London Transport Museum
Social programme
LTM prides itself on being an organisation that listens to young people, involving them in decision-making and supporting them to build their skills and experiences. We improved the young employees' working experience for the London Transport Museum by evaluating the Young People's Programme and ensuring LTM supports them to take tangible steps on their career path.
My Role
UX Researcher
Team
Evaluation advisor : Tiggy
The young volunteer: MeiLi, Diego
The young freelancer: Ivana
The young apprenticeship: Liam
Group activity facilitator: George
Date
Apr 2022-Jul 2023
User
Young LTM employees/activity participants age group 18-25
The Goal
Evaluating the effectiveness of existing programmes
Our goal was gaining insights into young Londoners’ working experience within the Young People programme, creating a dialogue between them and the Young People Skills and Community team to optimise the programme’s effectiveness.
User needs- To ensure young employees' needs and expectations are heard and understood, amplify their voice to drive the programme designing team’s decision-making and ensure LTM delivers on its promises.
Business needs – refreshing the LTM programme designing teams’ vision for working with young people, driving the Young People Skills and Community teams programming forward, and ensuring the programmes are designed to be better equipped to meet the needs and wishes of young Londoners.
Discover
Aspects of the Current Programme Requiring Refinement
The LTM Creative Careers programmes are still in their early stages of development. Given the age disparity between those who designed the programme and its users, there's a need for a youthful perspective to assist in communicating with the young employees to evaluate the current programme's efficacy and areas for development. In response to the insights we got from young Londoners, the Young People Skills and Community team will work to implement changes and programming to develop more effective ways of working with young people and meeting their unique needs and expectations.
Research method:
To understand the young Londoner’s voice better, we used the following research methods:
1. Panel discussion
2. Case studies
3. Interviews.
Evaluation advisor sharing her experience
Unveiling the Needs of Young People
Panel discussion:
We conducted a group panel to understand better young employees’ experiences and needs in the LTM work environment. We aimed to unpack questions such as How would young people rate the paid work opportunities LTM offers? Do these opportunities meet their real needs and expectations? And did the resources provided by LTM help young people improve their skills to get REAL jobs? Do they feel empowered and included in decision-making? What else do they want to say?
Firstly, we used the existing keywords on the young people programme, such as skills, networking, paid work. We brought together four young employees and the programme design team's evaluation advisor to discover the needs behind these and develop them into a detailed and complete statement of young people’s precise needs and the goals LTM needs to grow.
Young people mapped out their needs
We invited young Londoners to share their domain needs, input of the programme, activity, and short-term and long-term goals. Their answers to short-term goals emphasise the paid job, skills development, opportunities, creative practice, and network, and long-term ones direct to greater well-being in their professional lives, having more significant influence in the creative industry, young people feel better about their prospects and guiding LTM programme development and review.
Domain, input, short-term& long term needs
Who's responsible for these needs?
We allocate those needs to different responsible parties. This step distributes the responsible parties to the LTM and the young people, hoping they will see their responsibilities and work together.
Theory of change and responsibility planning
Potential short and long-term changes
Next, we used the theory of change to see the short and long-term changes these declarations would make. The need to be paid is heard, and it will guide LTM to offer more paid opportunities and reduce unpaid roles, which in the long term build up a diverse working environment. Skills development-oriented design can prepare young Londoners to gain new soft and technical skills and confidence for future job applications, meanwhile feeding the businesses the skilled workers they need. Fair and accessible opportunities and a safe supportive environment can make LTM include diverse backgrounds‘ young people.
Mapped activities that can help change happen
Deep Dive: Qualitative Exploration from Industry Perspectives
Case study& Interviews
Once we had agreed on the manifesto and what the young people wanted to achieve in the short and long term, we used this as a cornerstone to conduct case study and personal interviews to gain qualitative experience and advice. We interviewed young Londoners on the freelancer, apprenticeship, and volunteer projects to ask about their journey and came up with the following insights.
Persona:
Empathy map:
The empathy map helped us dive into the answers of what do they need to say, what do they think about the situation, what actions have they done, and how do they feel about their career in London.
Emotional journey map:
We conducted a journey mapping exercise for young individuals to understand their emotional progress from the programme. We aim to quantify their progression from an emotional aspect, providing a motivational tool for reflection.
Insights:
From Apprenticeships perspective:
Liam is an LTM Apprenticeship and details the process of joining LTM and shares the educational and networking support provided to her during the latter part of her career, in which he recognises that he has gained Fair and Accessible Opportunities, Supportive and safe spaces to experiment, and Collaboration in decision-making. As a result, he has improved his skills in management and communication, Confidence and professional performance, and a chance to network at an industry summit in Scotland. He has now been offered a full-time job due to the many workshops he has carried out as part of his next volunteer project.
In terms of providing a quantitative progression plan for future Apprenticeships, his advice was to use pre- and exit interviews to check the apprentice's technical progression and for the apprentice to confirm that they understand the help the business needs. Use the reflective journey for apprentices to talk to their peers to check that their network is being expanded. At the same time, we pay special attention to the psychological state of the absentee students and care about whether they need help in their daily lives, such as caring for their families. For example, caring for family members.
For Young volunteer perspective：
MeiLi speaks for young freelancers seeking Fair and Accessible Opportunities, networking growth, and training to secure genuine jobs. She got involved in co-design workshop activities for LTM and improved her public speech and collaboration skills. She proposed that LTM consistently assesses volunteers' acquired skills to address these needs and offers continuous projects for skill practice. Additionally, she highlighted the challenges of cultural differences and language barriers as vital issues for international students like her, which reduced their confidence in the place, suggesting LTM's specialised workplace support to ensure diversity and inclusivity.
For Young freelancers perspective:
Ivana questioned the necessity of a traditional office format on behalf of young freelancers. She highlighted the significant transport costs in London as a burden for disadvantaged young individuals and asked if there were opportunities for reductions or subsidies. Furthermore, she inquired about the specific scenarios where young freelancers can bring value to LTM.
Group reflection time
Consideration for the evaluation team:
One of our team members has highlighted a consideration: Should there be a fixed set of criteria to assess such progress? For example, During the case study session, I learned about one participant, an individual with intellectual disabilities, who initially required her mother's accompaniment for every commute. Post-program, she could travel to LTM independently. Would we consider this as a progression? What should we look for outside the quantifiable range of regular questions? What non-technical factors might affect their work experience and employment potential? What are some common Non-technical factors that can affect the user experience?
Results：
The LTM evaluation team successfully designed questionnaire questions and a creative evaluation plan based on our gathered insights. They will soon provide detailed data quantitative and qualitative feedback in September and October.
Conclusion：
We foster mutual understanding between young individuals' needs and LTM's support. This helps identify gaps in current programmes. Feedback from participants enables the LTM team to refine processes, ensuring better opportunities for young Londoners.