weak points in a youth's process and alert the guide.
In a broader view, it is possible to develop another side to the platform where the managers of the instructors could see what is happening in the groups that belong to their district.
CONCLUSION
Allow guides to focus on training
Buds allows guides to deal less with bureaucracy and information gathering, and to focus instead on the educational process. This improves the quality of initiation, the development of the youth, the group dynamics, and the individual relationship between the guide and the youth.
