I CAN!

Video Blog & Organization

For my Design Senior Thesis I took on a national problem: Getting girls interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers.

I identified 4 major problems:

1. A lack of positive female role models.

2. Cultural abundance of negative female stereotypes on girls’ abilities.

3. Culturally pervasive gender-role bias, limiting girls’ emulative imagery.

4. Subconscious or active discouragement from entering STEM by media, parents, teachers, and peers.

All this leads to girls believing that as a female, they are not supposed to be anything more than a limited set of personalities, values, careers, or worse, that they're not capable of being more.

So my solution needed to include:

1. Positive female role models.

2. Teach a "Growth Mindset" to combat negative female stereotypes of innate ability.

3. Create a community of support for girls in or wanting to go into predominantly male career paths.

4. Supply active encouragement to take on challenging tasks and push personal limits.

My design solution: Create an organization of support and guidance based around a weekly updated video blog that shows smart, strong female role models that teach young women about gender stereotyping, growth mindset, and encourages them to take on difficult challenges.

Logo

YouTube Page

The organization begins with a YouTube page to be found by and to attract the target audience of 15-18 year old girls to the website.

First Video: Introduction to I CAN!

Videos for the blog were inspired by existing YouTube bloggers. This is the first video, introducing viewers to I Can! as a funny yet informative, motivational video blog.

The video is a little shoddy, I know, but for my first time being on camera, filming myself, and editing— I think I did alright. (Some of the shoddiness works to the blog's favor, capturing feelings of a casual blogger rather than a distant company or uptight educational series.)

Video Content System

The topics discussed in the videos fall under four categories:

Each week the blog would present information from a single category, and run through each at infinitum.

Second Video: Brain Muscles

This video was created as an example of the sort of content a single video would cover. The content would fall under the Brain Science category, and has a guest speaker pertaining to the subject matter. My guest speaker is the brilliant and talented illustrator Elizabeth Bitsy Conde.

As my second video, I did a little better recording so there are less unnecessary jump-cuts. However, I still wish I had recorded more time for the onscreen text that appears.

Watercolor Onscreen Text for Videos

I water-colored some text and doodles for information reinforcement and fun in the videos.

I CAN! Website

In addition to the YouTube page, a website for the organization was created. It was meant as the home for support and community, as well as a resource for the girls and their parents.

Raw Drawings for Website Elements

To create a feeling of light-heartedness and youth reminiscent of doodling on school pages, I drew some STEM/girl related doodles as decoration for the website. Here are 2 pages from my sketches.