Get Schooled: frog and MTV Team Up For a Winner

We teamed with MTV and the College Board to help shepherd three finalists in the Get Schooled College Affordability Challenge. Here’s what we learned in the process.

Recently, frog, MTV, the College Board, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation teamed up for a program called the Get Schooled College Affordability Challenge. The goal was to get students to create an innovative technology to better understand the financial aid application process and help alleviate the financial burden of college. Three finalists were chosen, and frog helped shepherd the students through the process of refining their concepts. Today, President Bill Clinton announced the winner at his Clinton Global Initiative University. UNLV graduate Devin Valencia won with her “Connect Fund” app, which leverages a person’s Facebook profile to automatically generate relevant aid opportunities. 

Helping each of the finalists through the creative process was a rewarding challenge and a learning experience for us at frog (in addition to Devin, the finalists included Larissa Simpson and Dekunle Somade). Unlike our work with clients, we had to refrain from doing the work ourselves, and focus on empowering and guiding these students to take their concepts to the next level. 

Each student arrived at frog with their concept at varying degrees of depth and fidelity—some had done research; some had simply created their concept based on their own financial aid experiences; some had images of the application; some simply used words; some ideas were broad; another was tightly focused. Regardless, we had one week with each student to help them hone their idea, assess feasibility, and communicate it for MTV’s cameras.

During the week we spent with each of the three students, we learned a lot and were given some important reminders about our own practice as designers.

Lesson #1: You can’t teach what we do in a week, but you can still grow an idea significantly in five days.
When our first student arrived, we had every hour of their day planned out with frog experts and interactive sessions. By the end of the first day, we realized that we needed to stop talking and give them more space to absorb and work on their concepts. The more we could keep them talking to us—with a strong feedback loop—the better the concept progressed.

Lesson #2: We use a lot of jargon, and that’s not the most effective language.
When one of our students was walking us through the different sections of her presentation (it was pasted up around the walls of a conference room), we realized that the labels we had selected to summarize the different angles on her concept just weren’t working for her. They sounded forced. Once we changed our labels from “titles” to actionable questions for her to answer, the story got much stronger. “User Insights” changed to “why students need this” and “Technical Feasibility” changed to “Can we do this?” Nomenclature is a critical part of the question itself.

Lesson#3: Visual design, writing skills, and toolsets are incredibly valuable, and they cannot be learned quickly.
We struggled with choosing the right tools with which to express ideas with the students, and quickly realized that we could not expect them to use the tools we use and have high fidelity outputs. The instinct was to just take over and create their slide presentations for them, and we actually held a quick meeting to discuss whether we could provide more visual design support (equally to each of them). That instinct was pretty quickly nipped in the bud because we could see the slippery slope (where does “support” stop, for example). In the end, we backed off and let each of them own their own visual output.

Lesson #4: The story is the most important aspect of selling a concept.
Once we let go of our burning desire for polished visuals, we returned to the story. We had the students tell the story of their concept again and again. Through this process of telling and retelling, the stories evolved, and the finalists were able to articulate why they had chosen their particular concepts. The personal relationships to the ideas were perhaps the most compelling aspect of each story.

Lesson #5: Naming something makes it real.
I was struck by how much more “real” the ideas became when the students named them. It also makes the storytelling easier.

Lesson #6: The (MTV) camera is a pretty powerful force.
The arrival of the MTV cameras on the fourth day was a great catalyst for getting concepts to the next level (nothing like a nationwide audience to up your game).
 
At the end of the day, we each stood back with great pride as we watched Devin, Dekunle, and Larissa present their final ideas. While it was hard to restrain ourselves from doing the work during the process, it was amazing to see how far the concepts could evolve without our hands in it—these three young people did a remarkable job of taking their raw ideas and turning them into refined pitches to a wide audience. The best part is that we’ll be seeing Devin’s “Connect Fund” concept brought to market this coming fall. Best of all, we hope future students can better navigate the challenging process of applying for financial aid.

President Bill Clinton names Devin Valencia, far right, the winner in the Get Schooled College Affordability Challenge.

(Top photo of finalists Larissa Simpson, Dekunle Somade, and Devin Valencia, courtesy of MTV.)