Understanding Camper’s and Their Family’s Needs

JULY 2017

Goal Generate camper archetypes and their ideal camp journey so a summer program can broaden its base while maintaining its unique curriculum.

Role Strategist and Envisioner

Client World leader in gifted education and programming for pre-college students

Scope 4 months, $300K, 4-person team

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Persona generation: through research conducted in both Asia and the United States, we developed personas for this programs online and campus-based gifted curricula.

Persona generation: through research conducted in both Asia and the United States, we developed personas for this programs online and campus-based gifted curricula.

 

Challenge

How might an education program focused on serving the needs of gifted students expand its applicant pool? What are the unmet needs of talented youth and their families that this program can address in programming and marketing to grow and diversify its enrollees?

Project Goals

  • Understand unmet needs and desires of families who seek out programs for talented, gifted youth.

  • Uncover future needs of families and children given current social and academic trends.

  • Capture other growth opportunities like refining curriculum and program offerings

  • Establish personas that will story of what matters for potential program students and their families and focus attention for future efforts.

Project Summary

 
 
In-home research with students, their parent, and client

In-home research with students, their parent, and client

Approach

Our approach engaged a client core team throughout the following process:

Alignment: stakeholder interviews, learning preparation and planning, recruit and screening for interview participants

Discovery: in-context interviews with children and their parents in United States and South Korea.

Synthesis and Envisioning: persona development, their ideal journeys (experience, design requirements)

Two mindsets that our client needs to consider in capturing and growing a more diverse pool of applicants

Two mindsets that our client needs to consider in capturing and growing a more diverse pool of applicants

What we learned campers (and often their parents) are looking for from out of school programs

What we learned campers (and often their parents) are looking for from out of school programs

 

Key Findings

We uncovered two customer mindsets drive what current and future applicants are looking for from a talented youth program:

  • Design for parent’s happiness – success mindset: Parents connect both happiness and success when thinking about their child’s ideal future. The order, however, of which should come first defines different parent mindsets and approaches that drive what families are looking for in programming.

  • Design for parent’s need to nurture a “well-rounded child”: Parents see it as their responsibility to round out their children’s education by exposing them to interests, experiences that the child isn’t getting at school or where the child has a perceived “deficiency.” s

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Outcome

We generated six personas, their ideal journey with experience requirements and recommendations.

These personas and their journeys informed a larger digital project to restructure the program website and online programs.

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