2025 MIT - KPMG HUI #1

Phew! Our first visit to KPMG was an absolute highlight! Busy and packed with lots of mahi BUT we were well looked after! The day began with a chance for all of us to reconnect over breakfast at the Lawn Cafe before Justine Todd warmly welcomed us into the KPMG building. We had the pleasure of working in KPMG’s Rangiatea Infinity Room — a stunning and inspiring space that truly embodied the celestial essence of its name. It made for a fantastic day!

After introductions, we had a quick recap on our HMW's and worked through what has challenged or confronted our thinking and what has emerged to add clarity and confirmation to our thinking.

What has emerged to add clarity and confirmation to my thinking?	What has challenged or confronted my thinking?	What HMW statement am I currently confirming?
Although it affects students in the long run, really its a teacher issue and the project will support them in their planning and resourcing	Questioning whom the problem really belonged too.  Also stuck on how big and how far to go, where to start,  Wondering how to include new curriculum such as structured literacy when still in the PD phase .  Deep dive into whats already online	How might kaiako access Māori literacy content and add value to it?

Next, we started on the real nitty gritty stuff! 

 Prototyping is an essential step in the design thinking process. It includes a preliminary version of a product, service, or system. It involves testing and evaluating its effectiveness, challenging ideas and reshaping accordingly.

The main focus for today's hui was to make a start on the prototype planning phase working towards creating our first prototypes for testing and feedback. We looked at the Slidedeck Example MIT Prototype Planning and also worked through the following slides for our own MIT Prototype Planning that helped us identify potential features and solutions, narrowed in on assumptions and helped us work through the prototype planning phase.

        

In the first slide, we chose one of the ideas from our Crazy 8's and we worked on expanding on that idea. We had 8 boxes to brainstorm potential features and / or describe how different parts of the prototype will work.

My potential features included:

I appreciated this activity. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I tend to jump straight into the creation phase, thinking I know the best solution. The downside is that I often realise my solution isn't the best, get stuck and then abandon the project. This process has helped me slow down and consider all possible solutions with the user at the centre of it all. It also gave me an idea as to how I could format the site - giving each kaupapa its own page and identifying content for each page.

The solution sketch was a follow on activity to the one above. We were asked to use a combination of images and text to create a simple sketch up to show how our solution will work. My final product was:

Following these activities, we were encouraged to stand up and share our potential features and sketch solution slides to the group.  Normally when talking in front of a group I get nervous and tounged-tied but it helped that our rōpū was small and intimate. This was a valuable opportunity to receive initial feedback on my prototype. I was given some excellent ideas to consider as well as important points to check before sharing my prototype with others outside our MIT group. I know that being encouraged to talk about my prototype and being questioned will prepare me for later down the track when I'm presenting my final prototype to large groups of people.

I was inspired by Dorothy’s idea of creating a challenge for Te Wiki o te Reo Māori and / or Matariki. The goal is to get a wide range of people to contribute towards reading texts and submitting them to the site.  To encourage participation, we would create two submission portals: Te Taha Matatau for those confident in reading te reo Māori, and Te Tana Kei te Ako for those not so proficient at reading in te reo Māori. This approach would not only reduce my workload but also promote sharing, which is at the heart of the solution I’m working on. 

Another pertinent suggestion came from Matt during a later conversation where he suggested starting small and focusing on one kaupapa and making sure it is well developed before expanding and adding another subject area. I like this idea because it emphasises building a strong foundation before scaling up. This approach would allow me to focus on quality rather than quantity making it a more manageable process and easier to refine and improve before expanding.

Our next step in the prototype journey was to test our assumptions. We had to come up with 3 assumptions and ideas as to how we can test these assumptions. 

I found this task particularly helpful. It put me in the position of the 'user' of my prototype and forced me question why a kaiako would want to use the site. It implored me to consider how helpful the site would be kaikao and made me question WHY a kaiako would want to contribute to its effectiveness and usefulness by sharing their own planning and resources. Matt and I had a very insightful conversation about how difficult it is to get people to share - even when their is a monetary koha. We also talked about foot traffic and how difficult it is to sustain visitors returning regularly to a site long term which has given me a lot to consider and keep in mind. 

This activity actually made me a little worried and highlighted to me the need to test, test, test! It conscientised me to the importance of creating a prototype and asking people to try it out in order to gauge their opinions. By doing this, I can create a final product that is well suited to the needs of the user rather than going off my own assumptions which I will admit are not always right.

For the last activity of the day relating to prototyping , we worked on refining our assumptions about the prototype. We identified how we would test and we determined what data we would collect and how we would measure the success based on specific goals such as user satisfaction and resource effectiveness. 

My idea is to create a scaled-down version of my site with samples of planning templates and resources for teachers to use, test and give feedback via Google Forms. 

A great suggestion from Matt was to use Google Slides rather than creating a Google Site to share the initial prototype. Using this suggestion, I plan on creating two sets of slides - one with planning templates and the other with examples of resources for users to try and give feedback on.  

I plan on collecting both quantitative and qualitative data to assess the relevance and usefulness of the planning templates and resources. Testers will be asked to rate the planning templates and resources on a scale of 1-5 based on their usefulness. In addition, open-ended questions and suggestions will be gathered to gain further insights. The types of questions I plan on asking (via Google Forms) include:

What aspects of the sample planning did you find most valuable?  

What parts did you find least useful?

What you like to see added?

Would you use this planning template as part of your teaching and learning programme?

What resources did you engage with?

What aspects of the sample resources did you find most valuable?  

What did you find least useful?

Would you like to see anything added?

Would you use these sample resources as part of your teaching instruction?

I will also look into ways to track analytic data to monitor user engagement and interaction with the site  so I can see what users are going to the most and using.

The last item on the agenda today was a wero from Matt and Dorothy that encouraged the 2025 MIT cohort to work together to come up with a Cohort Logo Design that would be used to brand items such as drink bottles and t-shirts.  We were required to follow the ManaiaKalani branding, using their color palette and font guidelines.  As a group, we managed to come up with an initial sketch idea and a quick mock-up in Canva.  The next step is to work on the final creation via chat / email with the other members of the group, create a PNG / JPEG version and then share it back with Matt before 9pm Thursday April 3rd.

Today was another amazing session! It was a great opportunity to strengthen the relationships with each other, to see where everyone is at with their projects, to give and receive feedback, feedforward and encouragement.  The next step is to prepare the testing prototype and release it for testers to trial and provide feedback. The timeframe for this is really short so getting started sooner rather than later is the key!