The Guild Music Experience

More Info…

First we had to decide what group, within the Menlo Park community, we wanted to design for. We used need-finding techniques to locate a number of groups that could benefit from specialized music experiences, however we felt that those most in need of musical help were the Menlo Park high schoolers.

Unfortunately there is staggering research on the poor mental health of teens in this area compared to other places in the country. We learned that two of the things that can improve mental health are community bonding and listening to music, which the Guild can supply. We reached out to some students in the area to hear more about their experiences, as well as their connection to music, and we felt that we could design an experience for these kids (on behalf of the Guild) that might be helpful.

3 Part Program

Overview

The Guild Theatre (a non-profit concert venue) wanted proposals for ways to serve their community by providing events. Our team of 4 designed a 3 part experience for high schoolers in the area.

Included

High Schools Near The Guild

Our Solution…

We came up with a range of potential solutions in many forms. We considered guided music therapy, a music bus transporting the kids to school encouraging bonding, and a board game night held at the theatre. In the end, the most beneficial, and feasible, idea was an app where students could bond with other students in their school through sharing music. We felt having a digital component might be more enticing for young users and would be able to reach more people than in-person events would. However, we also believed in the value of in-person interactions so we incorporated a meet-up component for them to spend time face-to-face with peers they had been communicating with on the app, while the music is playing in the venue. Our final solution was a 3 part program that the Guild could run at local high schools.

We presented our proposal to a representative at The Guild Theatre who expressed interest in taking our idea further. The video component of the proposal is shown above, but we also had a 5 minute presentation that covered things not in the video like cost analysis (shown to the left). We also highlighted the added value of our proposal having a digital component rather than just an in-house Guild event, it would result in a Guild-branded product out in the world which is good marketing for other Guild events.