PodKST: A community-building podcast

The Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST) is a local theater in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. Our team worked with them to understand how they could continue to foster their inclusive and creative community safely during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Problem: In our research, we learned that people want to engage with the arts and KST’s mission of celebrating diversity and artistic expression, but, during the pandemic, they find being inside on their computers all day exhausting.

Solution: We developed a way to bridge this gap with PodKST, a community-building podcast. Through compelling storytelling and co-creation, PodKST gives the members of the KST community an accessible and COVID-safe way to connect, learn, and express themselves, away from their laptops.

Impact: "You all have really considered what KST’s values are… This idea really gets to who we are and all of the changes and considerations of our neighborhood." - Joseph Hall, executive director of the Kelly Strayhorn Theater

Because KST can no longer hold traditional live performances in-person, nor bring audiences and artists together to mingle in their lobby after shows, they are missing key components of what makes them unique and allows audiences to engage with them. Our challenge was to find a solution that would increase engagement with the theater while still upholding their mission of bringing unlike people together, both during the pandemic and beyond.

As research lead, I wrote interview protocols, conducted sessions with participants using both generative and evaluative research methods, and led the synthesis and analysis of collected data to reveal insights that would inform our design solution. In addition, I worked with the whole team through all phases of the project, from initial research to ideation to testing the ultimate solution.

> Cam Davison (Project Manager)
> Linda Lin (Visual Design Lead)
> Zach Van Cleef (Program Manager)
> Connie Ye (Technical Design Lead)

KST is a pillar of accessibility and acceptance in the East Liberty community, Pittsburgh, and beyond, and they use their voice to uplift underrepresented voices in their community. However, with the restrictions brought forth by the pandemic, the community they have fostered has become difficult to maintain. We used this problem as the starting point for our research.

We began with an in-home approach to see if we could build community by having users interact with each other on existing technologies while watching online performances. We conducted five two-part think-aloud interviews, in which participants: 1) used Facebook to find an event they wanted to attend, whether it be online or in-person, and 2) watched a livestream and interacted with it as they naturally would.

Once we learned that people need a break from their indoor, computer-heavy routines and don’t seek out online live performances, we looked outside KST’s doors to East Liberty. We recruited five Pittsburgh residents, who have varying familiarity with East Liberty and the arts in Pittsburgh, and conducted five contextual interviews with them, in which they led us around East Liberty on a virtual guided tour. Using street view on Google Maps and screen sharing on Zoom, we navigated East Liberty with our participants to see what they thought were significant places and what they know about East Liberty’s community and culture.

In order to make sense of all the data from the contextual interviews, we put all our notes up on a (virtual) board and grouped them into meaningful categories.

To dive deeper into people's relationship to East Liberty and the arts, we generated 15 storyboards to explore five needs:
  > participation in the arts
  > the arts as an event
  > safety during the pandemic
  > a unique arts experience
  > avoiding gentrified experience

We used the storyboards to understand if people related to the experiences described in them, as well as to determine when proposed solutions cross social boundaries. We conducted five speed dating interviews using our storyboards. Of the 15, two stood out: people connected with the idea of a simple interaction, like listening to a podcast while they walk, and they liked the idea of engaging with KST and co-creating art.

We used these five learnings as the basis for our design:

1. People want to get outside [think-aloud]
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2. People want to learn about important topics relevant to KST and the East Liberty community [contextual interview]
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3. People want an accessible way to experience the arts [storyboarding and speed dating]
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4. People want to stay COVID-safe [storyboarding and speed dating]

5. People want to engage with each other and KST, preferably through co-creation of art [storyboarding and speed dating]

We initially believed that the the context in which users were listening to our podcast would affect how they engaged with it.

We created three videos that showed our solution in three different contexts, and tested them with five participants. We chose these contexts based on where our speed dating participants said they were most likely to listen to and/or engage with a podcast.
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> as the user walks around East Liberty
> as the user walks around their own neighborhood
> as the user is doing chores

This brought us to our solution of an interactive podcast that gives people an opportunity to listen to discussions on topics relevant to KST (and their community and art), as well as to provide their own opinions if they wanted to. These contributions would then be incorporated into future podcasts to continue the conversation and promote engagement between users. Additionally, to further promote co-creation, KST could use these conversations as a foundation for their artists to build off of and create more art and programming for the theater itself.

Our team presented our solution to our client at a poster session. I served as a content lead for our poster and elevator pitch, as well as co-led the presentation to our client. We received very positive feedback, with the executive director of the theater, Joseph Hall, telling us,

"You all have really considered what KST’s values are and the community and the history of the community… I’m really impressed… I’ve seen other posters, but this idea really gets to who we are and all of the changes and considerations of our neighborhood."